This article is very short but (some) early commenters appear not to have read it, and most subthreads at this moment started from them. Here are some of the important points from the article:
> This was due to a decrease in coal plants
> Further, renewables were up 6% in 2019
> Emissions rose from buildings [2.2%], industry [0.6%], and other parts of the economy
I'm supposed to take delivery of solar panels at my house today. It shouldn't be long before they're operational. I'm so excited!
To people in general, what improvements are you making (not your country, but you personally)? Not something you've always done - what's your latest new eco-project, big or small?
- I work remotely and live in a city where I can walk.
- I try to avoid buying new things for as long as possible. When I can, I repair what I own or buy used. Living in a small apartment provides some natural incentives to avoid buying too much stuff.
- I avoid eating meat, and when I do, try to eat Chicken or fish.
- I try to take short showers and don't flush the toilet if I only urinate (it took my wife a while to get used to this, but she came around after a bit).
- I avoid using paper towels and reuse aluminum foil and bags as often as possible (often, you can wipe off the aluminum foil and use it a second or third time).
Some of these may not make much of a difference.
I have not spent too much time thinking about this, so my reasoning may be faulty, but I will share it anyway:
I am more worried about deforestation and the rainforests and poaching than climate change.
I want to keep a healthy planet so that conscious beings, and especially humans, can continue enjoying it. Thus, there is a balance between enjoying life (e.g., traveling) and reducing emissions. It seems, as is often the case with difficult ethical questions, that finding balance is key.
> I want to keep a healthy planet so that conscious beings, and especially humans, can continue enjoying it
I think this is the key point that needs to get marketed. The 'save the planet' works well for people with holistic view of things but we need to get the other 50% (or whatever as I made that ratio up) on board. And I think pushing a message like 'dont let polluters ruin your lifestyle' message would be more effective for the unconvinced portion of the world. Turn the message back to something personal and micro rather than 'the planet is doomed' type messaging.
Is really not flushing the toilet any helpful? I’ve never heard of it and can’t imagine that 2 litres or so of water per day are that important compared to the other points.
Small difference is better than nothing, but the inconvenience to eco friendliness ration seems very bad with this one
What is inconvenient about not flushing the toilet if you only urinate? I may have a weak nose, but I have never smelled anything. If you are skeptical that this is the case, I would try for a couple days and see what you think.
I think the amount of water saved is higher than you expect. I work from home and drink a lot of coffee, so maybe my usage is higher than yours.
> Toilet flushing is the single highest use of water in the average home, so it also presents a prime opportunity for water conservation. With the average person flushing five times a day, toilets make up about 31% of overall household water consumption.
> To people in general, what improvements are you making (not your country, but you personally)?
2019 was a great year for limiting my spent resources:
- I went fully plant-based in January, quit meat, eggs, dairy etc
- I joined a local gym that I can ride my bicycle to (or run in the warmer weather)
- I started working from home 4/5 days of the week
- I walk up the block and take a bus to work on that extra day
I also turn off my heat during the day when I'm home, and use a little space heater rather than burn natural gas keeping the whole house warm, since I'm in my office 99% of the time anyway.
Things I'd like to change in 2020 or beyond:
- My "daily driver" is still a large Dodge Ram - though I rarely ever drive it and certainly not daily, but occasionally I need it. It's an '09 so I've had it for quite a while. I want to replace it with something less ridiculous, but our lease on the Honda HRV is up so that'll take priority. Something electric if possible though our house is old and there's nowhere to install a charger.
> - My "daily driver" is still a large Dodge Ram - though I rarely ever drive it and certainly not daily, but occasionally I need it. It's an '09 so I've had it for quite a while. I want to replace it with something less ridiculous, but our lease on the Honda HRV is up so that'll take priority. Something electric if possible though our house is old and there's nowhere to install a charger.
I've heard that replacing your gas guzzler with an electric car can actually generate more carbon by virtue of the carbon emissions associated with the manufacture of electric vehicles, and consequently you're better off driving your gas guzzler til it dies before going electric. I'd be very curious to hear from people who know more about this. Intuiting about emissions is really hard, unfortunately (which is why I'm curious about carbon offsets as a solution).
According to the video, average electric car is in the green after 4.8 years. If you already own a Prius that could be true, but a Dodge Ram is unlikely.
In 2019 I bought an electric cargo bike. I've been able to replace a number of car trips, even while toting kids (record so far: taking a 3-year-old to a birthday party 17 miles away, without using the car).
We've also started bringing more things into our local area, walking more, and using public transit. We've cut our gas usage by 75%, saving roughly $2,500/year.
We consume less, buying secondhand where possible, aiming for quality, or just evaluating whether you really need something.
We're eating less meat and more beans. I was vegan once for a two-year period, I won't go back there - I don't believe a 100% vegan diet is a good idea. However, it is important to reduce meat consumption (majority vegetarian diet is the goal), and we make sure 100% of our meat is purchased from a small local farm using sustainable and humane practices. I'm really interested in entomophagy and will take any chance to eat insects I can find.
I live in Seattle so my electricity is nearly 100% emission free, and I pay for the green option to offset another home's electricity somewhere in Washington.
Lastly, we've stopped flying for vacations. There's plenty to enjoy in the local area.
Things still to be improved: my car, a Jeep Liberty, is an awful gas-guzzler. The next car will be electric (or better yet, no car).
I'm keen to start an urban farm with aquaponics and insect farming.
I will keep advocating for safer streets so that it's a viable option for more people to move around cities without a car.
I'm saving money to buy some degraded agricultural land someday and restore it.
Climate change will bring increased intensity to weather events going forward (hurricanes, fires). It's too late to avoid some of that (e.g. Australia). I think our globalized society is actually very fragile and susceptible to disruption, so focusing on local resiliency will matter more into the future. I'll be looking at food security, water storage for extended droughts, and building in resistance to weather events like high winds and fires.
More power to you!.You can do this and more because Seattle is the most biker friendly city in the US. I miss that big aspect when I moved down to the valley. Keep it up!
I love this subject because it is so full of marketing and green washing by companies that want to profit of the green hype.
Nowadays everyone pretends to be green or to be saving the planet by buying a Tesla or taking shorter showers. Here is the thing though, those things statistically don't matter. They are a good way for most people to signal that they are doing something while not really doing anything.
The things that matter the most are [0]: Having less kids, not OWNING a car (owning an EV doesn't really count), not taking flights.
Almost nobody does that though because those changes are really difficult
I believe that we should stop making people believe that they save the world by buying a Tesla and push it a bit more as a real environmental crisis.
> The things that matter the most are [0]: Having less kids, not OWNING a car (owning an EV doesn't really count), not taking flights. Almost nobody does that though because those changes are really difficult
And what's the point, where do you draw the line? If we have to reduce our standard of living, we've failed to come up with smart solutions. If I take your line of thought further, we'd better stop fighting famine and developing vaccination.
Thanks for this link. I didn't know. After putting in my address, I was afraid to click "See providers". Thankfully, Google just redirects you to a local search instead of feeding my address to some list of shady partners.
Thank you Google, for being sensible.
Very cool. Despite all the sun I get (we live on a corner) it still seems like it would take literal decades to see any savings, and very little at that ($3K after 20 years? No thanks!) The issue seems to be how slanted my roof is.
Genuine question: why should we put solar panels on our roofs versus investing in a solar coop or buying solar power directly? I would think the latter options would be more cost-effective/efficient (it's more efficient to service one solar farm than the equivalent number of panels on roofs scattered across a community, etc).
At least in California, PG&E charges a disproportionate amount as "delivery cost" even if the energy comes from a cheaper and greener alternative coop. For me more than half my total cost is PG&E fees and I am subscribed to a CC Coop.
With your own solar (I don't have yet), the idea is that you can transition more of your usage to electric (say change water heater from gas to electric) without paying a cut to someone else.
>To people in general, what improvements are you making (not your country, but you personally)? Not something you've always done - what's your latest new eco-project, big or small?
Voting for candidates with a good environmental record, because that's really the only way to solve the problem.
I've been looking into Carbon offsets. The chief criticism against them seems to be "they're just paying for your sins; they don't actually reduce the carbon", but as far as I can tell, that's not a valid criticism since the offsets directly fund projects that reduce carbon. As far as I've been able to discern, the most legitimate criticism is around governance and quality assurance--how to make sure the funded programs are actually achieving the results you're paying for, and specifically how to make sure those results wouldn't have been achieved without those programs. I would really like to hear from people who are more knowledgeable than me.
Beyond that, I'm also considering buying solar power.
I live inside an apartment in a bigger city and don't plan on leaving later on in life.
I don't commute to work. I use carsharing if I have to use a car (every month or 2).
I spend 8h a day working for my current client, whose success directly lowers CO2 emissions.
I am slowly optimizing my buying habits for groceries etc., one item at a time to reduce waste. I try to buy the most expensive, high-quality stuff (for everything) and stick to it as long as I possibly can.
I don't know how I could improve my lifestyle further, without totally boycotting modern society. Maybe I am missing something, but I think from my position you can only marginally improve. From here on it's on politicians.
Just curious, but how does renting in a big city lower your CO2 footprint? If you're this far into things, what's holding you back from boycotting modern society?
Living in denslier populated areas makes you use less energy, because your commute is shorter, you need less energy to heat, you are sharing all the infrastructure with more people, so footprint/person decreases.
I don't think I am very far along. If you have a lifestyle like I do, you get most of the benefits almost for free. Improving upon that is very hard.
On the other hand, I think someone living in a (first world) village, could be way more conscious about these things than I am and would still have a hard time to come close, just because he or she is sharing his house/car/roads/infrastructure with less people.
On the waitlist for rooftop solar panel install, currently installing electric heat pump water heater (we use radiant heat, so this covers space heating as well) and induction stove and will buy electric car as soon as solar panels are in to go all-electric at home!
I like flying but hate the pollution burning leaded gas in crappy inefficient engines produces and have a really hard time justifying it.
As a result, I'm building my own plane to run 91 octane E10 from the corner pump. With redundant electronic ignition and fuel injection I'm expecting in excess of 30mpg equivalent at around 150mph, about two to three times the efficiency of your average Cessna. Being under an experimental type certificate, conversion to electric once battery density is reasonable should be feasible.
> To people in general, what improvements are you making (not your country, but you personally)? Not something you've always done - what's your latest new eco-project, big or small?
I had solar panels for five years; we're generating ~90% of our electricity. Planning to buy a used Nissan Leaf (maybe later this year) to replace one of our vehicles.
I don’t have a lot of trust in some of the non-profits that plant trees for the purpose of carbon offset.
It seems like a “debt” you take on. Today I will produce N carbon and plant enough trees to consume N carbon over 10 years. However, you aren’t actually watching the carbon repayment over 10 years. You’re trusting someone to do it for you. It seems like an easy swindle with how little regulations there are in this space.
True, that could happen. But if these people are planting gardens and food forests to literally provide food for their families, the interests align to keep those trees growing (and replanting any that die off for any reason). That, along with the longevity of the non-profit, makes it a reasonable-enough risk for me.
It would be cool if there were an organization (non- or for-profit) that would get you annual (or quarterly) reports on how their carbon capture is going. Perhaps through drone fly-overs, with software to capture the 3D image changes and then calculate/estimate the carbon mass storage increase/decrease.
I recently bought an electric skateboard (kaly board for those so inclined). Commuting on one of these to work costs me about 20 cents in electricity. I can only do it when the weather is nice though, right now the cold just cuts through to my bone.
Electric skateboards are insanely fun and after purchasing one I became convinced these things and (mostly) scooters are going to become ubiquitous in cities where the climate allows it.
I recently donated to TeamTrees. I'm looking for other places to donate that will have significant impact. This is a guess, but I think that charities are likely able to make a bigger impact per-dollar than I can by trying to decarbonize my own lifestyle. I found this[0] Vox article recently and the first two organizations look compelling. I need to do more research, but I'm hoping that they're making significant differences and that I can help just by donating regularly.
That said, I'm still considering buying an electric car this year. I at least want to contribute to having fewer ICE cars on the road. I know there's a difference of opinion on whether buying a new EV actually helps...short-term, it may not, but if nothing else I'm supporting the industry's growth, and long-term hopefully it does reduce my own personal emissions. And, locally, I'm just tired of inhaling exhaust...
(BTW: Not sure if you did the numbers, but with my solar system, electricity is so darn cheap that running a heat pump (air) is cheaper than running a natural gas furnace. If my house was smaller.)
I also put in a wood stove and light the fire when it's extremely cold and I'm home for awhile. Wood is carbon neutral. (The carbon released is carbon that the tree captured while it was alive.) (Although some people like to point out that burning wood releases particulates and other nasty pollutants.)
I'm not sure how burning wood is carbon neutral. Trees, other plants, etc. will sequester carbon from the atmosphere at the same rate regardless of the source. All that matters is how much gets into the atmosphere.
Because the trees sucked the carbon out of the air to make their wood as they grew, and if the trees are left to decay naturally, the carbon returns to the air.
It's just the basic carbon cycle: plants remove carbon from the air as they grow, and return it as they decay, (or burn in a natural fire.)
I've been thinking about how best to get people the information they need to deal with the climate crisis.
I'm thinking about a community run portal to try and match person to the correct advice. E.g. someone with investments should find advice about how to invest to help. People interested in acting locally should find environmental groups to join. Activist people .
Google is fine if you know what you are looking for, but I have come across a few different times where I didn't know the correct terminology. E.g. I wanted to find something like a community energy group in my local area, but I didn't know what it was called.
I'm not currently sure how to do this. Some form of search engine where people put in information about themselves is a possibility. Or an advanced directory.
>> Not something you've always done - what's your latest new eco-project, big or small?
Nothing. There's no action I can take on an individual scale that matters one whit. The best I could hope for would be to gain some mythical moral high ground for lecturing others on their consumption.
If I had to guess, it would be voting for Sanders in the primary, whenever that comes around to my state. Even then, I'm not hopeful it will meaningfully change the politics in the United States. The structure of the senate, electoral college, and judiciary enshrined in the constitution, combined with the almost unimaginable difficulty of amending that system, and the prevalent first-past-the-post voting system means my country will remain at the mercy of the coal-burning red-meat eating minority currently in charge.
This is a bit of a sorites paradox, though. You posted publicly on something with a large readership. Imagine the marginal difference between what you posted, and if you posted other individual efforts you had taken. Maybe the collective impact of the thread would have been greater to the point that it would have pushed a couple of other people over the edge into taking action they otherwise wouldn't have. I don't know either way but it's worth considering.
I went through data recently that convinced me that US Citizens should plant 20 trees a year (or pay a service). I'm hunting for a good service that does that, that isn't just planting trees that would already be planted anyway.
I'm glad other people responded with this counter position. Bernie is getting people excited and engaged but on his own he will not be enough. I recommend getting organized with socialists, as collective, democratic planning of the economy is the only way out of the quagmire of environmental death by competition: https://www.socialistalternative.org/2019/08/08/climate-cata...
I'm upcycling an old motorcycle to be electric and then ditching my car. I'm expecting to use it for trips where public transit cannot take me, like my current workplace. Otherwise I just bought a townhouse near a transit hub and have dramatically reduced my car use. I use my utility's 'wind source' product to help subsidize renewables investment. I've changed roles so that I am no longer required to fly. I also have gone vegan after several years as a vegetarian. The AC in my new unit is quite old- I plan on trying to go without it this summer and just have it removed if it turns out I don't (I live in Colorado though so it's easier for me than others).
- Moved closer to work so I bike every day unless it rains
- Stopped buying clothes and many things in general. Buy/sell used as needed
- Eating less meat
- Reuse everything until they fail
Thank you for starting this thread. Although I personally don't sacrifice nearly as much as the other commenters, all of you are inspiring the rest of us to do better!
Do alcoholic beverages have high carbon footprint in general? Maybe beer, since you have to heat it, but I wouldn't expect homemade wine to have significant footprint.
No real benefit, but it's essentially free and simple so you needn't feel bad about doing this.
Energy producers (e.g. a wind farm, or a huge converted coal power station which burns "waste" forests) get credits for producing renewable energy which they can sell. A company like bulb buys those credits, and so long as they buy credits which add up to the amount of power their residential customers use they can say they're 100% green.
If most UK residential customers used a green provider there wouldn't be enough credits and that could in theory drive change but in practice most UK residential customers pay their "incumbent" even though that's usually the most expensive and has no benefit whatsoever.
The actual supply of electricity to homes is by a boring but necessary natural monopoly supply company. They're the people who come out if a storm smashes the power lines.
> I'm supposed to take delivery of solar panels at my house today. It shouldn't be long before they're operational. I'm so excited!
They'd better be operational soon, because their production and delivery generated a bunch of emissions upfront - in China, presumably - that'll take years to compensate.
I am spreading the knowledge that individualized improvements are not nearly enough and we have to change the structure of our entire economy to save the environment. I am optimizing my life to organize around that.
I also think it can only be done through an international planned economy, seeing as capitalist nation states keep going to war against each other and prioritize short term gains in their competition with one another.
you are being downvoted because you speak the inconvenient truth.
People in this thread want to feel like they save the world by buying an EV but that change is statistically insignificant (even if everyone on the planet bought an EV).
I fully agree with you that real change is going beyond our actual economy. The "micro-step" changes that we are taking right now with solar and EVs are almost useless.
Thank you. These changes are nice in the right context but are even worse than useless if they distract from systemic changes. Especially useless is the kind of personal change like buying solar panels or an EV that take being middle or upper middle class as the economy continues to get worse for most people. Almost every major source of carbon pollution is socially interdependent(eg transportation) or controlled by a few near-monopolies (eg general purpose energy production). And lots basically exist due to how capitalism controls the state (as it always has) for its own purposes, eg in the massive subsidization of industrial meat production. We need social solutions that correspond to how the economy is socially specialized and interconnected.
The distraction here is exactly the issue. It actually removes the urgency of climate change. Companies greenwashed us into thinking that all it take is buy a upper-class Tesla to save the planet (Yes I'm reusing this example because I see it every single day in the bay area). This is not the solution, you are marginally polluting less with a Tesla but you are not solving the issue at all. you are only making yourself feel good.
Even worse, as you say it creates two class of people based on money: The ones that can afford the green-washed toys and the ones that cannot and are now blamed for "polluting".
Real change is going beyond single occupancy car for example, or reducing over population on the planet. But those are mainly economical changes that nobody wants to conveniently talk about because those are actually hard. Buying solar panels, walking to work or taking shorter showers are conveniently nitpicked easy metrics for feel-good effect.
The most underrated comment in this thread. In 2016 I started walking to work and since then have been impressed with the improvement in my overall well-being.
> To people in general, what improvements are you making
I moved out of the State of California to a jurisdiction without insane environmental laws, and now pay 0.08c/kwh, which more or less makes solar irrelevant. I bought a really nice, big house that was extremely affordable and enjoy a great quality of life. I use the extra money I make that isn't spent on electric bills and taxes to enrich the local economy, which helps lift people out of poverty and promotes innovation.
You could use some of that money and buy RECs to offset your emissions, which would not just enrich your local economy but do so in a way that encourages low-externality-energy production.
>To people in general, what improvements are you making (not your country, but you personally)? Not something you've always done - what's your latest new eco-project, big or small?
I'm installing air filters to remove the smoke particles from the fires and I'm building a hydrogen cooled suit for 50+ degree days, once I have the prototype working I can completely isolate myself from the environment to the point I could take a stroll in the middle of a forest fire.
At this point it's being comfortable for the next 50 years until industrial society collapses.
> This was due to a decrease in coal plants
> Further, renewables were up 6% in 2019
> Emissions rose from buildings [2.2%], industry [0.6%], and other parts of the economy
I'm supposed to take delivery of solar panels at my house today. It shouldn't be long before they're operational. I'm so excited!
To people in general, what improvements are you making (not your country, but you personally)? Not something you've always done - what's your latest new eco-project, big or small?