There are numbers for these, you know. Biggest sources of carbon emissions are (1) burning fossil fuels and (2) land use change (converting natural ecosystems such as forests, grasslands and wetlands - to plantations, farmlands and concrete).
Most beneficial activity is <redacted>.
There are numbers for many things. It doesn’t stop people from discussing their thoughts on them.
Advertising.
Cause it’s driving over-consumption, by flooding people brains with shit ideas, turning them into idiots in the process.
Most beneficial thing is to choose a more minimalist lifestyle. Buy only if you need it, use only if you must and discard only if you absolutely have to. These principles can be applied to pretty much everything, from eating at a restaurant to buying clothes to using technology.
I agree with this. Minimalism is the way.
- Energy demand to power heavy industry that we all use (steel, aluminum, chemicals, fertilizers)
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- I don’t see these going away, so it’d be best to make their processes greener by repurposing the carbon into ag products, then institute a viable carbon tax and offset the rest of their footprint
- Use of concrete in construction
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- some promising technologies coming that crystallize the carbon and use it to self heal the concrete, carbon tax and offset the rest
- Shipping
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- bring manufacturing closer to consumers, global environmental manufacturing and shipping standards, improve right to repair laws
- Transportation
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- upgrade public transportation options where it makes economic sense to do so, make our cities and towns more people friendly instead of car friendly, raise the gas tax to fund these efforts. Reduce the amount of detached single family housing stock and encourage multi-family stock, particularly in cities.
- Heating and cooling
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- incentivize heat pumps, add taxes to heating fuels and fossil energy plants to fund it. Start a major campaign to educate people to keep temperatures around 68 (winter) to 76 degrees (summer). And encourage use of ceiling fans.
The worst are wars imo. Massive usage of resources to build war machinery, massive destruction of infrastructure that used resources to build, massive usage of resources to clean up and rebuild… And it’s usually not accounted for: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/warfares-climate-emissions-are-huge-but-uncounted/
This one definitely does not get enough time in discussion, especially with so many active wars in the world currently.
If you own your home, you can drastically reduce your carbon.
- installing solar to take energy off the grid
- install a heat pump to generate heat and cool off of electricity
- even if your grid is pure coal, this is still more efficient than burning your own gas
- you can keep a gas furnace as a backup, look up “dual-fuel” systems
- take transit whenever possible
- if you are in a car dependent area, look into e-bikes and EVs. Even replacing just your commuter car can have huge impacts, you don’t have to replace them all.
In the US it’s roughly a tie between road transportation and energy generation (which lumps together both heat and electricity).
(Source: University of Michigan https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/sustainability-indicators/carbon-footprint-factsheet)
The global breakdown is similar: https://www.wri.org/insights/4-charts-explain-greenhouse-gas-emissions-countries-and-sectors
The solutions? Build mass transit, live in temperate climates, buy less stuff, …? Honestly, I don’t think we’re not going to fix the problem with simple, local improvements (though by all means do what you can). There are global demographic forces to contend with. A century ago there were 2 billion people on earth. Now there are >8 billion, and in my lifetime we will surpass 9 billion. Many of those people are climbing out of poverty, and they want cars and air conditioners and all the other energy-intensive things that rich countries have enjoyed for a century. IMO we’re going to need massive technological changes (like powering much of the world with nuclear very soon) in concert with a major population reduction and/or major changes to how people expect to live.
Nuclear is: very slow to make, very expensive, generates dangerous waste, invites proliferation.
Wind and solar are quick, relatively much cheaper, create little waste. The sun is forever.
Personal transportation needs a complete redesign. Burning fossil fuel at 20% efficiency (80% waste) to push a 4000lb. vehicle with a 200lb person in it is insane. Personal electric vehicles of 200-300 lbs tracking defined lanes at 20mph under computer control would take care of 80-90% of urban travel needs. And greatly reduce the number of roads needed.
I’m curious about how CO2 emissions from road construction in the US compares to that of Europe (adjusted for scale, obviously).
Concrete creates A LOT of CO2, and after driving a lot in both US and EU roads I can say that US roads involve a lot more concrete.
EDIT: Autocomplete and autocorrect is even worse at this than I am…
Side note: If worrying about climate isn’t enough, we can also worry about potential famine as we use up our fossil fuels.
We are able to feed the world because of the Haber-Bosch process. This process uses fossil fuels, usually natural gas, to produce synthetic ammonia for fertilizer. That fertilizer makes modern high-yield farming possible. “Without the Haber-Bosch process we would only be able to produce around two-thirds the amount of food we do today.”
https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/features/cewctw-fritz-haber-and-carl-bosch-feed-the-world/
#1 Making more humans #2 Making less humans
Going vegan was the easiest for me. The Co2 impact is massive!
While I agree with the idea of going vegan for the environment, it is unfortunately an unattainable diet for many people on the planet. It is not cheap to be vegan, even though with the wealth of technology and advancement we have it should be.
Obligatory “not vegan” but it’s hilarious to me when people ignore this.
Why do you think we cut down trees? Yes, more farmland. Farmland for what? To feed the cattle lol
Cattle are ruminants - their one super power is they can eat grass from marginal land that can’t grow crops, they don’t need grain at all.
And about 30 seconds on google shows that’s less than 3% of beef production. That’s why deforestation is so rapid.
If we shifted all of our cattle to grazers, we’d have less than 1/3rd of our current beef production due to land constraints.
We have about 5x as much range land as we do arable land on the planet.
Soil stewardship and replenishment are critical to a sustainable ecology - and ruminants are key to generating new top soil.
Also, for the record, not every inch of land categorized as grazable is not able to support cattle (arid, bad soil fertility, mountains and other terrain issues, etc.). When I said we couldn’t meet current demand, that assumes those were non-issues.
Sure bud. Sure. Just make all the cattle free range and we solve every problem in the world.
Now we just have to subsidize beef even more than we already do so that people can afford their free range beef. God forbid they eat another form of protein that’s sustainable and environmentally friendly.
There’s reality and then there’s your hypotheticals. I’ll continue to discuss reality but not absurd hypotheticals like “let’s just change 95% of our beef production”.
And for the record, 5x is a vast overstatement. It’s closer to 2-3x. Still not plausible. Even if every single inch of grazable land on the planet were filled with cattle (and no other animal), we could not fill current beef demands. And that’s a demand that will grow very rapidly in the coming decades.
God forbid they eat another form of protein that’s sustainable and environmentally friendly.
The non-animal protein that is sustainable and environmentally friendly - where does it get its fertilizer from?
They get it from synthetic fertilizer? You think it comes from cattle lol?
Dude, you cut a cow and you need WAAAAAY less land and fertilizer than if you feed that cow.
And yes, not all land for cattle feed can be used for human crops, but even if we had zero beef, we’d have enough land to support human crops.
I honestly think you’re trolling now because you’re not only denying reality and making up absurd claims, but you’re ignoring my points and not responding to them lol.
Is synthetic fertilizer bad for the environment? Sure, but we need a hell of a lot less when we decrease beef production. If you add more cattle for natural manure fertilizers, you need more land to grow their feed. This is a self-perpetuating cycle.
The excess production of useless shit that nobody would need or want without the manipulation of advertising convincing us otherwise. Cell phones and such are nice, don’t get me wrong, but do we need thousands of factories around the world churning out cargo ships full of cheap plastic junk that’s designed to fail? No. It only exists because it makes some rich people even richer, and it’s burning our planet down. If all that productive capacity was bent to the purpose of meeting peoples’ actual needs/reasonable wants it would be a different matter.
There is no need to express opinions when we have good estimates for both your questions:
Sector by sector: where do global greenhouse gas emissions come from? -> https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
individual solutions reviewed and assessed by Project Drawdown, including their relevant sector(s) and their impact on reducing heat-trapping gases -> https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions
Both the links above are from a very interesting video on the topic that I suggest to take a look at. Also the whole channel is really interesting and well done -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReXaS4QausQ
I am aware their are numbers behind this. I am asking for peoples opinions on the matter.
Bad
- Voting for reactionary or fossil industry-backed parties and candidates
- participating in local initiatives with climate action delay campaigns (eg “wind farm too loud”, “PV lowers property prices”, “bike lanes decrease spending”)
- keeping an internal combustion engine car,
- keeping a fossil fueled heating/cooling system
- paying for fossil fueled electricity plans
- building with concrete
- eating an omnivore diet with high waste lifestyle
Good
- Bicycling
- avoiding transportation
- using public transit when necessary
- decreasing load on electric grid
- using self-made energy (ie PV, communal wind) at the right time (ie washing clothes on solar peak)
- building with timber
- eating a plant-based diet with low waste lifestyle
- understanding LCAs of various materials and things
- increasing participation in circular economy (recycling, waste separation, repair shops, 2nd hand/gift economy)
- listening to actual science
For typical middle-class people (like the ones probably reading this), usually the single worst thing they do is flying. It’s the only way to blow your personal carbon budget for the whole year in just a few hours.
That’s at the individual level.
I think when it comes to flying we should go back to balloons. We don’t need to reach far distances as quickly as we do, and we could drastically cut emissions if we grounded all the planes.
Honestly, capitalism.
The whole damn consume consume consume mindset. The idea that things are discarded instead of being repaired or properly recycled.
What Economic system would you change out for Capitalism?
Communism or socialism.
