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Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

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Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#51

Post by bluefirebrand »

K0balt wrote: post #29
LUmBULtERA wrote: post #20

I don't think I disagree with anything in the article. However, I'd weary that many people extrapolate the conclusions to mean that the average person shouldn't do anything differently. For many many people in the world (not all yet), their ROI is positive for most household and transportation electrification projects. That is, they not only help the environment by switching to electric appliances and cars rather tha…

I’m with you on the collective effect of small efforts, but it’s a difficult ask to motivate when one persons excess personal environmental contamination (say, through private jet ownership) offsets an entire nations efforts of using paper instead of plastic straws, for instance. It’s like everyone shares the pool, and everyone gets out and goes to the bathroom to defecate. But not this one guy, he “doesn’t have time…

Yeah, basically this. No one should be expected to reduce how much they drive their car when there are people out there using personal jets to commute and mega yachts to vacation on

Average people should not be asked to reduce their consumption so that rich people can continue getting away with their excess

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#52

Post by bryanlarsen »

kazinator wrote: post #50

> For example, recycling, shutting off the lights when leaving a room and avoiding plastic packaging are lower-impact behaviours that are overestimated in terms of how much they can reduce one’s carbon footprint. Turning off the lights is almost a don't-give-a-damn item in the age of the LED, when you have 6W doing the job of 60W. Recycling is a scam that was originally introduced by the plastics industry in order to…

Recycling plastic is a scam. Most other recycling programs aren't.

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#53

Post by tempfile »

bendigedig wrote: post #49
tempfile wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To communicate what fact? That some random people on the street can't guesstimate carbon footprints very well?

To communicate the fact to people that they and others likely misunderstand their own carbon foot print. This is the kind of thing that makes it on to the news because it connects something abstract with everyday people.

Apparently that is not what the study concluded, they only found that everyone (rich and poor) underestimated the carbon footprint of the rich. Anyway, I still can't find this surprising. It's just obviously a complicated question. How much energy does it take to heat a home in a year? Or to transport a mango from Bolivia to Germany? Or to fly 1000km vs 10000km? This is what we have experts for, is it not?

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#54

Post by bendigedig »

tempfile wrote: post #53
bendigedig wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To communicate the fact to people that they and others likely misunderstand their own carbon foot print. This is the kind of thing that makes it on to the news because it connects something abstract with everyday people.

Apparently that is not what the study concluded, they only found that everyone (rich and poor) underestimated the carbon footprint of the rich. Anyway, I still can't find this surprising. It's just obviously a complicated question. How much energy does it take to heat a home in a year? Or to transport a mango from Bolivia to Germany? Or to fly 1000km vs 10000km? This is what we have experts for, is it not?

From TFA:

> The vast majority of participants across the four countries overestimated the average personal carbon footprint of the poorest 50% and underestimated those of the richest 10% and 1%.

Edit: are you an LLM?

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#55

Post by Yizahi »

actionfromafar wrote: post #4
paulcole wrote: post #2

Any time you spend thinking or breath you spend talking about someone else’s carbon footprint is a total fool’s errand. Nobody will ever change their carbon footprint because of what someone else tells them. There will always be someone worse than them who they can point to and say, “Well I’m not as bad as them so they should change. If people cared at all about this, they’d change their own behavior. And it’s fine t…

Woah, I expected you to get to the point that concerted effort, legislation and better technology is the only thing which will lower carbon dioxide outputs. Instead I got fatalism. :-P

You can check CO2 level meter in the atmosphere over past half a century, to see that "concerted effort, legislation and better technology" not only did jack shit to the actual CO2 levels, but the rate of increase is also increasing last years (accelerating).

Until governments start collectively implementing policies which actually contain or reduce climate change, instead of greenwashing and shifting blame overseas, fatalism is probably the only valid approach, despite how dumb it is. And don't get this old song about personal improvements etc. In no universe individual humans can invent and scale DAC, or deploy giant sunshields, or spread sulphur in the troposphere over thousands of flights. And anything else is pointless really.

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#56

Post by bluefirebrand »

lostmsu wrote: post #36
tempfile wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This definitely gets said a lot, but I am not sure it's a meaningful thing to say. After all, something like 20% of emissions come from agriculture. If you count that as industrial emissions (surely it is an industry) then it must dwarf personal footprints. But the food you eat surely belongs to your personal footprint as well? I'm not confident that when people make this comparison, they account for the double count…

The rich don't eat 20x food though.

I wonder how much food they purchase and waste though..

For example, it's not hard for me to imagine someone wealthy having strawberries delivered to every house they own, week after week, just in case they decide to visit that house and want strawberries

Maybe that's not very common, but we are talking about a class of people that will take a private jet to another city to get breakfast at their favorite restaurant there

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#57

Post by LUmBULtERA »

peteey wrote: post #32
LUmBULtERA wrote: post #20

I don't think I disagree with anything in the article. However, I'd weary that many people extrapolate the conclusions to mean that the average person shouldn't do anything differently. For many many people in the world (not all yet), their ROI is positive for most household and transportation electrification projects. That is, they not only help the environment by switching to electric appliances and cars rather tha…

>electric bikes Its not safe to cycle for practical purposes in my city. The city make gestures like painting a few road shoulders green and nature trails for exercise. This does not get me to work, daycare, the dentist, etc. Generally in America, bikes are more of a novelty than transportation.

Ok. My comment wasn't even promoting e-bikes over electric cars. I have an electric car. I use it daily and use it to get me around more than my ebike. But if someone lives somewhere in the world off of a much tinier budget and they can use something like a bike/motorcycle/cart that is electric powered over a much dirtier gas engine, then that's something they should consider.

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#58

Post by LUmBULtERA »

K0balt wrote: post #29
LUmBULtERA wrote: post #20

I don't think I disagree with anything in the article. However, I'd weary that many people extrapolate the conclusions to mean that the average person shouldn't do anything differently. For many many people in the world (not all yet), their ROI is positive for most household and transportation electrification projects. That is, they not only help the environment by switching to electric appliances and cars rather tha…

I’m with you on the collective effect of small efforts, but it’s a difficult ask to motivate when one persons excess personal environmental contamination (say, through private jet ownership) offsets an entire nations efforts of using paper instead of plastic straws, for instance. It’s like everyone shares the pool, and everyone gets out and goes to the bathroom to defecate. But not this one guy, he “doesn’t have time…

But I'd argue two points here. First, the average American household spends approximately $5k a year on gasoline [0]. That's still quite a lot of gasoline burned up. Add to that another ~$1k of natural gas the average household is burning up every year. I don't really call that small consumption. On a worldwide scale, each of these American households is burning up way more fossil fuels than the bottom 50%+. THEY ARE the rich of the world. But my second point is that switching to an EV and heat pumps (HVAC, dryers, water heaters) and induction (or electric) stoves are actually an improvement over their fossil fuel burning counterparts, either by ROI, function, or most likely, both.

[0] https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/how-much-do-peo....

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#59

Post by LUmBULtERA »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #51
K0balt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m with you on the collective effect of small efforts, but it’s a difficult ask to motivate when one persons excess personal environmental contamination (say, through private jet ownership) offsets an entire nations efforts of using paper instead of plastic straws, for instance. It’s like everyone shares the pool, and everyone gets out and goes to the bathroom to defecate. But not this one guy, he “doesn’t have time…

Yeah, basically this. No one should be expected to reduce how much they drive their car when there are people out there using personal jets to commute and mega yachts to vacation on Average people should not be asked to reduce their consumption so that rich people can continue getting away with their excess

But I'd argue two points here. First, the average American household spends approximately $5k a year on gasoline [0]. That's still quite a lot of gasoline burned up. Add to that another ~$1k of natural gas the average household is burning up every year. I don't really call that small consumption. On a worldwide scale, each of these American households is burning up way more fossil fuels than the bottom 50%+. THEY ARE the rich of the world. But my second point is that switching to an EV and heat pumps (HVAC, dryers, water heaters) and induction (or electric) stoves are actually an improvement over their fossil fuel burning counterparts, either by ROI, function, or most likely, both.

I'm not suggesting anyone drive less even. Just switch to superior electrified products (and support renewable electricity+batteries as appropriate).

[0] https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/how-much-do-peo....

Re: Personal carbon footprint of the rich is vastly underestimated

#60

Post by rickydroll »

theluketaylor wrote: post #35
david-gpu wrote: post #5

This is why I am in favor of a carbon dividend: tax carbon emissions at the source and distribute the revenue equally among residents. This way the average person doesn't experience any difference. The main challenge is finding a reasonable way of dealing with imports.

Also a fan of revenue neutral carbon pricing that uses a standard dividend. Pricing externalities does seem like the only realistic way to solve tragedy of the commons issues like climate change. The weight of regulating individual actions would be impossibly complex. I also think pricing alone isn't sufficient since there are many poor people who can't really make different choices about their consumption even if th…

I'm largely in agreement with you but I think the payout from the carbon tax should be higher on the poor side of the spectrum and much lower on the wealthy side. Alternatively, one could use the carbon tax to feed a negative income tax.
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