do you know anyone in this affluent area that has altered their lifestyle to reduce CO2 emissions?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean, passenger vehicles of all types make up only about 7% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. All residential energy use is something like 11%. So you can try all you want but the reality is that industry is responsible for almost all global emissions and you're just making your life harder to not even put a dent in this.

^This is true.

Industry serves households. Without households, there are no end consumers. If all households were to cut their consumption of all goods and services by 10%, aggregate output (and industrial activity along with it) would also have to be cut by 10%, or businesses would be stuck with surplus goods that cannot be sold.

A household's ability to adjust its carbon footprint isn't limited simply to adjusting the thermostat or installing solar panels. Altering one's consumption patterns can lead to a large % reduction in a household's total CO2 footprint. This is particularly true in this affluent area, where much of our footprint is devoted to non-essential or luxury items -- stuff we don't really need, 4 vacations a year instead of just 1, a new car every 4 years instead of trying to get as much use out of a vehicle as possible, huge SUVs often driven without any accompanying passengers, lawn services that involve tons of chemicals produced via fossil fuels, high consumption of meat, excessive consumption of calories (obesity = more calories per day = more CO2), using furniture for just a few years and then tossing it to the curb, etc.

Long story short, I disagree with your view that households can have only a tiny impact on aggregate CO2 emissions.

The size of the problem is magnified even further if we get the basic math wrong. On this thread we have had people say something to the effect that (1) if every household reduced their footprint by 50% then it would have almost no aggregate impact and (2) that households can have little impact because residential energy emissions are a small fraction of total emissions.

Both of these lines of reasoning are flawed. In regard to idea (1) -- if each individual reduces their footprint by 50%, then the aggregate footprint is also cut by 50%. This is basic math -- the individual parts must sum to the whole.

In regard to idea (2), while emissions by industry are greater than residential emissions, households are the final destination of goods. Without household-level consumption, industry would have no buyers for its products. So if households reduce their consumption by X%, then industry must also reduce its production by X% or be faced with surplus goods and services than cannot be sold. It follows, therefore, that household-level consumption is the determinant of industrial production. If we consume less -- or consume products that are less CO2-intensive -- then it will have an impact on industry. Households and industry are not separate islands -- we are two sides of the same coin.

So let's at least state the problem correctly. Households can indeed have a massive downward impact on CO2 emissions. Currently, in 2023, there aren't enough people and households taking action, but if this movement can continue to grow -- if each year, more and more households install solar panels, cut back excessive use of fossil fuels, reduce leisure activities that involve excessive CO2 emissions, etc -- then we can gradually begin to make a real dent in CO2 emissions. Yes, it may be too late to meet the Paris Accord target of 2 Celsius, but perhaps we can move fast enough to avoid an increase of 3C or 4C.

This is jibberish. If each individual in the country reduced by 50% the impact is not impactful. But each household would not do this because some already have and some will never so even if it was impactful it would not be. Also we will not consume less just more. No one will cut any activities. These are not the solutions we need. We will never get anywhere by cutting. We need a new approach. Science based that does not involve cutting. Maybe it is better battery technology. That is 25 years away but reachable.

How would a 50% emissions reduction at the individual-level not have an impact? If this is yet again the argument that China/India are the main culprits, so the USA can't have an impact? You realize that much of our consumption here in the USA is in the form of imports? So some of the CO2 released in India/China is to serve our consumption.

It is too large a gamble to wait for future technological improvements to rescue us. The only prudent strategy is to begin cutting emissions now, rather than waiting for a technological miracle that might never arrive.

[Anonymous]

We live in Del Ray. We are a one car family. DW takes the metro to work. She walks to the Metro. I bike to work in DC. We only drive our kids to sports practices on the other side of town. Otherwise we are traveling by bike or foot. We live in an old house we renovated. We limit our meat consumption, don't buy bottled water, shop at thrift and consignment stores, buy from sustainable companies like Patagonia and MM LaFleur that upcycle old items and sell their own used items. We have a year round vegetable garden. We compost but it caused rats so we take our compost to the farmers market.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really don't think about it. Some people have turned it into a moral game, the modern version of the cardinal sins. My attitude towards anything with quasi-religious followings is to shrug and just get on with life. We are not extravagant but we live well. I have no intention of regressing into some sort of stone age lifestyle to make the ideological happy because I also know no matter what I do, it will also never be good enough.

I don't think "quasi-religious" is a fair term. The desire to reduce CO2 emissions is based on science, not religion.

Emotions, feelings and morality come into the picture only because of the enormous risks that science has revealed with respect to rising concentrations of greenhouses gases.

The situation is not hopeless. The primary obstacle is that we, as individuals, feel small compared to the size of the problem, and we feel that our own actions are inconsequential. Yet aggregate CO2 emissions are nothing more than the sum of individual-level emissions (and the emissions tied to the products and services we consume). So our individual actions do matter. If increasing numbers of us make an effort to alter our behavior, it will indeed make a difference at the aggregate level.

I'm willing to make the effort for the sake of my children and grandchildren, and I believe that with each passing year the number of like-minded people will increase, until, I hope, aiming for a small CO2 footprint becomes part of mainstream culture.

Well no. It is not based on science. Science would tell you this is a China/India problem.

About half of the USA's total carbon footprint is CO2 "embodied" in our imports. The root cause of the associated emissions is not the country manufacturing the goods, but the country consuming the goods. So when you assign blame to China, you are simultaneously assigning blame to us. Their manufacturing and our consumption are two sides of the same coin. If we were to alter our consumption here, it would have an impact on emissions there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really don't think about it. Some people have turned it into a moral game, the modern version of the cardinal sins. My attitude towards anything with quasi-religious followings is to shrug and just get on with life. We are not extravagant but we live well. I have no intention of regressing into some sort of stone age lifestyle to make the ideological happy because I also know no matter what I do, it will also never be good enough.

I don't think "quasi-religious" is a fair term. The desire to reduce CO2 emissions is based on science, not religion.

Emotions, feelings and morality come into the picture only because of the enormous risks that science has revealed with respect to rising concentrations of greenhouses gases.

The situation is not hopeless. The primary obstacle is that we, as individuals, feel small compared to the size of the problem, and we feel that our own actions are inconsequential. Yet aggregate CO2 emissions are nothing more than the sum of individual-level emissions (and the emissions tied to the products and services we consume). So our individual actions do matter. If increasing numbers of us make an effort to alter our behavior, it will indeed make a difference at the aggregate level.

I'm willing to make the effort for the sake of my children and grandchildren, and I believe that with each passing year the number of like-minded people will increase, until, I hope, aiming for a small CO2 footprint becomes part of mainstream culture.

Well no. It is not based on science. Science would tell you this is a China/India problem.

About half of the USA's total carbon footprint is CO2 "embodied" in our imports. The root cause of the associated emissions is not the country manufacturing the goods, but the country consuming the goods. So when you assign blame to China, you are simultaneously assigning blame to us. Their manufacturing and our consumption are two sides of the same coin. If we were to alter our consumption here, it would have an impact on emissions there.

Yup. Ironically climate change should appeal to MAGAts because it’s a great chance to require American made everything. Problem is they can delude themselves with cheap Chinese crap into thinking they can actually afford stuff - they couldn’t afford to buy American if it was the only option.

Oh and racism.

[Anonymous]

Lawrence Livermore National Lab publishes a sankey chart that shows the US economy-wide energy use and efficiency. It can be found here: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/commodities/energy

The largest energy consumers and least energy efficient sectors of our economy are the electricity generation sector (35% efficient) and the transportation sector (21% efficient). The buildings sector (both residential and commercial) are the most efficient sectors of our economy at the moment. As an individual, the biggest contributions that you can make to GHG reductions are to minimize your transportation footprint (both via personal transportation and the the transportation footprint of the goods you buy).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lawrence Livermore National Lab publishes a sankey chart that shows the US economy-wide energy use and efficiency. It can be found here: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/commodities/energy

The largest energy consumers and least energy efficient sectors of our economy are the electricity generation sector (35% efficient) and the transportation sector (21% efficient). The buildings sector (both residential and commercial) are the most efficient sectors of our economy at the moment. As an individual, the biggest contributions that you can make to GHG reductions are to minimize your transportation footprint (both via personal transportation and the the transportation footprint of the goods you buy).

Thx for this information. Can you explain the term "efficiency" in this context? If a sector is 35% efficient, does that mean that 65% of the energy is wasted or lost?

[Anonymous]

I’m seeing a lot more electric vehicles and solar panels in my Bethesda neighborhood.

Commercial buildings make up a bulk of greenhouse gases and emissions. MoCo is requiring all electric new buildings in a few years. I just hope that electricity is coming from a sustainable source.