How gin can help fight climate change – leader comment

A new kind of gin made from peas has a negative carbon footprint.

The news about climate change sometimes seems endlessly negative. Don’t fly, don’t drive fossil-fuel cars, don’t do this, eat that etc.

However, do not despair, because human ingenuity is a most powerful thing and, when really we put our minds to it, we can solve the most intractable of problems.

Scientists have long warned about the dangers of global warming and inventors are now coming up with practical everyday solutions. Some are big – like increasingly cheap and reliable forms of renewable energy – while others are a bit more niche.

And it is into the latter category that a new kind of gin, called Nàdar, made from peas, perhaps belongs. Created by Abertay University PhD student Kirsty Black, it is apparently responsible for ‘emissions’ of minus 1.5kg of carbon dioxide, so it actually removes carbon from the air.

This might be relatively small beer – if we are allowed to mix our drinks for metaphorical purposes – in the grand scheme of things, but every little helps. If this can be done with gin, surely other consumer products can be redesigned to produce negative emissions. Now there’s an idea to raise a glass to.