Rubber Tree Pizza.

(And this is Dilly waiting to go to bed).

My Carbon Conscious friend Tim has taking to cycling around his home town of Cologne barefooted and dressed only in a loin cloth.

When concerned friends point to the snow and ice, he scoffs and pedals on.

Many blame his recent trip to India for some of his idiosyncrasies, others notice his contentment and refer to him simply as the CCCCLCC of Cologne.

The Contented and Currently Carbon Conscious Loin Clothed Cyclist of Cologne.

The CCCCLCC wrote to me yesterday, urging – no imploring – me to switch my computer default settings from Google.

The reason for his fervour is http://ecosia.org/, which claims to be a search engine that will save the rain forest.

Save the rain forest – certainly!

Sign me up!

Do I have to wear a loincloth too?

This is the (apparent) deal – switch to Ecosia, click away and they will give 80 percent of their profits to saving the rain forest.

About twenty years ago when I lived in London my local pizza restaurant had on their menu The Veniciana.

I don’t remember the exact composition but it was vegetarian – an interesting (for me) proposition and furthermore the restaurant promised to donate a certain sum, for every Veniciana ordered, to the Save Venice from sinking fund.

Brilliant.

I like Venice and I wanted to help save it.

I can’t remember exactly how many of the things I ate over the years that I lived there but it was quite a lot, and I urged fellow diners to consider the same.

When I arrived in Venice some years later I half expected to see personal welcoming signs draped between the Gondolas.

Instead I was told by locals that any money collected from the eateries of London was most probably mafia diverted to building a huge and ugly industrial centre on the outskirts, and that the foundations of the beautiful aquatic city were continuing to dissolve beneath my feet.

I was distraught and became carnivorous overnight.

So when I was told that I could save the rain forest simply by doing what I was already doing, but just doing it on Ecosia instead of Google I was suspicious.

However, I installed the thing and used it to do a quick search for information about Ecosia and found this article.

But…..Wow, the software showed that I had already saved two square meters of Rainforest!!

Wow!!

Er, how big is it anyhow?

I did another search and saved 2 more square meters.

Then for experimental purposes, I just typed in life (click) earth (click) and (click) by (click) click (click) a (click).

I didn’t read any of the results but WOW I’m up to 16 square meters saved already.

I don’t know, call me a cynic or a disbeliever, or both – but saving the Rainforest from destruction MUST take more than me sitting in France typing inanely into a search engine and clicking?

Surely I need to get out there, picket the Brazilian Embassy, march to Downing Street, lie down in the road and stop the traffic or form a human shield around a rubber tree?

And anyway, why is this company stopping at 80 per cent – why not donate ALL its profits to the cause?

So I decided to write to Larry Page.

Here’s a copy of my letter should you feel like writing to him too.

If you have any further knowledge of Ecosia please share it with me.

And in the meantime, as I wait for his reply, I’ll go on clicking but I think we are all going to have to don our loin cloths soon and join the CCCCLCC if we really want to make a difference.