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]

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. [/quote]

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