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

[Anonymous]

I'm not upper income, but we've tried to consider environmental factors. We live in a very old rowhome instead if a newer SFH, so our house is leaky in terms of energy use, but didn't require new construction or paving over green space. We have a tiny yard in exchange for living very close to our schools and downtown, so we have one car and try to bike whenever possible. Unfortunately I cancel a lot of that out by commuting 50 miles to work once a week, do my best to carpool, and hope to switch to a closer or MARC-accessible job in a couple years.

Someday we'd like a hybrid car, but we definitely need to stretch our old gas powered car until it dies, and there's no way we can charge an electric vehicle given that we have street parking.

We haven't flown for a vacation since our honeymoon 7 years ago. I do plan to travel by plane with my family someday though. It won't be multiple times a year but I'm not willing to say never.

In terms of consumption we try to minimize how much beef we eat, but that's about it.

I think it's important to at least consider sustainability as a factor in daily life decisions, my parents say "well we can't solve the problem or be perfect individually so nothing we do matters and we shouldn't bother" and I disagree with that. But I also think we will never, ever make a difference if we ONLY look at it as an individual consumer responsibility. Collective action is the route to big change, and in terms of industrial contributions, government has an important role to play. Activism matters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In North Arlington, my wife and I feel like we are completely alone in our efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. We have just one car that we use sparingly, and we use bicycles for our local errands. We keep our thermostat at 65F in the winter (and wear sweaters) and 79F in the summer, using ceiling fans to make the bedrooms more comfortable. We greatly limit our international and domestic travel. We eat mostly vegetarian meals, and we never eat beef.

All of our neighbors have multiple large SUVs, and many neighbors have knocked their 2000 square foot houses down and replaced them with 5000 square foot homes. Some neighbors with 5000 square foot homes have only 1 child, so they don't truly need a huge living space. Many neighbors drive to work in their SUV without any other passengers to accompany them. They go on multiple international vacations a year (lots of CO2 per flight). Huge amounts of garbage are generated each week and placed on the curb, presumably to make way for yet more stuff that they are buying for their homes -- stuff that will probably end up on the curbside, destined for the landfill, a year or two down the road.

I've posted my frustrations in the "car and transport" section of this forum, only to be told by other posters that I'm jealous of my neighbor's SUVs and large homes. Despite a high level of education among DCUM posters, most don't appear concerned about the consequences of their consumerism, and can't even conceive of a high-income family exercising some restraint.

We are, in fact, a high net worth family, but we are striving to reduce our carbon footprint. We feel completely alone, like strangers in a foreign country. I'm curious if anybody else here feels the same way.

OP, you are taking so many positive steps and should be applauded for them but until you do more than just "limit" your domestic and internatinal air travel (esp the international) you are doing far more harm to the environment than all the good you are doing put together. It is just the facts.

And this is the thing that is so annoying about posts like the OP.

OP's family has decided that they'll limit but not give up travel, including flights. They live in a SFH in North Arlington, even though they have just one kid. I'm sure there are other things that aren't mentioned that aren't the environmental ideal. So, OP has drawn a line for things that he (assuming here) and his family will do, and won't do. That's fine, and something everyone should do. But then he writes this passive aggressive screed ("I feel so alone in my fight against climate change! Where are all the other like minded souls? Woe is me!") that is, when you get down to it, just criticizing others for drawing that line in a different place than he did. Anything less than his efforts are insufficient, and shows that others just don't care. But there's no recognition that the line that *he* drew is completely arbitrary, and there are tradeoffs that he has refused to make because they are necessary, or would make his life too uncomfortable. He's fine with his choices, but other choices are bad!

Short version, OP is a passive aggressive, sanctimonious hypocrite, but the most irritating thing about him is the complete lack of self-awareness.

OP here. A couple of responses to your post. First, I haven't taken a flight for a vacation in 5 years. Prior to that, I flew a great deal, but I altered my habits after calculating my CO2 footprint and waking up to the consequences of my behavior. Second, my wife has an elderly parent in another country. She visits her mother once every 2 to 3 years. That is the total extent of my family's air travels. Nothing else. Our airline CO2 amounts to about 10% of our household's annual emissions.

In regard to our single family home -- if we sell this home (where we have lived for 10 years), the lot will be used to build a McMansion. So selling the house won't lower CO2 emissions, but rather increase them. Second, our average monthly power consumption is about 375 KWH, or 12KWH per day. This is about the same level of consumption that we had when we lived in a condo 15 years ago. Our monthly gas consumption is about 50 therms. As far as I can tell, this is quite low. We achieve these low numbers by being extremely conservative with heating and cooling, and we don't have a large screen TV (in fact, we don't have a TV at all).

We have compared our household's per capita CO2 emissions against various metrics. This past year, our per capita emissions were about one-third of the national average. Of course, even this isn't good enough -- net zero will require even deeper cuts.

I think "self-awareness" on this issue involves (1) calculating your CO2 footprint, (2) comparing it to various benchmarks to develop a sense of how your emissions stack up to the emissions of others, (3) figuring out what you can do to push your CO2 emissions down, and (4) implementing your emissions cuts. We have gone through this process, leading to large reduction in our footprint.

Like I said, you have drawn a line based on what is comfortable for you. Great.

Please spare us the rationalizations about the house. All of your posts (even this one) are all about your own personal CO2 footprint, and how you can push that down. But suddenly, with respect to the house, it isn't about your own personal output anymore, but what happens to the house *after* you sell it, when it is definitionally not about your own output, but someone else's. It's now about the aggregate effect. It's a convenient shift in the analytical framework that gets you to the result you want. Also, if you were *really* serious, you could sell the house to someone who won't tear it down, even going so far as to use restrictive covenants to ensure that. You won't do that, of course, because it's a significant monetary hit. (And to be clear, I'm not suggesting you should do that - I'm just demonstrating that your "it would be counterproductive to sell the house" is both analytically flawed and incorrect - it's just too much of a burden for you to contemplate.)

At the end of the day, you are acting in a way that makes you feel good. That is, as I posted earlier, very important. And you've received a bunch of plaudits from anonymous strangers, which no doubt makes you feel good too. So congrats, I guess.

[Anonymous]

NP--And it seems like you're acting in a way to make yourself feel good by trying to denigrate their efforts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In North Arlington, my wife and I feel like we are completely alone in our efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. We have just one car that we use sparingly, and we use bicycles for our local errands. We keep our thermostat at 65F in the winter (and wear sweaters) and 79F in the summer, using ceiling fans to make the bedrooms more comfortable. We greatly limit our international and domestic travel. We eat mostly vegetarian meals, and we never eat beef.

All of our neighbors have multiple large SUVs, and many neighbors have knocked their 2000 square foot houses down and replaced them with 5000 square foot homes. Some neighbors with 5000 square foot homes have only 1 child, so they don't truly need a huge living space. Many neighbors drive to work in their SUV without any other passengers to accompany them. They go on multiple international vacations a year (lots of CO2 per flight). Huge amounts of garbage are generated each week and placed on the curb, presumably to make way for yet more stuff that they are buying for their homes -- stuff that will probably end up on the curbside, destined for the landfill, a year or two down the road.

I've posted my frustrations in the "car and transport" section of this forum, only to be told by other posters that I'm jealous of my neighbor's SUVs and large homes. Despite a high level of education among DCUM posters, most don't appear concerned about the consequences of their consumerism, and can't even conceive of a high-income family exercising some restraint.

We are, in fact, a high net worth family, but we are striving to reduce our carbon footprint. We feel completely alone, like strangers in a foreign country. I'm curious if anybody else here feels the same way.

OP, you are taking so many positive steps and should be applauded for them but until you do more than just "limit" your domestic and internatinal air travel (esp the international) you are doing far more harm to the environment than all the good you are doing put together. It is just the facts.

And this is the thing that is so annoying about posts like the OP.

OP's family has decided that they'll limit but not give up travel, including flights. They live in a SFH in North Arlington, even though they have just one kid. I'm sure there are other things that aren't mentioned that aren't the environmental ideal. So, OP has drawn a line for things that he (assuming here) and his family will do, and won't do. That's fine, and something everyone should do. But then he writes this passive aggressive screed ("I feel so alone in my fight against climate change! Where are all the other like minded souls? Woe is me!") that is, when you get down to it, just criticizing others for drawing that line in a different place than he did. Anything less than his efforts are insufficient, and shows that others just don't care. But there's no recognition that the line that *he* drew is completely arbitrary, and there are tradeoffs that he has refused to make because they are necessary, or would make his life too uncomfortable. He's fine with his choices, but other choices are bad!

Short version, OP is a passive aggressive, sanctimonious hypocrite, but the most irritating thing about him is the complete lack of self-awareness.

OP here. A couple of responses to your post. First, I haven't taken a flight for a vacation in 5 years. Prior to that, I flew a great deal, but I altered my habits after calculating my CO2 footprint and waking up to the consequences of my behavior. Second, my wife has an elderly parent in another country. She visits her mother once every 2 to 3 years. That is the total extent of my family's air travels. Nothing else. Our airline CO2 amounts to about 10% of our household's annual emissions.

In regard to our single family home -- if we sell this home (where we have lived for 10 years), the lot will be used to build a McMansion. So selling the house won't lower CO2 emissions, but rather increase them. Second, our average monthly power consumption is about 375 KWH, or 12KWH per day. This is about the same level of consumption that we had when we lived in a condo 15 years ago. Our monthly gas consumption is about 50 therms. As far as I can tell, this is quite low. We achieve these low numbers by being extremely conservative with heating and cooling, and we don't have a large screen TV (in fact, we don't have a TV at all).

We have compared our household's per capita CO2 emissions against various metrics. This past year, our per capita emissions were about one-third of the national average. Of course, even this isn't good enough -- net zero will require even deeper cuts.

I think "self-awareness" on this issue involves (1) calculating your CO2 footprint, (2) comparing it to various benchmarks to develop a sense of how your emissions stack up to the emissions of others, (3) figuring out what you can do to push your CO2 emissions down, and (4) implementing your emissions cuts. We have gone through this process, leading to large reduction in our footprint.

Like I said, you have drawn a line based on what is comfortable for you. Great.

Please spare us the rationalizations about the house. All of your posts (even this one) are all about your own personal CO2 footprint, and how you can push that down. But suddenly, with respect to the house, it isn't about your own personal output anymore, but what happens to the house *after* you sell it, when it is definitionally not about your own output, but someone else's. It's now about the aggregate effect. It's a convenient shift in the analytical framework that gets you to the result you want. Also, if you were *really* serious, you could sell the house to someone who won't tear it down, even going so far as to use restrictive covenants to ensure that. You won't do that, of course, because it's a significant monetary hit. (And to be clear, I'm not suggesting you should do that - I'm just demonstrating that your "it would be counterproductive to sell the house" is both analytically flawed and incorrect - it's just too much of a burden for you to contemplate.)

At the end of the day, you are acting in a way that makes you feel good. That is, as I posted earlier, very important. And you've received a bunch of plaudits from anonymous strangers, which no doubt makes you feel good too. So congrats, I guess.

OP here. For the record, we don't feel good about our CO2 situation. I'd like to emit zero CO2, and I feel guilty knowing that I don't, and that the CO2 I've emitted will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

In regard to selling the house to somebody who won't tear it down -- please explain to me what that would accomplish, assuming I could find such a buyer? Would the nation's aggregate CO2 emissions go down as a result? How?

I'm trying to understand your logic. Are you assuming that the new buyer would use the heating/AC even more sparingly than what we are already doing? I think that is highly unlikely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In North Arlington, my wife and I feel like we are completely alone in our efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. We have just one car that we use sparingly, and we use bicycles for our local errands. We keep our thermostat at 65F in the winter (and wear sweaters) and 79F in the summer, using ceiling fans to make the bedrooms more comfortable. We greatly limit our international and domestic travel. We eat mostly vegetarian meals, and we never eat beef.

All of our neighbors have multiple large SUVs, and many neighbors have knocked their 2000 square foot houses down and replaced them with 5000 square foot homes. Some neighbors with 5000 square foot homes have only 1 child, so they don't truly need a huge living space. Many neighbors drive to work in their SUV without any other passengers to accompany them. They go on multiple international vacations a year (lots of CO2 per flight). Huge amounts of garbage are generated each week and placed on the curb, presumably to make way for yet more stuff that they are buying for their homes -- stuff that will probably end up on the curbside, destined for the landfill, a year or two down the road.

I've posted my frustrations in the "car and transport" section of this forum, only to be told by other posters that I'm jealous of my neighbor's SUVs and large homes. Despite a high level of education among DCUM posters, most don't appear concerned about the consequences of their consumerism, and can't even conceive of a high-income family exercising some restraint.

We are, in fact, a high net worth family, but we are striving to reduce our carbon footprint. We feel completely alone, like strangers in a foreign country. I'm curious if anybody else here feels the same way.

OP, you are taking so many positive steps and should be applauded for them but until you do more than just "limit" your domestic and internatinal air travel (esp the international) you are doing far more harm to the environment than all the good you are doing put together. It is just the facts.

And this is the thing that is so annoying about posts like the OP.

OP's family has decided that they'll limit but not give up travel, including flights. They live in a SFH in North Arlington, even though they have just one kid. I'm sure there are other things that aren't mentioned that aren't the environmental ideal. So, OP has drawn a line for things that he (assuming here) and his family will do, and won't do. That's fine, and something everyone should do. But then he writes this passive aggressive screed ("I feel so alone in my fight against climate change! Where are all the other like minded souls? Woe is me!") that is, when you get down to it, just criticizing others for drawing that line in a different place than he did. Anything less than his efforts are insufficient, and shows that others just don't care. But there's no recognition that the line that *he* drew is completely arbitrary, and there are tradeoffs that he has refused to make because they are necessary, or would make his life too uncomfortable. He's fine with his choices, but other choices are bad!

Short version, OP is a passive aggressive, sanctimonious hypocrite, but the most irritating thing about him is the complete lack of self-awareness.

OP here. A couple of responses to your post. First, I haven't taken a flight for a vacation in 5 years. Prior to that, I flew a great deal, but I altered my habits after calculating my CO2 footprint and waking up to the consequences of my behavior. Second, my wife has an elderly parent in another country. She visits her mother once every 2 to 3 years. That is the total extent of my family's air travels. Nothing else. Our airline CO2 amounts to about 10% of our household's annual emissions.

In regard to our single family home -- if we sell this home (where we have lived for 10 years), the lot will be used to build a McMansion. So selling the house won't lower CO2 emissions, but rather increase them. Second, our average monthly power consumption is about 375 KWH, or 12KWH per day. This is about the same level of consumption that we had when we lived in a condo 15 years ago. Our monthly gas consumption is about 50 therms. As far as I can tell, this is quite low. We achieve these low numbers by being extremely conservative with heating and cooling, and we don't have a large screen TV (in fact, we don't have a TV at all).

We have compared our household's per capita CO2 emissions against various metrics. This past year, our per capita emissions were about one-third of the national average. Of course, even this isn't good enough -- net zero will require even deeper cuts.

I think "self-awareness" on this issue involves (1) calculating your CO2 footprint, (2) comparing it to various benchmarks to develop a sense of how your emissions stack up to the emissions of others, (3) figuring out what you can do to push your CO2 emissions down, and (4) implementing your emissions cuts. We have gone through this process, leading to large reduction in our footprint.

Like I said, you have drawn a line based on what is comfortable for you. Great.

Please spare us the rationalizations about the house. All of your posts (even this one) are all about your own personal CO2 footprint, and how you can push that down. But suddenly, with respect to the house, it isn't about your own personal output anymore, but what happens to the house *after* you sell it, when it is definitionally not about your own output, but someone else's. It's now about the aggregate effect. It's a convenient shift in the analytical framework that gets you to the result you want. Also, if you were *really* serious, you could sell the house to someone who won't tear it down, even going so far as to use restrictive covenants to ensure that. You won't do that, of course, because it's a significant monetary hit. (And to be clear, I'm not suggesting you should do that - I'm just demonstrating that your "it would be counterproductive to sell the house" is both analytically flawed and incorrect - it's just too much of a burden for you to contemplate.)

At the end of the day, you are acting in a way that makes you feel good. That is, as I posted earlier, very important. And you've received a bunch of plaudits from anonymous strangers, which no doubt makes you feel good too. So congrats, I guess.

OP here. For the record, we don't feel good about our CO2 situation. I'd like to emit zero CO2, and I feel guilty knowing that I don't, and that the CO2 I've emitted will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

In regard to selling the house to somebody who won't tear it down -- please explain to me what that would accomplish, assuming I could find such a buyer? Would the nation's aggregate CO2 emissions go down as a result? How?

I'm trying to understand your logic. Are you assuming that the new buyer would use the heating/AC even more sparingly than what we are already doing? I think that is highly unlikely.

Good grief. At the risk of further encouraging this nonsense, your focus has been your family's CO2 output. What happens with the house is irrelevant. You could move to a condo or apartment and reduce, even if only slightly, your output even further.

But I think we've finally hit on the issue. It's this:

For the record, we don't feel good about our CO2 situation. I'd like to emit zero CO2, and I feel guilty knowing that I don't, and that the CO2 I've emitted will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

This is a peculiar blend of narcissism and anxiety, where you have centered yourself in a global crisis and let it drive your actions, to the point of feeling guilt for actions the impact of which any rational person will tell you are so infinitesimally small that they don't deserve any thought.

I have been pretty snarky with you up till this point, but all that aside, I mean sincerely that you might benefit from some therapy to address this anxiety.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In North Arlington, my wife and I feel like we are completely alone in our efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. We have just one car that we use sparingly, and we use bicycles for our local errands. We keep our thermostat at 65F in the winter (and wear sweaters) and 79F in the summer, using ceiling fans to make the bedrooms more comfortable. We greatly limit our international and domestic travel. We eat mostly vegetarian meals, and we never eat beef.

All of our neighbors have multiple large SUVs, and many neighbors have knocked their 2000 square foot houses down and replaced them with 5000 square foot homes. Some neighbors with 5000 square foot homes have only 1 child, so they don't truly need a huge living space. Many neighbors drive to work in their SUV without any other passengers to accompany them. They go on multiple international vacations a year (lots of CO2 per flight). Huge amounts of garbage are generated each week and placed on the curb, presumably to make way for yet more stuff that they are buying for their homes -- stuff that will probably end up on the curbside, destined for the landfill, a year or two down the road.

I've posted my frustrations in the "car and transport" section of this forum, only to be told by other posters that I'm jealous of my neighbor's SUVs and large homes. Despite a high level of education among DCUM posters, most don't appear concerned about the consequences of their consumerism, and can't even conceive of a high-income family exercising some restraint.

We are, in fact, a high net worth family, but we are striving to reduce our carbon footprint. We feel completely alone, like strangers in a foreign country. I'm curious if anybody else here feels the same way.

OP, you are taking so many positive steps and should be applauded for them but until you do more than just "limit" your domestic and internatinal air travel (esp the international) you are doing far more harm to the environment than all the good you are doing put together. It is just the facts.

And this is the thing that is so annoying about posts like the OP.

OP's family has decided that they'll limit but not give up travel, including flights. They live in a SFH in North Arlington, even though they have just one kid. I'm sure there are other things that aren't mentioned that aren't the environmental ideal. So, OP has drawn a line for things that he (assuming here) and his family will do, and won't do. That's fine, and something everyone should do. But then he writes this passive aggressive screed ("I feel so alone in my fight against climate change! Where are all the other like minded souls? Woe is me!") that is, when you get down to it, just criticizing others for drawing that line in a different place than he did. Anything less than his efforts are insufficient, and shows that others just don't care. But there's no recognition that the line that *he* drew is completely arbitrary, and there are tradeoffs that he has refused to make because they are necessary, or would make his life too uncomfortable. He's fine with his choices, but other choices are bad!

Short version, OP is a passive aggressive, sanctimonious hypocrite, but the most irritating thing about him is the complete lack of self-awareness.

OP here. A couple of responses to your post. First, I haven't taken a flight for a vacation in 5 years. Prior to that, I flew a great deal, but I altered my habits after calculating my CO2 footprint and waking up to the consequences of my behavior. Second, my wife has an elderly parent in another country. She visits her mother once every 2 to 3 years. That is the total extent of my family's air travels. Nothing else. Our airline CO2 amounts to about 10% of our household's annual emissions.

In regard to our single family home -- if we sell this home (where we have lived for 10 years), the lot will be used to build a McMansion. So selling the house won't lower CO2 emissions, but rather increase them. Second, our average monthly power consumption is about 375 KWH, or 12KWH per day. This is about the same level of consumption that we had when we lived in a condo 15 years ago. Our monthly gas consumption is about 50 therms. As far as I can tell, this is quite low. We achieve these low numbers by being extremely conservative with heating and cooling, and we don't have a large screen TV (in fact, we don't have a TV at all).

We have compared our household's per capita CO2 emissions against various metrics. This past year, our per capita emissions were about one-third of the national average. Of course, even this isn't good enough -- net zero will require even deeper cuts.

I think "self-awareness" on this issue involves (1) calculating your CO2 footprint, (2) comparing it to various benchmarks to develop a sense of how your emissions stack up to the emissions of others, (3) figuring out what you can do to push your CO2 emissions down, and (4) implementing your emissions cuts. We have gone through this process, leading to large reduction in our footprint.

Like I said, you have drawn a line based on what is comfortable for you. Great.

Please spare us the rationalizations about the house. All of your posts (even this one) are all about your own personal CO2 footprint, and how you can push that down. But suddenly, with respect to the house, it isn't about your own personal output anymore, but what happens to the house *after* you sell it, when it is definitionally not about your own output, but someone else's. It's now about the aggregate effect. It's a convenient shift in the analytical framework that gets you to the result you want. Also, if you were *really* serious, you could sell the house to someone who won't tear it down, even going so far as to use restrictive covenants to ensure that. You won't do that, of course, because it's a significant monetary hit. (And to be clear, I'm not suggesting you should do that - I'm just demonstrating that your "it would be counterproductive to sell the house" is both analytically flawed and incorrect - it's just too much of a burden for you to contemplate.)

At the end of the day, you are acting in a way that makes you feel good. That is, as I posted earlier, very important. And you've received a bunch of plaudits from anonymous strangers, which no doubt makes you feel good too. So congrats, I guess.

OP here. For the record, we don't feel good about our CO2 situation. I'd like to emit zero CO2, and I feel guilty knowing that I don't, and that the CO2 I've emitted will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

In regard to selling the house to somebody who won't tear it down -- please explain to me what that would accomplish, assuming I could find such a buyer? Would the nation's aggregate CO2 emissions go down as a result? How?

I'm trying to understand your logic. Are you assuming that the new buyer would use the heating/AC even more sparingly than what we are already doing? I think that is highly unlikely.

Good grief. At the risk of further encouraging this nonsense, your focus has been your family's CO2 output. What happens with the house is irrelevant. You could move to a condo or apartment and reduce, even if only slightly, your output even further.

But I think we've finally hit on the issue. It's this:

For the record, we don't feel good about our CO2 situation. I'd like to emit zero CO2, and I feel guilty knowing that I don't, and that the CO2 I've emitted will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

This is a peculiar blend of narcissism and anxiety, where you have centered yourself in a global crisis and let it drive your actions, to the point of feeling guilt for actions the impact of which any rational person will tell you are so infinitesimally small that they don't deserve any thought.

I have been pretty snarky with you up till this point, but all that aside, I mean sincerely that you might benefit from some therapy to address this anxiety.

NP--Wow, you are seriously full of yourself. And not nice in how you try to make sure everyone knows how smart you think you are. And incorrect, to boot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In North Arlington, my wife and I feel like we are completely alone in our efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. We have just one car that we use sparingly, and we use bicycles for our local errands. We keep our thermostat at 65F in the winter (and wear sweaters) and 79F in the summer, using ceiling fans to make the bedrooms more comfortable. We greatly limit our international and domestic travel. We eat mostly vegetarian meals, and we never eat beef.

All of our neighbors have multiple large SUVs, and many neighbors have knocked their 2000 square foot houses down and replaced them with 5000 square foot homes. Some neighbors with 5000 square foot homes have only 1 child, so they don't truly need a huge living space. Many neighbors drive to work in their SUV without any other passengers to accompany them. They go on multiple international vacations a year (lots of CO2 per flight). Huge amounts of garbage are generated each week and placed on the curb, presumably to make way for yet more stuff that they are buying for their homes -- stuff that will probably end up on the curbside, destined for the landfill, a year or two down the road.

I've posted my frustrations in the "car and transport" section of this forum, only to be told by other posters that I'm jealous of my neighbor's SUVs and large homes. Despite a high level of education among DCUM posters, most don't appear concerned about the consequences of their consumerism, and can't even conceive of a high-income family exercising some restraint.

We are, in fact, a high net worth family, but we are striving to reduce our carbon footprint. We feel completely alone, like strangers in a foreign country. I'm curious if anybody else here feels the same way.

OP, you are taking so many positive steps and should be applauded for them but until you do more than just "limit" your domestic and internatinal air travel (esp the international) you are doing far more harm to the environment than all the good you are doing put together. It is just the facts.

And this is the thing that is so annoying about posts like the OP.

OP's family has decided that they'll limit but not give up travel, including flights. They live in a SFH in North Arlington, even though they have just one kid. I'm sure there are other things that aren't mentioned that aren't the environmental ideal. So, OP has drawn a line for things that he (assuming here) and his family will do, and won't do. That's fine, and something everyone should do. But then he writes this passive aggressive screed ("I feel so alone in my fight against climate change! Where are all the other like minded souls? Woe is me!") that is, when you get down to it, just criticizing others for drawing that line in a different place than he did. Anything less than his efforts are insufficient, and shows that others just don't care. But there's no recognition that the line that *he* drew is completely arbitrary, and there are tradeoffs that he has refused to make because they are necessary, or would make his life too uncomfortable. He's fine with his choices, but other choices are bad!

Short version, OP is a passive aggressive, sanctimonious hypocrite, but the most irritating thing about him is the complete lack of self-awareness.

OP here. A couple of responses to your post. First, I haven't taken a flight for a vacation in 5 years. Prior to that, I flew a great deal, but I altered my habits after calculating my CO2 footprint and waking up to the consequences of my behavior. Second, my wife has an elderly parent in another country. She visits her mother once every 2 to 3 years. That is the total extent of my family's air travels. Nothing else. Our airline CO2 amounts to about 10% of our household's annual emissions.

In regard to our single family home -- if we sell this home (where we have lived for 10 years), the lot will be used to build a McMansion. So selling the house won't lower CO2 emissions, but rather increase them. Second, our average monthly power consumption is about 375 KWH, or 12KWH per day. This is about the same level of consumption that we had when we lived in a condo 15 years ago. Our monthly gas consumption is about 50 therms. As far as I can tell, this is quite low. We achieve these low numbers by being extremely conservative with heating and cooling, and we don't have a large screen TV (in fact, we don't have a TV at all).

We have compared our household's per capita CO2 emissions against various metrics. This past year, our per capita emissions were about one-third of the national average. Of course, even this isn't good enough -- net zero will require even deeper cuts.

I think "self-awareness" on this issue involves (1) calculating your CO2 footprint, (2) comparing it to various benchmarks to develop a sense of how your emissions stack up to the emissions of others, (3) figuring out what you can do to push your CO2 emissions down, and (4) implementing your emissions cuts. We have gone through this process, leading to large reduction in our footprint.

Like I said, you have drawn a line based on what is comfortable for you. Great.

Please spare us the rationalizations about the house. All of your posts (even this one) are all about your own personal CO2 footprint, and how you can push that down. But suddenly, with respect to the house, it isn't about your own personal output anymore, but what happens to the house *after* you sell it, when it is definitionally not about your own output, but someone else's. It's now about the aggregate effect. It's a convenient shift in the analytical framework that gets you to the result you want. Also, if you were *really* serious, you could sell the house to someone who won't tear it down, even going so far as to use restrictive covenants to ensure that. You won't do that, of course, because it's a significant monetary hit. (And to be clear, I'm not suggesting you should do that - I'm just demonstrating that your "it would be counterproductive to sell the house" is both analytically flawed and incorrect - it's just too much of a burden for you to contemplate.)

At the end of the day, you are acting in a way that makes you feel good. That is, as I posted earlier, very important. And you've received a bunch of plaudits from anonymous strangers, which no doubt makes you feel good too. So congrats, I guess.

OP here. For the record, we don't feel good about our CO2 situation. I'd like to emit zero CO2, and I feel guilty knowing that I don't, and that the CO2 I've emitted will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

In regard to selling the house to somebody who won't tear it down -- please explain to me what that would accomplish, assuming I could find such a buyer? Would the nation's aggregate CO2 emissions go down as a result? How?

I'm trying to understand your logic. Are you assuming that the new buyer would use the heating/AC even more sparingly than what we are already doing? I think that is highly unlikely.

Good grief. At the risk of further encouraging this nonsense, your focus has been your family's CO2 output. What happens with the house is irrelevant. You could move to a condo or apartment and reduce, even if only slightly, your output even further.

But I think we've finally hit on the issue. It's this:

For the record, we don't feel good about our CO2 situation. I'd like to emit zero CO2, and I feel guilty knowing that I don't, and that the CO2 I've emitted will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

This is a peculiar blend of narcissism and anxiety, where you have centered yourself in a global crisis and let it drive your actions, to the point of feeling guilt for actions the impact of which any rational person will tell you are so infinitesimally small that they don't deserve any thought.

I have been pretty snarky with you up till this point, but all that aside, I mean sincerely that you might benefit from some therapy to address this anxiety.

OP here. I study climate change as part of my job. The anxiety I feel for the future is common among people who are close to this issue and recognize its seriousness. One our present trajectory, atmospheric CO2 may eventually exceed 2000 ppm. This could cause major disruptions to our food and water supplies and could perhaps threaten our survival as a species, and also threaten the survival of many other species. So yes, I take this issue seriously, and I am willing to cut my own CO2 emissions recognizing, of course, that I am but one human among 8 billion. But there is no other way forward at the moment. If one believes the science of climate change, as I do, it is illogical to wait for the government to take action. One can get started now by making voluntary modifications to one's own lifestyle. If many individuals take action, then these individual-level actions can indeed add up to make a difference on a global scale.

In regard to whether an individual should buy/sell their house in an effort to reduce CO2 emissions --- when you sell an asset, you are handing that asset over to a new owner, and you must therefore consider the future actions of that new owner when considering the effects of the sale on CO2. Suppose, for the sake of simplicity, that a condo owner and a SFH owner agree to swap ownership. Suppose that in each property the thermostat is always fixed at 72F regardless of who is the owner. Thus, swapping ownership has no impact on aggregate CO2 emissions, although it is likely that the condo will emit CO2 at a lower rate than the SFH. A negative scenario arises if the new SFH owner finds a way to tamper with the thermostat, thereby raising emissions. In this scenario, swapping ownership leads to an increase in aggregate emissions.

An even simpler example to help make this idea as easy as possible for you: suppose I own a large 5000 square foot house that is sitting in a field on top of an undeveloped oil reservoir. As long as I live in the house, I have no intention of developing the reservoir, but my house, unfortunately, has a large carbon footprint. I can sell my house and move to a condo, which, by your logic, will reduce in a reducing in CO2 emissions. But the sale of my land leaves it exposes to the whims of a new owner who might decide to develop the oil field, thereby causing a massive release of CO2. Get it now?

[Anonymous]

I think you are your wife have OCD.

[Anonymous]

see! you said the anxiety you feel. =OCD

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:see! you said the anxiety you feel. =OCD

Suppose a bus filled with passengers is headed rapidly towards a cliff, and is gaining speed rather than slowing down.

If a passenger is alarmed by the situation, is it your contention that the passenger needs therapy?

[Anonymous]

I didn’t fill my emotional void with 3-4 children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:see! you said the anxiety you feel. =OCD

Suppose a bus filled with passengers is headed rapidly towards a cliff, and is gaining speed rather than slowing down.

If a passenger is alarmed by the situation, is it your contention that the passenger needs therapy?

suppose 1 minute later, 1 year later, 1 decade later the bus passengers are all fine as before. Then my contention would be that it was a delusion or paranoia.

[Anonymous]

I also believe in history - the ice has been receding for thousands of years. Most of the U.S. was buried in ice. One OCD individual cannot stop it. That my dear is delusional IMO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn’t fill my emotional void with 3-4 children.

Seems like you are swerving completely off the tracks. It is unclear what you are talking about or who you are referring to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In North Arlington, my wife and I feel like we are completely alone in our efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. We have just one car that we use sparingly, and we use bicycles for our local errands. We keep our thermostat at 65F in the winter (and wear sweaters) and 79F in the summer, using ceiling fans to make the bedrooms more comfortable. We greatly limit our international and domestic travel. We eat mostly vegetarian meals, and we never eat beef.

All of our neighbors have multiple large SUVs, and many neighbors have knocked their 2000 square foot houses down and replaced them with 5000 square foot homes. Some neighbors with 5000 square foot homes have only 1 child, so they don't truly need a huge living space. Many neighbors drive to work in their SUV without any other passengers to accompany them. They go on multiple international vacations a year (lots of CO2 per flight). Huge amounts of garbage are generated each week and placed on the curb, presumably to make way for yet more stuff that they are buying for their homes -- stuff that will probably end up on the curbside, destined for the landfill, a year or two down the road.

I've posted my frustrations in the "car and transport" section of this forum, only to be told by other posters that I'm jealous of my neighbor's SUVs and large homes. Despite a high level of education among DCUM posters, most don't appear concerned about the consequences of their consumerism, and can't even conceive of a high-income family exercising some restraint.

We are, in fact, a high net worth family, but we are striving to reduce our carbon footprint. We feel completely alone, like strangers in a foreign country. I'm curious if anybody else here feels the same way.

OP, you are taking so many positive steps and should be applauded for them but until you do more than just "limit" your domestic and internatinal air travel (esp the international) you are doing far more harm to the environment than all the good you are doing put together. It is just the facts.

And this is the thing that is so annoying about posts like the OP.

OP's family has decided that they'll limit but not give up travel, including flights. They live in a SFH in North Arlington, even though they have just one kid. I'm sure there are other things that aren't mentioned that aren't the environmental ideal. So, OP has drawn a line for things that he (assuming here) and his family will do, and won't do. That's fine, and something everyone should do. But then he writes this passive aggressive screed ("I feel so alone in my fight against climate change! Where are all the other like minded souls? Woe is me!") that is, when you get down to it, just criticizing others for drawing that line in a different place than he did. Anything less than his efforts are insufficient, and shows that others just don't care. But there's no recognition that the line that *he* drew is completely arbitrary, and there are tradeoffs that he has refused to make because they are necessary, or would make his life too uncomfortable. He's fine with his choices, but other choices are bad!

Short version, OP is a passive aggressive, sanctimonious hypocrite, but the most irritating thing about him is the complete lack of self-awareness.

OP here. A couple of responses to your post. First, I haven't taken a flight for a vacation in 5 years. Prior to that, I flew a great deal, but I altered my habits after calculating my CO2 footprint and waking up to the consequences of my behavior. Second, my wife has an elderly parent in another country. She visits her mother once every 2 to 3 years. That is the total extent of my family's air travels. Nothing else. Our airline CO2 amounts to about 10% of our household's annual emissions.

In regard to our single family home -- if we sell this home (where we have lived for 10 years), the lot will be used to build a McMansion. So selling the house won't lower CO2 emissions, but rather increase them. Second, our average monthly power consumption is about 375 KWH, or 12KWH per day. This is about the same level of consumption that we had when we lived in a condo 15 years ago. Our monthly gas consumption is about 50 therms. As far as I can tell, this is quite low. We achieve these low numbers by being extremely conservative with heating and cooling, and we don't have a large screen TV (in fact, we don't have a TV at all).

We have compared our household's per capita CO2 emissions against various metrics. This past year, our per capita emissions were about one-third of the national average. Of course, even this isn't good enough -- net zero will require even deeper cuts.

I think "self-awareness" on this issue involves (1) calculating your CO2 footprint, (2) comparing it to various benchmarks to develop a sense of how your emissions stack up to the emissions of others, (3) figuring out what you can do to push your CO2 emissions down, and (4) implementing your emissions cuts. We have gone through this process, leading to large reduction in our footprint.

Like I said, you have drawn a line based on what is comfortable for you. Great.

Please spare us the rationalizations about the house. All of your posts (even this one) are all about your own personal CO2 footprint, and how you can push that down. But suddenly, with respect to the house, it isn't about your own personal output anymore, but what happens to the house *after* you sell it, when it is definitionally not about your own output, but someone else's. It's now about the aggregate effect. It's a convenient shift in the analytical framework that gets you to the result you want. Also, if you were *really* serious, you could sell the house to someone who won't tear it down, even going so far as to use restrictive covenants to ensure that. You won't do that, of course, because it's a significant monetary hit. (And to be clear, I'm not suggesting you should do that - I'm just demonstrating that your "it would be counterproductive to sell the house" is both analytically flawed and incorrect - it's just too much of a burden for you to contemplate.)

At the end of the day, you are acting in a way that makes you feel good. That is, as I posted earlier, very important. And you've received a bunch of plaudits from anonymous strangers, which no doubt makes you feel good too. So congrats, I guess.

OP here. For the record, we don't feel good about our CO2 situation. I'd like to emit zero CO2, and I feel guilty knowing that I don't, and that the CO2 I've emitted will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

In regard to selling the house to somebody who won't tear it down -- please explain to me what that would accomplish, assuming I could find such a buyer? Would the nation's aggregate CO2 emissions go down as a result? How?

I'm trying to understand your logic. Are you assuming that the new buyer would use the heating/AC even more sparingly than what we are already doing? I think that is highly unlikely.

Good grief. At the risk of further encouraging this nonsense, your focus has been your family's CO2 output. What happens with the house is irrelevant. You could move to a condo or apartment and reduce, even if only slightly, your output even further.

But I think we've finally hit on the issue. It's this:

For the record, we don't feel good about our CO2 situation. I'd like to emit zero CO2, and I feel guilty knowing that I don't, and that the CO2 I've emitted will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

This is a peculiar blend of narcissism and anxiety, where you have centered yourself in a global crisis and let it drive your actions, to the point of feeling guilt for actions the impact of which any rational person will tell you are so infinitesimally small that they don't deserve any thought.

I have been pretty snarky with you up till this point, but all that aside, I mean sincerely that you might benefit from some therapy to address this anxiety.

OP here. I study climate change as part of my job. The anxiety I feel for the future is common among people who are close to this issue and recognize its seriousness. One our present trajectory, atmospheric CO2 may eventually exceed 2000 ppm. This could cause major disruptions to our food and water supplies and could perhaps threaten our survival as a species, and also threaten the survival of many other species. So yes, I take this issue seriously, and I am willing to cut my own CO2 emissions recognizing, of course, that I am but one human among 8 billion. But there is no other way forward at the moment. If one believes the science of climate change, as I do, it is illogical to wait for the government to take action. One can get started now by making voluntary modifications to one's own lifestyle. If many individuals take action, then these individual-level actions can indeed add up to make a difference on a global scale.

In regard to whether an individual should buy/sell their house in an effort to reduce CO2 emissions --- when you sell an asset, you are handing that asset over to a new owner, and you must therefore consider the future actions of that new owner when considering the effects of the sale on CO2. Suppose, for the sake of simplicity, that a condo owner and a SFH owner agree to swap ownership. Suppose that in each property the thermostat is always fixed at 72F regardless of who is the owner. Thus, swapping ownership has no impact on aggregate CO2 emissions, although it is likely that the condo will emit CO2 at a lower rate than the SFH. A negative scenario arises if the new SFH owner finds a way to tamper with the thermostat, thereby raising emissions. In this scenario, swapping ownership leads to an increase in aggregate emissions.

An even simpler example to help make this idea as easy as possible for you: suppose I own a large 5000 square foot house that is sitting in a field on top of an undeveloped oil reservoir. As long as I live in the house, I have no intention of developing the reservoir, but my house, unfortunately, has a large carbon footprint. I can sell my house and move to a condo, which, by your logic, will reduce in a reducing in CO2 emissions. But the sale of my land leaves it exposes to the whims of a new owner who might decide to develop the oil field, thereby causing a massive release of CO2. Get it now?

It's not that I don't understand. But you're applying this "must consider all the unintended consequences" logic (using the term in its loosest possible sense) *only* to your decision not to move. Not to any of your other decisions. And you're doing it, of course, because you don't want to move, but you can't bring yourself to make a decision that isn't optimal with respect to climate change, so you've convinced yourself that this is the *right* thing. Which is nonsense, because it's entirely speculative, and you could just as easily come up with multiple scenarios that lead inescapably to the opposite conclusion. But you don't want that.

However, this is a sideshow. My larger point is, and remains, that you are passive aggressive and sanctimonious, and that you somehow get validation thinking you are better than others, and from anonymous strangers telling you you're great.

Also, therapy.

As a final point with respect to unintended consequences - as a result of your posts, once I get off work I am going to drive around the block one time for each time you respond to me. I will use my least fuel efficient car to do so. That's the unintended consequence of you being a sanctimonious d-bag.