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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

^This is true.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

Any one household can have only an extremely microscopic impact on aggregate CO2 emissions. I try to reduce mine (because, as I said above, it seems crazy to just go on making things worse knowingly), and I wish others would do the same, but this is not a problem well-intentioned citizens can solve on our own.[/quote]

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