67
votes
Your organic, eco-friendly lifestyle isn't as green as you think
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- Title
- Your Eco-Friendly Lifestyle Is a Big Lie
- Authors
- Matt Reynolds, Kate Knibbs, Jennifer M. Wood, Paul Ford, Matt Simon, Alec Luhn, Maryn McKenna, Ben Goldfarb
- Published
- Dec 29 2023
- Word count
- 621 words
Popular consciousness associates "sustainability" with certain visibly green-looking actions, such as eating organic food, using LED lightbulbs instead of incandescents, physically living in a rural place with a lot of greenery, and so on. However, these beliefs are mostly vibes (or myths) which are not correlated with reality.
Counter-intuitively, empirical data suggests that what people perceive to be the most impactful lifestyle changes they could make are in fact the least impactful; and vice versa. For example, people routinely underestimate the climate impacts of traveling by air; driving any car (ICE or electric); eating meat and other resource-intensive foods; having children; and other intensive activities. The land use, fuel consumption, and movement patterns associated with such things are higher than we intuitively realize.
Conversely, people fail to recognize how comparatively insignificant many popular "eco-friendly" lifestyle habits are. They also incorrectly associate practices like relative urban density and public transportation (with its steel, tracks, machines, and computers) with human encroachment on the environment, even though such things actually reduce per-capita emissions relative to low density land uses and private vehicle transportation. (There are limits to specific examples of this: see previous comments of mine on monocentric vs. polycentric urban density and location/energy-efficiency. However, in general, many lifestyle choices that seem machinic and "distant from nature" are, in fact, the least polluting and most ecologically sustainable options.)
The article is premised on a poll from Ipsos that records how poorly people are able to identify climate-damaging lifestyle choices, and subsequently fail to prioritize the theoretically most effective mitigation measures. Here is the list, from most actually impactful to least impactful:
This isn't necessarily a comprehensive list of the most impactful mitigation strategies you could follow. Housing and land use is notably absent (see p. 12 for more rankings). For the purposes of the poll, these are just meant to be compared relatively.
The poll respondents essentially reversed the list, ranking what is actually the most effective mitigation (having one fewer child) as the least effective. (Philosophically, I think you could make an argument for that particular one, something about birthing a great scholar who discovers nuclear fusion and cures cancer etc. etc., but the opportunity cost of not creating a person who might theoretically solve a set of undefined problems in an undefined way is pretty quantitatively difficult to measure, so it isn't reflected in this data. Probably worth investigation in general, i.e. what is the most optimal population size to support innovation, but out of scope right now.) The mitigation that respondents ranked #1, recycling as much as possible, has a non-zero but effectively negligible climate impact relative to the others on this list. It's not that any of these things are entirely useless, but we are clearly not prioritizing mental energy toward solutions in the right way.
I anticipate some responses to the effect of: "Well, I want a kid so it wouldn't be reasonable for me to prioritize removing that from my carbon footprint, even though it's the most carbon-intensive action I could make." Ok. The poll does not ask what people would personally do to alleviate climate change (we all have excuses for not being perfect), but rather what is theoretically the most impactful. Even so, poll respondents failed to understand how their intentional lifestyle choices impact the climate. That is particularly concerning!
This lack of understanding is problematic for policy-makers because it means there is little public pressure to do the most important things, and much public pressure to make symbolic but ultimately meaningless or barely impactful changes to our consumption patterns. For example, decarbonizing the manufacturing of cement would have a dramatically larger impact on reducing global emissions than switching from plastic to paper straws, but the latter is what gets headlines. The former remains the topic of discussion of obscure internet forums and civil engineering conference panels, to the detriment of society at large.
In theory, policy is the most effective way to effect change that would otherwise not happen at the individual level (for self-motivated reasons) and which would potentially solve individuals' blockers to change, so not being able to create meaningful policy has a negative impact on quality of life in general as it perpetuates the expensive and resource-inefficient status quo. By extension, it also makes the future more expensive and resource-inefficient as the cost of repairing damage from climate change increases as a result of inaction.
I think people on Tildes are generally educated enough to look past native intuition in these cases, though I thought it was worth sharing anyway. I think that we (including me) tend to be resistant about recognizing certain lifestyle activities as objectively harmful simply because we like to do them, and anticipate that acknowledging their harm would ultimately lead us to stop doing them. We are biased toward our own lifestyles, and what we consider appropriate or ethical to provide ourselves or our families "the good life," which is psychologically defensible. (I think we, including me, also become defensive when we are criticized for high-emissions lifestyle choices that we made for the sake of loved ones, especially dependents.) But the long-term costs of climate change are ultimately higher than the short-term benefits of living luxuriously (that is, what the Western world has identified as the typical middle-class lifestyle, or anything more high-impact than that). Thus it is prudent to take a step back and look at the data to inform our future lifestyle decisions, rather than selectively focusing on which data we will pay attention to based on our current lifestyle.
My personal behavior for this list
Work in progress, but OK so far. I am lucky to be in a situation where I can make these changes voluntarily, though I have done a lot of planning to avoid becoming dependent on a high-emissions lifestyle. I think that amount of planning is what I am most proud of.
My takeaway is that I think that I'm doing an OK job of prioritizing lifestyle changes in an emissions-efficient way, at least according to these (incomplete) criteria. I've been directing more mental energy toward minimizing my transportation and electricity emissions. I think that is fairly realistic and sustainable for me so I'm likely to maintain it going forward, rather than making my life intentionally very complicated to handle some edge cases.
I think there is a point where we can "give up" being more eco-friendly as individuals, and exclusively worry about policy (i.e. advocating for system change while just following market practices or something), but I'm pretty sure that most non-homeless people living in the Western world are absolutely nowhere near that point. Nonetheless I still think education about what policies would be useful, and obviously the policies themselves, are ultimately the most effective things for activists to focus on. Policy and its effects on economics are consistent relative to voluntary cultural preferences.
We have had some discussions on Tildes in the past about the effect of social pressure on behavior (for reducing personal emissions, in this case). I actually was inspired by a thread posted in October "Should I stop flying? It's a difficult decision to make." to change some of my personal behavior around transportation, after reading about someone who made a similar decision. It was refreshing to read about someone who intentionally drew a line somewhere instead of allowing their emissions to continue inflating; and adopting a philosophy that supports that decision. So I feel that this sort of thing is still useful and relevant—we can positively encourage each other to adopt more sustainable lifestyle practices in addition to advocating for policies to make those practices universal: softening the blow.
Regular reminder that:
Big oil coined 'carbon footprint' to blame individuals for their consumption.
Unpopular policy changes are the only things that will be tangibly effective. We need to reduce consumption, and people are extremely resistant to even the mildest inconvenience. There were months of protesting about how a plastic bag ban in NJ would be the worst thing since 9/11. Turns out 3 months after the policy was enacted, almost everyone just learned to use their bags.
This is true in part because anything that would be effective is targeted by oil company propaganda, to make it as unpopular as possible so it doesn't happen. In fact, oil companies' best interests are to maximize perceived action and minimize actual action, by encourage ineffective and highly-inconvenient policy changes while discouraging the opposite - people will measure their action by effort and say "but we're doing so much <ineffective thing>, surely we're making as much progress as can reasonably be expected on climate".
There are plenty of climate change mitigations that wouldn't actually affect convenience - all sorts of industrial processes that would only raise end-user goods' cost by a few cents, while massively reducing emissions. The problem with people picking their own "individual action" is that it faces a massive availability bias - most people don't know the first thing about industrial processes, so it never even occurs to them to personally try and reduce those.
The single most effective thing we could do is pass a carbon tax - then all the "vibes" problems disappear overnight, because the worst things get much more expensive and the mostly-fine things don't, and the correct action emissions-wise is just to be a cheapskate.
For carbon taxes to work effectively they would have to be extremely steep, and the more steep they are the less popular they will be. As it is a lot of the wasteful things people buy are more expensive but people buy them for the convenience factor in spite of this.
Take water for instance. A glass of tap water costs fractions of a penny. Yet people still buy bottled water which can cost several orders of magnitude more, generates waste in the form of a one-time-use bottle made of petrochemicals which doesn’t biodegrade and almost certainly won’t actually be recycled, and incurs additional ecological penalties in the form of transportation.
A carbon tax is simple on paper but difficult in reality. Any time you push back on people’s conveniences or luxuries you will get angry mobs organizing to stop it. Have you ever seen pushback when people suggest not eating meat in a public forum? Imagine that but for almost every other enjoyable thing or convenience.
Perhaps a better option would be to slowly ban specific bad actions over time, like getting rid of plastic packaging or adding water to cleaning supplies, or forcing drink manufacturers to use reusable drink containers instead of relying on overly optimistic recycling schemes. It will be a change that people can see and will still allow people to live their lives with minimal notable changes .
Of course a carbon tax isn’t a bad idea and there are some places where it would make sense to use that instead of a blanket ban or direct policy initiative - transportation and industrial processes are probably good examples. But as I view it, we are in this mess because the government has refused to step in to regulate industry, allowing them to make insane choices that have since become mundane. It makes more sense to actually implement concrete regulations than to indirectly punish companies and end users via monetary policies. Besides, corporations are already pretty good at avoiding taxes, so I can see a future where a lot of it gets ignored.
I agree in general, though I was trying to suggest with the end of my comment that those policy changes are unlikely to actually be implemented (quickly or at all) if there isn't buy-in from constituents.
That is, convincing enough of a critical mass to act in some voluntary climate-conscious way can change the calculus of a political decision and enable previously unpopular legislation to pass; since some number of people are already doing it (and so wouldn't be affected by the new policy), it's more palatable.
[very big snip]
I think this is a key point. I have a child. Assume that now I've got the child I want to minimise carbon output associated with parenting. And I'm looking at nappies (US diapers). Which is best - disposable nappies or reusable cloth nappies?
The UK government did some research to look at the whole life cycle. They did the research in 2001 / 2002, and published 2005. It's here: Disposable and reusable nappies in the UK: life cycle assessment
It is two hundred pages long. And the conclusion? Essentially, not much difference.
Quote -
Government felt this was absurd, so they did it again in 2008. It's here: An updated lifecycle assessment study
for disposable and reusable nappies
This is a much more readable 37 pages long. Their conclusion is that the carbon harms from disposable nappies is mostly out of the control of the end user and we need the manufacturers to take action, but for reusable nappies it's mostly in the control of the end user and we need parents to dry on lines, to wash in colder water, wash in bigger loads, to re-use the products on other children.
To me this shows that it's simply not possible for end users to work out what the best option, or even what the least worst option is. We need governments to do this and tell us. And that sucks if you have, like the UK, a government that doesn't believe antropogenic climate change is real, and does not believe in regulation, and does not want to do anything at all to force industries to provide more information.
It's a really tricky thing we're asking people to do here.
That will work well and good for pee, but not nearly good enough to wash poop out. Especially non-exclusivly-breastfed, which tends to be most babies after 6 months or so as other foods slowly start being introduced.
The standard procedure is:
You especially don't want to put other things in the cold cycle. You also don't want to let your diapers sit and start festering diseases in them for 3+ days as you gather enough for a large load.
The correct answer would probably be for a public diapering service that collected and washed the diapers in industrial batches. Added bonus it'll alleviate a lot of stress on new parents.
I have no idea how common these are (and I don't have a kid so I haven't looked) but these definitely have been a thing for cloth diaper users in the past (though ofc they are generally private services, not public ones). I used to read my mom's big book on baby and childcare as a kid (book presumably came out in the mid 90s based on my age) and it referenced the possibility of hiring such a service.
I don't have a kid to wear cloth diapers but I do use cloth pads (FAR easier to launder at home fwiw thank goodness), and on that front I'd probably pick cloth diapers just because of my personal experience with how much less comfortable the disposable materials are on the sensitive areas. But ig I can't really ask a baby for their opinion on that one.
Plus, for reusable diapers you need to factor in water availability! Go far enough west in the US and extra use of freshwater might be worse just due to water scarcity in the region but that's even harder to calculate.
Speed to potty training is also a factor. In India and China the parenting style is much more "attached" in early childhood, and children are often permitted to run around naked. They learn by 8 to 10 months to signal when they need to go, and are usually able to be largely potty trained by 18 months. In the USA, it usually doesn't happen until 2 to 2.5 years. That's an additional 6 months to a year of diaper changes per baby!
The guidance given for potty training also tends to be very focused on being baby-led now, which is to say that you essentially have to wait for the kid to show an interest and desire to do it. So you realistically can't do that approach before 2 years at least.
The attached style would be better, but it also basically depends on there being a "village" to watch the kid. You have to always have someone (even if that someone is another, older kid) within arms reach to grab them when they start going. There's also a lot of cleanup. It's the physical act of grabbing them and activity that ensues that makes the kids register that an event is happening when they start to defecate or pee. That's how they learn they need to hold it in.
One thing that occurred to me with a lot of children's stuff is how wasteful so much of this feels since the idea of a BIFL children's toy of article of clothing seems absurd. I realize in past generations, when people tended to have 4+ kids if they could, the hand-me-downs might make it worth it. But today, when most people are having 1-3 you've got a lot of stuff that's used for 5 years max and then thrown or given away.
Though I will also add that putting "having children" on the list of "climate impacting lifestyle choices" is one of those things that makes environmental activists sound like they've severely lost the plot. Who exactly do they think people want to preserve the environment for? Is the idea to ensure we have a pristine blue orb for the sun to eat when it explodes?
Likewise, having a car or not is more of a civic infrastructure decision than a personal one.
Some environmentalists, especially people with Buddhist or pantheistic influence, don't feel as strongly about the human race specifically as opposed to a functioning ecosystem in general. I think the portion of environmentalists who want humans to go extinct is effectively zero, but there seems to be some desire to scale back human civilization to better integrate into the Earth's systems. In some philosophies that would require some amount of depopulation.
It's not clear to me whether that's true or useful, but it is something many environmentalists have put a great deal of thought toward, especially long-term futurists who are uniquely concerned with non-renewable resource use and biodiversity beyond timescales most people think on (i.e. thousands or tens of thousands of years rather than tens).
This is true in many cases, but it is also true in many cases that people who choose to own a vehicle do not need to do so. This includes the majority of city-dwellers. Very few US cities have car ownership rates below 50%. Actually, it's only one: New York.
It is untrue that 70.5% of residents of Philadelphia need a vehicle. It is also untrue that 70.5% of Philadelphians are incapable of using transit due to a lack of infrastructure. Many people might, especially in the northeast where there are no subways and fewer buses, but not 70.5%. I know this because it is obvious by speaking to car owners, including an enormous number of car owners who live in Center City and surrounding neighborhoods which are more than adequately served by transit, that it is a personal lifestyle decision on their part. Lots of these people rarely even leave Philly. For a city with as good a bus network as Philly's, it is just not true to say that infrastructure is the blocker. People do have agency over their lifestyle, and as much as I am an infrastructure-obsessed nerd, I think it's also critical to recognize that culture informs behavior just as much as infrastructure.
Obviously I am aware of the psychology of ease and luxury and am aware that transit has to be actively better than driving for many people to choose it. But it's not true that the majority of people in urbanized areas (where 81% of the US population lives), literally need cars. They choose to have them anyway. It is very possible to go car-free in many cities, whether you are an individual, a couple, or a family. That people do not do this is not a function of its impossibility but rather whether it is culturally understood to be "possible" or "normal."
I think the individual Philadelphians in question are probably more aware of what their day to day needs are. Cars aren't impulse buys, they're making a calculation that the benefit of the car outweighs the prodigious financial and logistical costs. Things tend to go a lot better when you don't try to second guess each and every person in the world's revealed values and preferences.
On the disposable nappy conversation. I could see the reusable being fairly good if you: use well water, septic, and only use renewable energy for electricity. We have a well and septic but do not have renewables yet, and we are on our second kid with cloth nappies. If we had that perfect situation above it's honestly super efficient.
Edit: I also did see this was a UK study, I am in the US for what it's worth.
Ground water is also depleting, wells are part of the problem too. :(
Wells for single homes aren't why ground water is depleting in some parts of the US. That falls pretty squarely on misuse of water resources by agriculture. There is a real problem with housing being built in places that are not sustainable from a water availability standpoint, but it's a fraction of the overall consumption.
Ground water in certain parts of the world I agree is depleting. Wells are not an issue for residential applications. I would not have water where I live, without a well. I would need to bring buckets from a lake or river down the road
The reason I mentioned a septic AND a well is because I'm sending my water right back into the ground to replenish the water I have taken.
It is interesting to see how big an impact having a child is, but I also think it somehow belongs to a different category. Everyone has a baseline CO2 emission from their lifestyle. If looking at ways to decrease one’s own emissions, then kids are more about not adding more than actually reducing their current output. And it is often used as sort of an excuse to not reduce all the other things. Also, do the kids get their own CO2 emission budget when they turn 18 or how long is it tagged to the parents?
Also if you're someone who looks up the carbon emissions accounted to your children and opt out because of that alone - remember that the people still having children don't give nearly as much of a damn about carbon in the atmosphere. Improving the situation will partly be down to having the population care about the problem, which requires a climate-conscious next generation. This is a clear penny-wise pound-foolish situation.
It's also an argument that opens up all kinds of fun cans of worms re: rights of future peoples. In my opinion, telling a hypothetical future person they ideally wouldn't exist because a problem previous people created is somewhat morally questionable. Having a robust climate and a depopulated earth is not an improved situation in my mind.
You can't tell a hypothetical future person anything, because they're only hypothetical. What right do they have to exist? But to tell people who exist right now that they need to create future people regardless of the challenges the existence those people will bring comes with actual costs to actual existing humans.
Someone could make a credible argument in favour of doing nothing re: climate change starting with that premise. Personally I think the rights of future peoples is of moral significance and one of the biggest reasons to care about climate change, progress, and leaving our home a better place than we found it.
I don't think it's unreasonable to draw a distinction between the rights of future people who can reasonably be expected to exist, and the rights of future people to exist. This is consistent with how most people treat the expectation of procreation. Choosing to have an abortion is viewed very differently from choosing to give birth while willingly making choices that will cause birth defects. Even for those who are against elective abortions, very few people believe anyone should be required to get pregnant simply so a future person can exist, and even fewer believe that anyone should be required to have as many children as physically possible, which is the logical conclusion of accepting the right of future people to exist.
I believe anyone who does exist in the future should have all the same rights that you and I should have - clean water, comfortable shelter, wholesome food, clean air, a biodiverse world, etc. I have also chosen not to create any future people and do not believe that my hypothetical children have any right to exist while they do not exist. I find these stances to be entirely compatible. A person does not have rights until they exist, but waiting for them to exist to ensure the resources required to fulfill those rights are available is something like willful ignorance. We know tomorrow there will be people. We should make the world livable for them today not because they have rights today, but because it will be impossible to do tomorrow and yet they will still have those rights.
I agree with you and apologies if I wasn't clear.
Specific unborn people do not have rights, which is why I deliberately wrote 'peoples'. Obviously it's anyone's choice to not have children for any reason. Abstaining from having kids because of something along the lines of "someone else is going to have them" is perfectly rational.
I was more addressing the group of people (encountered elsewhere) who seemingly want everyone to stop having kids en masse as a solution to climate change. I realize the OP wasn't suggesting that, I kind of jumped there on my own so apologies for the confusion.
I expect to live another 30+ years more or less, assuming the actuarial tables aren't totally thrown into disarray by the future. There's plenty of years left in me to be screwed over by climate change. I want it fixed for me and my family and the crops I can no longer grow where I live and the snow and rain that no longer falls when it should. I don't have to be doing it for some hypothetical kid my sterilized ass will definitely never have. I can appreciate that other people have other reasons, and I had a more abstract desire to protect the climate in years past, but at this point it's a clear and urgent issue for people to address if they want their quality of life to stay anywhere close to where it was.
Anyone who wants to do nothing wants things to go very wrong. Addressing climate change is a human rights issue and a moral good. But unaddressed climate change is also a matter of national security and a major contributor to illegal immigration as desperate people will do whatever they can to get to places that are still livable. At this point everyone who isn't being regularly lied to sees the current immediate importance of taking better care of the world.
Future people will benefit, but fighting for the climate is going to save the people of the right now.
Define "depopulated".
As someone that has no children, is childfree specifically, and has known other childfree people: I've never met or heard of a single childfree person that has used not having a child as an excuse to continue onward without reducing their own carbon output, but have seen this statement made many times that purports that childfree people do exactly that.
Have any data to back up that childfree people pollute more than people with children?
My intent wasn't to make a generalization on everybody here, and I am honestly not sure any such reliable data exists for that sort of thing. It was more an anecdotal thing from the types of people that say "I am okay with flying 10+ times a year, because XYZ" - which of course comes in many variants.
The same sort of anecdotal things are used in everything from childfree generalizations to racism, none is welcome.
Even if such an anecdote were true of childfree people, the simple math from the list provided shows that they'd still be less polluting taking 10+ flights per year (the breakeven point is 36.625 6+hour flights) than someone else that made the lifestyle choice of having a single child.
My problem with that logic is that it is not about reducing but adding less. And also the extra logic to have the childs emission tagged on to the parents. Like when do we start owning our own emissions? As I said previously, if talking about reducing we should consider variable methods of changing current lifestyle to emit less than ones baseline. Creating a new person to the world is a whole different concept and makes little sense when talking about what one can to reduce. It is a totally valid discussion to have about how many kids people should put into the world, but I feel like that is sort of a different category than driving less, eating less meat and air dry clothes.
Once they can begin making their own decisions regarding their own emissions, which is, generally, adulthood.
Potato/potato.
Having a child, outside of extenuating circumstances, is a choice. It's as much as choosing to drive a EV instead of ICE car. How is it a "different concept"? If one's baseline emissions, as is evident by the sheer number of people born and it being the "norm", is to have a child (or several) then changing one's lifestyle by choosing to not have children is a viable and the single most impactful way of reducing emissions available to an individual.
Driving an ICE car, in the US at least, is the norm. Choosing to only drive an EV, or ride a bike, is the method to reduce one's emissions.
Being an omnivore is the norm. Choosing to be vegetarian/vegan is the method to reduce one's emissions.
Having a child is the norm. Choosing not to is the method to reduce one's emissions.
If my emission calculation includes the burps of the cow I eat then it must also include the fuel used to transport the diapers catching the waste output by a child I sire. It's all the same category, it's all emissions an individual is responsible for based on the choices they made, be it an international flight, a steak dinner, or breeding.
There are several things here that I find problematic with how we view personal attachment to emissions. There is the one that is also discussed in another part of this thread, that the concept originally comes from the fossil industry to sort of sidetrack the whole issue to avoid actual change. If we just make it an individual responsibility, then we can waste time finding minuscule improvement instead of doing things on a soceity scale that would actually matter.
But even if we buy into the individual emissions, then I have a fundamental issue with mixing what existing humans do with the concept of creating new humans. You could say no one has chosen to be born. It is a choice made by our parents. So if we really want to commit to the personal choice being what is responsible for everything, then are our parents responsible for our entire life's worth of emissions? Technically they should be by this logic, even after adulthood or whatever arbitrary threshold we set.
And there is a difference in starting with a person and what they do to live their life, and how they can emit less than they do now - and then deciding not to do something. These kinds of list with "how much do this and that do" is about activities we can do less of or in a manner that emits less. You don't actually reduce any of your existing emissions by not having a child. You will still emit the same. By adding that concept to the mix often sidetracks these types of discussions, because then it is not about reducing or actually changing anything, but not adding something - because you can't really reduce existing children. You can drive less, you can travel less, you can eat less meat and so on. You are not changing a lifestyle by not having children. You are keeping existing lifestyle. To re-iterate, to add children into the same sort of lists as food or transport puts the idea of change to a lower priority - and sidetracks these kind of discussions.
In a more general manner, I also think there is - I don't know a better word for it than "uncomfortable sense" - of "tagging" people merely existing as humans as something that should be reduced. Which is sort of what we do when we put new humans in the same category as petrol car emissions. Because what it comes down to, is generally saying that people are immoral to create new humans and that humans should bear some sort of "CO2 guilt" by merely existing. Historically, few good things comes from the idea of valuing whether humans are allowed to exist or who is allowed to create new humans.
This bit right here, is an excellent phrasing of the idea I couldn't figure out the words for.
Counting creating future generations as 'part of the problem' only works if you want there to be no future generations.
It's fine if you want to count my kids carbon emissions against me. I'll just teach them to never help any childless people over 60 when they grow up. That's no less empathetic.
The world is seeking to punish high emissions (generally a good thing), by having a personal "impact score". By counting 'creating kids' it's actively punishing people whom are raising the people whom will have to care for the elderly who sought to punish their parents for creating them.
Not counting the future generations ends up making so there are no future generations.
Does that get to work both ways? Because your children certainly aren't helping elderly childless people for free. If you get to teach them not to help the elderly, do the childless get to keep all the taxes that pay to feed, clothe, and educate your kids?
[to keep comments concise as this has run it's course and I'm done after this, from another comment reply to me:]
So parents have to pay for the consequences of their own actions? Oh no...
Should someone that uses $100k as an investment not get to enjoy the returns on that because someone else spent $100k on a car instead?
Everyone has a budget, right now it's primarily money and time based, if people are also given a carbon budget then the child has to be attributed to someone and the child isn't the one deciding to spend their budget on diapers, toys, iPads, or trips to Disneyland.
The formula is simple. If X is the worldwide personal carbon emissions, Y is the worldwide population, then X/Y=Z with Z being the personal carbon emissions per person. If Y1 and Y2 (parents) decide to make Y3 and Y4 (children), the personal carbon emissions of Z is now lower for someone, should someone have to send out a message to everyone else saying "Hey, we're cutting your carbon budget because Y1 and Y2 had twins." or should it come from the parent's budget?
The fossil fuel industry did do so to sidetrack their own responsibility, but the facts of the matter are that we, as humans, can both make individual decisions to lessen our impact while also forcing the society scale changes that are needed.
Which is why the emission cutoff is set at adulthood, same as it is with laws in general, because at some point personal responsibility has to be involved. It's not the parent's fault if their 40 year old climate-denier elects to roll coal every day just because they elected to sire a child.
If only viewed in a black and white, reduce or increase lens, then yes, not having a child does not reduce your existing emissions.
However, the world isn't black/white, and most people have children, so by default their lifetime expected emissions would/should include tallying up the price of breeding.
If we don't want to look at it that way and instead look at it as reduce/increase, then it's a comparison of not having a child to remain at a baseline (or reduce one's own baseline) vs having a child and in doing so will actively increase emissions be they attributed to the parents or not.
I am not, do not, nor intend to tag anyone merely existing as something that should be reduced. No one should, nor am I saying they should, feel CO2 guilt by existing. My point is that someone is responsible for the emissions of children and it's not the child themselves, that choosing to have a child is directly counter to any efforts an individual makes to reduce their own emissions, and the single most effective way to reduce overall emissions that an individual can do is to simply not have children.
A lot of choices that can be made to reduce emissions, be they personal or overall, aren't always feasible. An individual can push for public transit, but that individual cannot build trains and tracks and infrastructure and as a result they likely have no choice but to drive. They can push for green energy, but can't build wind turbines and so on and so forth. However, if one wishes to reduce emissions, regardless of whether we count them for that individual or just overall, then not breeding is the best way to do so. Not to mention all of the other issues people should consider when deciding to have a child.
Certainly. And I have nothing against making these sort of lists where different activities is compared by their CO2 output. That includes also considering the general sustainability for future generations and the total population of the Earth. The problem comes from mixing those two things together which creates unhealthy incentives and sort of comparing apples to oranges.
But why not by the same logic? Maybe the child is raised to not care about the environment or have a very high emission lifestyle. It is logically the parents "fault" that that person even exists if we want to count peoples emissions to their parents.
Which is sort of my main problem here. That it is a different type of discussion about the general sustainability of how many people the planet can handle. And as I have tried to express a few times now, when these things are put side by side in a comparison alongside regular variable activity that we can all reduce/increase almost on a day to day basis, it offsets any meaningful incentives to add the entire lifetime of a child (or even just till 18) to the same pot. Not sure if this phrasing makes sense, but we are comparing variable emission output with a constant addition. In practice it becomes an argument used by people who are already childfree and I somehow doubt there are many people that badly want children, that are not doing simply because of the CO2 emissions. Unlike considering switching to an EV car, replacing red meat with chicken and so forth.
But that is the outcome of that logic, when we tag responsibility to individuals in this way and saying that a childs emissions is in the same category as driving a petrol car. When we start with the logic that the most effective way is to not do something, it offsets actual activities that reduce emissions and paves the even more unhealthy idea that an even more effective way of reducing emissions is by eliminating existing people. If we actually want to tackle these issues on a global scale, the most effective way of reducing the number of children born is to battle poverty and ensure better education for women in poorer countries. Most first world countries already have negative birth rates and is by this logic doing their part of "reducing" emissions. Should we by this logic make political changes to nudge people to have fewer children, in the same manner as increasing taxes on fossil fuel and the like? Do we need a diaper tax?
And what is even the point of reducing emissions if we all should just stop having children and let humanity die out in a 100 years? Because that is surely the most effective way of doing things by this logic.
Quick replies to the various points made, roughly in order, as this has run it's course and I won't be replying further.
It's not apples to oranges, it's lessening impact by making a decision, and there is zero evidence of "unhealthy incentives". No one is taking 40 flights a year because they didn't have a kid.
Because that's not logic. Should your parents be responsible for your speeding tickets as an adult? How about if you run over a child in your EV, does your mother and father get the vehicular manslaughter charge? No. Society has decided that responsibility transfers to the individual when they begin making adult decisions.
Having a child is a regular variable activity since it is not a given, not a requirement, and a choice one makes.
The most effective way is to use birth control. By your definitions, it is now an actual activity to reduce emissions.
The most effective way to reduce emissions is not to battle poverty and give better education to women in poor countries (this should be done anyway, but that's a different point) because the emissions of the poor are practically non-existent. The top 10% of global earners (about $50k/year) account for 50% of global emissions, the bottom 50% of earners account for 8%. The top 1% ($140k/year) account for the same emissions as the bottom 66%. 77Million people at the top pollute as much 5.1Billion at the bottom. Top earners pollute enough in two weeks to account for the entire lifetime pollution of the poorest. [1] [2] [3] - Poor people having a dozen kids aren't the problem, people that can even afford an EV having a child are.
What's the point in having children if doing so greatly increases emissions and all of humanity dies out in 100 years anyway? By your own logic, having children is doing nothing and that doing nothing is going to continue increasing emissions until the planet decides it's time for the 6th mass extinction and that mass extinction will largely impact the poorest, who had no say in the matter, which won't actually lower emissions enough to save the richest.
Look at it this way, even discounting the dehumanizing aspect.
If we ever seek to cap emissions, say nobody gets more than 50T a year (arbitrary pick), you can't count kids. Or the childfree get to live like kings while the parents get nothing.
Heck, we could just kill off everyone over 75...that'd save us just as many if not more emissions...medical care is expensive and it'd remove a good portion of the deniers. But that's also an incredibly horrible idea.
I think emissions from camping are low enough that we probably don't need to concern ourselves with it. Plus the benefits of getting people outside probably outweighs the tiny amount of emissions from it.
Also, don't forget that air drying indoors is a free way to cool your home in the summer.
I have more to say on what you wrote, but not necessarily more to contribute, so I'll just leave it at that.
Only if you live in a dry climate. Those of us with 95%+ humidity summers and those clothes stay wet without sunlight. If you're using your AC as well, you're just making your AC work harder.
Dry your clothes outdoors.
Yeah I'm not very concerned about my minimal propane usage, that was just the only gas-related object I think I own. I think I'm a pretty conscientious wilderness inhabitant otherwise.
I always thought it was funny to see city people come into the woods as a kid to "appreciate nature" because the way they got there was by driving 300 miles. Or taking the car up dirt roads that probably shouldn't exist so as to not walk another couple miles. Not that I didn't do this too, but it was incongruent.
In that vein, now that I live in the city one of my personal (not climate-related) goals is to spend more time camping and in wilderness areas, with the (climate-related) caveat that I would like to get to those places exclusively via public transportation and walking. I think that will involve a different philosophy of wilderness: focusing less on the touristy vistas and more on the "getting there" actually being the journey.
Jeez, I can't think of a campground near me that wouldn't make 90% of that trip walking hours worth of miles. For a laugh, I decided to see how long it would take to get from the end of my light rail line to one of my usual campgrounds on foot and it said over a day! Now I want to do more research though as I am the type to do stupid things like that. I wonder if there's a safe enough bike route.
There are actually surprisingly good transit connections to a lot of state and national parks. For example, there's a bus that goes straight from Washington DC to Shenandoah National Park (Front Royal) in two hours. It technically stops at a nearby Walmart instead of the park (for some reason), but it's within walking distance. Rural bus options are more common than I think many people realize. They don't necessarily run frequently, but if you're going camping you probably don't need them to.
I haven't tried it myself, but you can pretty easily take a standard bike on an Amtrak train in the United States. Regional buses typically have enough room for a bike inside the vehicle, and I guess you could store it in the hold on a coach bus. With a fold-up bike, it would be even more practical. I know several bike enthusiast types who do this sort of thing on Amtrak once in a while. It's usually because they want to go biking in another city, but I don't see a reason why one couldn't take a transfer out to a park. Just lock up on a signpost or a tree.
Of course there are many locations where this isn't feasible whatsoever, like Nunavut or most of Wyoming. If there's somewhere I am particularly keen on visiting, and it's truly inaccessible without taking a personal car, I would consider renting one. But I think that the experience of getting as close as possible via transit and exclusively using human-powered methods to get to a vista would be a more interesting experience.
You're right about public transportation in rural areas being better than one suspecting, but I doubt that rural public transport is always going to be better than taking a car as far as emissions go; a lot of places public transport is "call us and we'll dispatch a driver". The thing that makes public transportation a saving is the carpooling aspect, so if they have to make a special trip for you you aren't actually saving anything (especially if you own a car you could take instead to avoid the trips to get the vehicle to you).
Yes, good point. I'm specifically not talking about on-demand "micro-transit" (not a great term) services, but rather services which run regularly but infrequently and do have actual passengers with whom you're carpooling. I haven't taken many on-demand transit vans, but I have taken lots of rural buses which were more useful than I expected. Miles in Transit has some neat videos of exploring strange bus routes in rural areas, usually as an alternate path home from a very obscure Amtrak station or some other odd locale.
As far as climate is concerned, an on-demand service would probably be sub-optimal for any specific trip from A to B for the reason you describe. However, if you're considering the externalities of owning a car that you otherwise wouldn't have, it could theoretically still be better to take the on-demand vehicle for occasional trips in a place you aren't typically visiting (such as a state park) and using your typical transit agency for normal trips... instead of driving to all those locations, since owning a car would encourage the latter.
And conceivably, depending on where you are and where you're trying to go, taking transit for the majority of a route and an on-demand service for the "last mile" (not necessarily a mile, but a short distance) is probably much more carbon-efficient than driving that same distance plus the "last mile." The longer the distance you're traveling to visit a rural locale, the more this effect is pronounced.
But at this point it's difficult to make generalizations because it's so situation-dependent.
I wonder if an alcohol stove produces less emissions than a propane stove. Alcohol doesn't produce as much heat, so you'd need to run it longer. I tried looking it up and found comparisons on cost and safety, but nothing on emissions.
I found this, but I'll keep looking.
Sweet, thank you!
Mitigating #2 and #3 could be rough for a lot of people living in North America. Many of us have had to move long distances (often, to the opposite coast) to bolster work/career, which combined with how few vacation days we get (not enough time for transit via Amtrack, etc) means that visiting family unavoidably involves long distance air travel.
For #2, cities are the only places where not owning a car is practical. That’s not really a problem in itself, but if one is to have something left over from their earnings to build a financial safety net, save for retirement, etc with, they’re probably going to have to move to less dense areas where cost of living is low and cars are a must. This is particularly relevant for those of us who come from poor backgrounds and whose families don’t have the means to lend a hand when disaster strikes (meaning we’re effectively on our own).
So to some extent, meaningful improvement by the masses on both points is going to require major structural changes.
Yes, plenty of structural changes would be needed to make rail travel time-competitive with flying. Political changes enforcing more vacation time (as in France) would also be a monumental challenge which we should undertake either way.
I'm particularly interested in rail infrastructure improvements because it's about as systemic a solution as you can get. New, dedicated right-of-way for passenger rail? Hey, there we go for the next several decades. We've had some discussion about cross-continental high-speed rail routes across North America in the past and generally came to the conclusion that current technology isn't going to beat airplanes purely on speed. But a hypothetical day-long train ride, while still longer than a flight, addresses the worst of the travel time issues.
Regardless, regional high-speed rail (such as SF to LA, NY to Chicago, Boston to DC) is extremely feasible and would serve a significant portion of trips currently taken by air in a significantly more energy-efficient way. The United States just hasn't attempted to build that infrastructure in a meaningful way. Every year it intentionally diverts hundreds of billions of dollars to highway and airport repair and expansion instead of equivalent capacity for passenger rail infrastructure, which would ultimately cost less for the value it creates.
What you're saying is relevant, but I'm obligated to remark that the cost of living is not automatically high in dense areas. It is high in some dense areas. And, technically, the supposed "decreased cost of living" in a car-dependent area often coincides with increased transportation and other costs to an extent that you don't actually save money by living out there, even though it seems like it intuitively. (In addition there are often career opportunity costs to living in non-dense areas.) This metric is called location efficiency and CityNerd actually made a couple interesting videos about the least and most location-efficient cities in the United States last month (based on some highly specific and arbitrary criteria, but it demonstrates the concept relatively accessibly). His videos are at the city level, but it's also worth analyzing at the ZIP code level. Different neighborhoods within a particular urban area can differ dramatically in price while offering essentially identical access to amenities, including schools. Even in a place like New York, there are more affordable and location-efficient ZIP codes than people intuitively think because rent in Manhattan is high.
I have this conversation a lot with people who move out of the city because they want a certain amount of space and don't see that available to them (in a neighborhood they consider "good") within a dense area. Nominally, they want more space because they are having children or are getting a dog. But that is a lifestyle decision. It's not actually a requirement. Many people raise children and/or dogs perfectly happily in dense, urban areas (using far less space than the typical suburban resident); and, notably, many of them are not wealthy! So indeed, you can make a perfectly strong case for moving to a non-dense area because you need X amount of space and have Y budget and you just can't find that in a dense place; but if the goal is environmental sustainability, finding different or more efficient ways to think about the amount of space one uses in one's household can open up opportunities for life in denser areas.
The justification that some progressive people are reluctant to provide here is that they characteristically associate dense urban living with poverty and/or people who do not physically resemble them (they aren't always as progressive as they think). So even though in virtually every single metro area in the United States there are dense location-efficient neighborhoods they could live in, they often choose to move to a relatively sparse, car-dependent place for reasons that are not economic. That is also a lifestyle decision. It is something that can (and will) be defended, but it is not quite true that people literally don't have any choice except to move to car-dependent areas purely for housing reasons.
This isn't an indictment of people who move to the suburbs. There are plenty of good reasons to not want to live in a place that is technically location-efficient but which is, in practice, not pleasant; like feeling physically unsafe, or facing racial discrimination, or just wanting to be somewhere quiet. And sometimes it really is less expensive (just way less than people think). But many people in North America (especially the moderately privileged) are overly fond of blaming "the economic condition of the city/state/country" for making some environmental aspiration impossible for their situation when, really, the aspirationalness of these aspirations is a function of the sociocultural lifestyle choices they make more than some immutable law of the universe. This kind of narrow etiology tends to reinforce social norms at the expense of environmental sustainability because it erodes the individual's ability to make creative choices about what constitutes a fulfilling living arrangement or life.
I would love to be able to take the train, but I suspect most Canadians simply cannot afford to do so. Example: I am in Nova Scotia and i want to go to Vancouver. Let's ignore the last many many miles and assume I can get to stops magically. I can take Canadian Via rail to Toronto, then bus to Ann Arbor, Michigan. From MI then use American trains to go to Seattle. Then train to Vancouver. This takes 7 different buses and trains total, even after ignoring the last miles. In terms of time this will take more than 4 days 7 hours (103hr total) as opposed to 9 hours. Let's say I can afford the time off work for this. The total cost of JUST the train ride to Toronto, representing only a quarter of the journey, already costs more than airfare. The amount of expensive travel food I'd have to consume would further raise the total cost.
So, absolutely we have to make rail travel better.
But I honestly don't see how it's at all possible to be competitive. Not very many people can afford the way fare it would cost to be on the road for 103 hours each way even if the trains themselves are completely free.
Honestly the solution is not to travel at all: everybody live within walking distance to all your loved ones, groceries, and work from home. I would love to if I could afford to do so.
the city nerd videos look interesting. thanks for the link
Edit:
I will say, that your post has inspired me to look into trains/buses from Vancouver to Seattle, as opposed to driving, and next trip I will more than likely be doing train/bus instead of drive. So, while trains likely won't ever be comparable to flying for long distances, for closer together cities like your Toronto trip they make a lot of sense.
In theory, dedicated high-speed rail (of which Canada has built exactly zero miles) could optimistically reduce the travel time between Nova Scotia and Vancouver from something like four days to more like one. But most people aren't taking cross-continental trips, so the largest benefits would be in connecting cities between adjacent provinces. The biggest gains from HSR using current steel-on-steel technology would be in city pairs under 750 miles apart with a sweet spot around 250 miles apart.
When I said "time-competitive" I meant "time-competitive" and not "price-competitive." But yes, price is also a relevant factor. It isn't practical for inter-city rail to be completely free, especially if the routes are operated by a private company as they sometimes are in Europe. I'm not aware of any inter-city systems without fares, even somewhere like China. But that doesn't mean fares have to be exorbitant: I can take an Amtrak between Washington, DC and Boston (a distance of 457 miles by rail) for $37. The Northeast Corridor is actually profitable for Amtrak, too (this is mostly because of business travelers, but an advanced ticket for something like a family visit is not expensive).
It's worth noting that one of the reasons rail fares seem high relative to driving is because the government chooses not to tax (toll) drivers at a rate corresponding to (or anywhere near) the damage inflicted on roadways by those vehicles and the cost of such high-footprint infrastructure in the first place. Thus the externality costs of any particular trip are almost entirely socialized through income taxes. You are still paying for your usage (and everyone else's), and it's a lot, but you aren't aware of the infrastructure cost as a driver. (Also, drivers have already spent thousands of dollars on a personal vehicle, but that as well as vehicle maintenance costs are "invisible"). The only other visible cost to drivers is gas, whose externalities are also socialized (via costs incurred by climate change) instead of being paid directly by the user.
By contrast, politicians and constituents inexplicably expect railroads to have much higher farebox recovery ratios than highway toll stations. This requires higher fares, so there appears to be a higher cost to the user. However, railroads have comparatively few externalities with socialized costs, other than equivalent infrastructure, which is generally cheaper per person-mile traveled anyway. If drivers were charged a more appropriate amount for using highway infrastructure and its various externalities (it would be much more than what train riders are charged for using rail infrastructure), driving would immediately become less relatively economical. Of course this doesn't happen because it is would be politically unpopular, but it's still true.
It doesn't have to be this way though. With a fast (time-competitive) enough train, the "immediate" price of a train ticket can be lower than the cost of fuel for an equivalent car journey because the time-value of the train is better than the car (i.e. time = money, and driving wastes more time relative to a fast train, so more people would take the train, so the train could theoretically offer less expensive tickets). But it simply isn't as economical with conventional (slow) diesel trains. Because Canada's trains are almost exclusively low-speed diesel trains with very few tracks suitable for anything approaching high-speed operations, it's unsurprising that the trains are not time-competitive; this means less money to the railroads, which means less ability to set lower/more price-competitive fares.
There are a lot of reasons airplanes are sometimes cheaper than taking the train a similar distance. Part of it is inconsistencies in taxation of jet fuel vs. train electricity/diesel fuel; various value-added taxes which airlines are exempt from (for some reason); and, most importantly, the fact that the government has already invested hundreds of billions of dollars into very advanced airport infrastructure but has not done the same for ground transportation. There are sometimes issues with a lack of competition between firms, which are also related to the government providing lots of public infrastructure for highways and airports but very little for railroads, but can alternatively be a symptom of an over-regulated business environment. It's a difficult and country-specific problem, but not an unsolvable one.
Density is important, but I don't think we have to give up travel altogether. Ground transportation could just be a lot better. North America intentionally chooses not to build high-speed rail, but it could, and such projects could absolutely thrive.
“Less dense == lower cost of living” has its caveats, for sure. I can only speak for my personal experience where such a move roughly halved my recurring costs compared to when I was living in a city, even when accounting for the need to drive (which to be fair, isn’t much in my case).
This takes it further than what my philosophical argument is, which goes something like "my partner and I have strong environmental values, so it's high likelihood my kids will as well, which is desperately needed" as @teaearlgraycold's comment lays out. You don't have to invent fusion -- just make an incremental (or larger) change to a system that negates more than your own lifetime impact in carbon. That level of impact, while difficult/impossible to quantify precisely, is being made by a number of systems engineers, data analysts, physicists, teachers, etc. who are working on building and promoting a more sustainable future throughout their careers. Of course, you can't control your kids' lives, values, or career focus. But it's not a binary between "Newton or Leech".
I'm curious how this works. Every time a program like this comes up, it basically seems like a big scam and that it's just a way to get a few extra dollars out of some of their customers. They've already built the infrastructure and equipment to generate the green energy. They're already generating that energy and selling it to you, even if you don't opt into this program. The only way it actually has a net benefit is if people sign up for the program faster than they build out their green infrastructure, and only if the energy company is honest and not trying to pull any weird calculation/accounting tricks.
Power purchase agreements as a concept are legitimate. They are financial transactions. Using a renewable PPA is just a market-based approach to climate change mitigation.
Every third-party energy supply contract that a customer makes is ultimately with a corporation which is generating electricity via some source (renewable or fossil).
So if consumers specifically sign energy contracts with renewable companies and not with fossil companies, the latter group does not succeed economically. As a result, they will stop producing as much electricity via fossil fuels (they may increase their renewable output or the delta may be taken by other companies). It isn't so much a matter of who is literally generating electricity at a specific point in time, but who is receiving capital inflow.
The grid is a mix of renewable and non-renewable energy, so the electricity ultimately gets combined in an untrackable way. So, technically, the electricity being delivered to my home is not strictly renewable, but an equivalent amount of renewable energy is being put toward the grid as I am personally using.
This is like the "direct/early action" cousin of a carbon offset (indirect/late action) for electricity generation because it specifically subsidizes renewable energy producers and boycotts fossil fuel energy producers. It is different than using fossil fuel energy and "offsetting" it with a tree-planting scheme because it avoids the externalities and inefficiencies associated with fossil fuel energy production in the first place. I guess if you look at this strictly in terms of infrastructure and not in terms of capital or if you don't believe in market forces then this is a "scam." But I would tend to believe that capital is a meaningful motivator for corporate behavior, given past evidence.
The thing to watch out for is what kind of renewable energy credit (REC) the PPA specifies. Obviously, a PPA is ineffective if you are paying an energy company which does not actually generate renewable electricity. In theory, these RECs are supposed to serve as verification that the energy produced is actually renewable. But like carbon credits, it is possible for a bad actor to submit misleading data to acquire a renewable certificate. I did some research into the renewable energy supplier I'm buying electricity from, and from what I can tell they seem legitimate.
I figure that in the off-chance they are secretly committing fraud, the difference in electricity price is not meaningful enough for my personal finances to be ruined, so I'm not stressing out over it.
Thanks! I appreciate you writing this up.
That is pretty much how I see it.
I think the market forces you mentioned are important, and the economics as you described it make sense. However, I think it depends a lot on location, and are probably why it seems like a good idea to you, and not so much to me. I live in an area (Ontario, Canada), where somewhere between 70 and 90% of our daily energy needs are produced by green (including nuclear) sources. While the production and distribution is partially controlled by private companies, the government has a lot more influence on the mix than in a lot of other places, and market forces are much less prevalent in this industry.
Perhaps I was a bit harsh to use the word "scam" earlier. I don't think they're trying to defraud anyone, but I do think that the implementation (at least here in Canada) is used more to pay back the developers/producers, rather than as an incentive to start up new projects, which are often only done with government support anyway.
One of the items I didn't see in here was heat pump clothes driers instead of traditional ones. I live in the US and just purchased a Whirlpool full size model (7cu ft) and it has been awesome. For those who can go with a smaller unit, the Miele models are awesome.
I be happy to help you with this one. What psychological difficulties were you having?
Well, the biggest hurdle is that I kind of like how meat tastes and it's a bummer to not eat tasty food. I really like beef in particular, which made it difficult to cut it out of my diet. My solution was to substitute it with pork, chicken, and lamb. I tried substituting chicken patties with veggie burgers, but I never found anything with a texture I liked. Lately my solution has been to cut out meals where meat is the primary ingredient (like a chicken sandwich) in favor of ones where it is secondary (like chicken noodle soup). I am mostly satisfied with that, but I would still like to go further.
I slip when I am traveling. It is just so much easier to buy a burger than to experiment with whatever unfamiliar non-meat foods are on the menu. This is basically the only time I end up eating beef, except once in a while when I have a sudden craving for a shepherd's pie but the Cheesecake Factory doesn't have lamb but does have beef and I can't stop myself from saying to the stressed-out waitress, "Oh that's alright, let's just do the cottage pie."
I am a particularly social person (believe it or not, considering how much time I spend on this website...) and a certain amount of socialization just seems to happen at restaurants and dinner parties. I avoid the former where appropriate, but I actually run some social groups which specifically rely on visiting bars/restaurants (it's hard to explain, but it would be devastating to extricate the bar from the events). While there are vegetarian options on most restaurant menus, they are not always things I care to eat. I really struggle to eat salads constantly. I am fortunate to live in a city where there are vegetarian/vegan restaurants out there, I just do not go to them. I do remember going to a vegan restaurant with a friend by accident and not realizing it was vegan until the waitress said so. But I wouldn't have noticed otherwise.
I strongly dislike having food requirements when I attend parties or events. I do not like to make my hosts go out of their way to provide vegetarian options for me. I also do not like complicating group orders where others are eating meat. I don't like to plan out my meals when traveling and prefer to be capable of eating whatever is available, because it makes things simpler.
I'm a pretty lazy cook and would rather not have a complicated kitchen. Frankly, I am not a creative chef and I don't feel a particular desire to make creative or interesting dishes except when I have company. I'm prone to wasting ingredients when I make lots of complex meals because I travel frequently and it isn't always feasible to use everything efficiently. I do still buy some fresh produce, but not exclusively. The more individual vegetables I buy, the more I tend to waste. Thus my schedule and aptitudes lead me to buy a certain amount of frozen or canned food. Unfortunately the variety of vegetarian canned soups at any of my local groceries are rather sparse. Almost all canned soup has chicken or fish in it (which are pretty good); those that don't are, so far, kind of meh. And while I like my frozen peas just fine, it's not a particularly interesting meal.
I'm not a serious or professional athlete but I am fairly active and am compelled to maintain my fitness. I am naturally very lean and have to eat a lot to keep extra muscle. I have historically relied on meat for that. But I have a thing against protein powder and anything that isn't actual food. Maybe that is unrealistic. Several times a year I attend events which involve a lot of movement and I feel like I'm starving if I don't eat meat (I don't see a reason for this to be technically necessary; but the vegetarian options are usually salads, not chickpeas). At some or many of these events men are in the minority, so food is portioned for women, who statistically eat less. If I am actually eating leaves the whole time I will be hangry.
I brought up the iron thing because there was a while when I was getting dizzy from standing up more than usual. That's always happened to me, but a friend suggested it was an iron deficiency. I haven't gotten it medically checked out. I know there is a lot of iron in meat, and she specifically blamed my vegetarian-ish diet. I know I can get iron from spinach but I absolutely hate frozen spinach and I tend to waste a lot of the fresh spinach I buy.
I am aware of some protein-heavy meat alternatives (like lentils), but psychologically I have trouble "feeling" like it's enough. If I buy yogurt, it is Greek; but I am more likely to buy cereal because it keeps far longer. :/ Some meat alternatives, like nuts, are fairly expensive. I am pretty frugal and the price leaves me all agog. The same goes for most meat substitutes (like veggie burgers). There are some grocery stores near me that I think would have more vegetarian options, but they're just so expensive that I can't bear to step inside.
I know these are silly excuses. I am being picky about my food, and my activities, and my weird aversions. I am not poor and I could afford meat substitutes. These are all lifestyle choices I continue to make because it's easier to stay in a holding pattern than to actually change my behavior (and at some level, psychologically, I want to stay in this pattern because having a righteous aspiration for vegetarianism as opposed to actually being vegetarian lets me indulge in my favorite meats while still feeling like I'm doing something).
There was a while when I was strictly trying to eat no meat during the week, and a little on weekends. (Sometimes I would cheat and have fish.) I think I could reasonably get back into that schedule. My goal is to just not eat meat at all, except maybe fish and crustaceans/shellfish, which I am not sure about yet.
You're in luck; it's Veganuary. :P
I think your biggest problem might be that you're too much in your head. It seems like you're almost punishing yourself for not being able to succeed in your goal. One of the main things to know when you're making a transition like this is realizing that it takes time. The longer you spend away from meat, the less you will crave it, and if you can't resist the urge the most important thing is to realize that you slipped up one day out of the many thousands you will have ahead where you don't.
One of the things that I really think helped me when I transitioned to my current diet was the idea that I was trying to "reset" my palate. So for the most part I tried to quit animal products "cold turkey". Emphasis on tried; I failed quite a lot at first. But the having a goal of changing the way you live and focusing on that transition really helps make it into a reality.
Another important thing to have is support. Try to surround yourself with people who will support your decision to change as much as you can. Find others who are in your same situation and talk about the things you find difficult. You're not alone. Since the biggest problem seems to be the way you are thinking about it, having others to talk to is not just nice to have, it's vital!
Also yes, don't eat a meal of just leafs. Eat a variety of foods. For protein, pretty much every legume is packed with it, and there is certain to be a few you will like. I don't like lentils either, but I find things I like. You might want to try out Butler Soy Curls; they're made of whole soybeans and have a fairly meaty texture and they can be flavored however you want (though they also sell a pretty good chicken flavored seasoning I recommend trying). I wouldn't classify it as a meat substitute, but I think having the texture would help.
Fwiw, it's not necessarily useful to set up a strict "I must go 100% vegetarian now" requirement on yourself. The fact of the matter is that just eating less meat and experimenting with plant-based dishes is a good thing. This isn't an all-or-nothing thing and it's not a failure to keep eating some meat. imo focusing on 100% abstention from meat has harmed the greater cause of incentivizing people to eat less meat overall as a population.
Even if you want to eventually eat no meat, I highly recommend you start with just eating less meat (a little on weekends like you mentioned is not a bad strategy). Switching "cold turkey" isn't better than gradually decreasing your meat consumption, and you are not a failure or a bad person even if you never go 100% plant-based.
I agree with Akir and sparksbet.
Take it one day (or even one meal) at a time. It can be really overwhelming to think "I'm never going to eat meat again." It's all about how you frame it. Instead think "today, I'm going to eat vegetarian."
If you're worried about money, rice and beans go a long way. Combined, they're a complete protein (and have a good amount of iron), and there's so many different rice and bean recipes you can find online, from so many different cultures. They also keep practically forever. There's a reason pretty much every culture has a rice and beans recipe.
I know you say you don't feel like lentils are enough, but they're actually a great source of iron and protein, and also keep forever. Funny you mention cottage pie, because there are actually a bunch of recipes that make that with lentils, and it's quite delicious in my opinion!
I also think it really helps to try traditionally vegetarian meals from around the world instead of trying to replace traditionally meat focused dishes. Asia (especially India) and the Mediterranean have tons that you can try out. Try taking your friends to an Indian restaurant or Greek restaurant! Chana masala and falafel are amazing!
It can take a bit of up front research, but it's entirely doable, and there are plenty of vegans/vegetarians that would love to help you! Like Akir said, it's Veganuary, so maybe try going vegetarian for this month, and see how you do :). Good luck!
I just wanted to add that the whole “complete protein” thing is something of a myth. Yes, amino acids are combined together to create protein, but you don’t need to eat them together in a meal for it to happen. As long as you are eating a good variety of foods you will be fine.
I don’t personally like rice and beans (they are good by themselves but I don’t like them together), so I’ll also mention that there are other options for protein. Wheat and oats are also high in protein, so if you are concerned about your intake have oatmeal for breakfast and some bread with your lunch or dinner.
We often talk about individual contributions to climate change because it's the only thing we can directly impact. The FAA says that there is an average of 45,000 flights in the US per day - so every day I don't fly can I count that towards my good feelings? Even if we only count the places I could or would want to go, there's still probably hundreds of flights every day that I don't take. Do those offset any kids I might have? Also, since having kids means having less money meaning less availability for flights, can I subtract flights from the kids impact?
At the end of the day, me shutting off the lights and keeping the thermostat set appropriately do nothing to offset the existence of Nick Cannon, nor the existence of my neighbors who keep the heat at 75 in the winter time.
Not that I shouldn't do these things because they're not only the correct actions but also they're cost efficient.
But, the carbon emissions from a single apartment building or road construction work likely blow my yearly emissions out of the water even if I purchased coal and natural gas backed utilities.
I'm not advocating for a policy crackdown on the upper middle class, I'm sure that Elon's myriad of children will out-pollute a neighborhood of McMansions in their lifetimes. I will continue to advocate for environmentally friendly policy and responsibility at every level however. Yes, I'm the one who got into a debate about recycling at a summer party - with the hosts no less but they know to expect that from me - but the honest truth is that, once again, the 'rich' need to pay their fair share. And not just individual billionaires but the corporations as well.
The blow would be pretty soft for me as it is but I'd rather see corporate offices banned nationwide for their carbon footprint before we state mandate individual home thermostat controls and limit individuals flights per year.
What do Tildes people think about carbon offsets? I know there are a lot of offsets that are dubious or outright scams. But let's say you've found a good company (I give money to wren.co - they do safe disposal of refrigerants, rock weathering, etc.). There's still a concern that these are not scalable solutions. I know that there's no way there is enough gravel out there to convert acid rain into crystalized carbon, or enough irresponsibly released refrigerants (100,000x stronger greenhouse gases than CO2) to meaningfully compete with hydrocarbon combustion (let alone that reducing refrigerants does not reduce hydrocarbon combustion). So maybe the entire notion of a carbon offset is flawed. But also I don't need a scalable solution. Asking people to buy less, fly less, etc. doesn't appear to be a scalable solution. A solution that works for me is good enough for my needs.
Edit: Because it keeps being brought up, I am not talking about trees.
I think carbon offsets are mostly just accounting tricks that have one or more of these problems:
Carbon rations are the only path forward. I'd prefer to see a bottom-up approach, by allocating the carbon rations to individuals and making companies buy them from individuals. But a typical cap-and-trade system, implemented correctly, is the only way to actively freeze or reduce emissions.
I agree that tree-based offsets are dubious. But I specifically mentioned non-tree approaches because I feel they are less easily scrutinized.
I'd say the non-tree ones are also, at this time, dubious at best.
The money spent offsetting is probably better spent buying small-scale solar panels. Or buy small plots of land.
Some of the direct capture methods cost upwards of $1,500 a ton. Like, you can buy 7+ acres of land in Oklahoma for less than $15,000. Letting that grow wild will do far more.
Yes but direct capture being expensive doesn't mean alternative (cheaper) approaches aren't viable.
Also I have to wonder if direct capture makes sense compared to adding solar power to the grid.
Or even just buying direct use solar. Buy one of those small power stations and 200W of solar panels to run stuff off-grid.
I'd love to do that once I own a home. I could charge my car from it, eventually it would pay for itself, and it will add to the home value. It's a clear win for those that can afford the up-front cost.
Here's one example that you could use while renting, presuming you have enough space to use the panel outside:
Jackery
I’ve seen that before. It looks awesome - but no I don’t have any space for it.
I would tend to see carbon offsets as an inefficiency in the market and our climate goals.
Instead of addressing the cause of a problem (through boycott, technology, policy), an offset increases costs to consumers to reach the same (theoretical) end-goal of not increasing their carbon footprint. In other words it is a roundabout way of solving an environmental problem which could be solved in other, more direct ways.
In practice, I am not aware of many carbon offset schemes whose impacts are meaningful and whose operations are legitimate. For instance, any scheme that relies on protecting land that may be redeveloped in the future is hard to quantify and, from what research I have done, generally a scam. Offsets that involve complex technological processes like carbon capture, refrigerant solidification, etc. are going to be particularly expensive and I question whether it's a good use of our time/money to support them instead of not polluting in the first place.
Some of the river cleanup projects come to mind. There are lots of non-profits working to create machines to clean up polluted navigable waterways (in theory, you could pay them to "offset" your own plastic pollution), but these machines only capture visible trash and therefore miss the vast majority of it (which sinks); they also do not stop garbage from accumulating in smaller, non-navigable waterways, nor from polluting groundwater/soils. But they continue to get funding because people are fooled by motivational videos of a river surface being cleaned, and bored by scientific measurements of water cleanliness in a graph. Proper solutions would involve working with local governments to implement better waste management systems; building some infrastructure to support trash collection vehicles; and banning the use of non-biodegradable materials. In this case, the "offset" option is just a late, messy, and incomplete solution.
I have personally decided that not flying (for example) is preferable to flying and paying for a carbon offset because 1) I don't believe that the flight offset companies are legitimate or that their offsets actually work, and 2) even with a theoretically useful offset, there are almost certainly externalities to my pollution that I'm not considering, which the offset does not/cannot resolve. For example, the localized negative health impacts of airplane emissions: the burning of jet fuel causes premature death from cancer and other medical conditions, and an offset for a flight can't bring someone back to life.
In theory I guess you could still fly and dedicate offset money toward known, good political organizations that are dedicated to solving these problems at an institutional/political level, but that does not immediately eliminate your emissions and does not guarantee a solution. So the answer I would give is probably:
The key consideration that I seem to be settling on for the latter point is that our decisions about discretionary spending must coincide with a philosophical shift away from what we presently consider socially luxurious or desirable and to some extent toward what we might consider relatively non-dazzling, local, slow, or quotidian. When I decided to take a 17-hour train from Philadelphia to Toronto last month (instead of a 2-hour plane), I did so with the recognition that this was an opportunity for me to see more of the countryside; to visit friends along the way; to give myself time to think and be introspective; and to just slow down my life for a moment. I was able to work during the journey, which made it practical, but the interior feeling I had toward the trip was that it was an adventure and that I wasn't rushing to get anywhere. If I hadn't made that mindset shift, I would have been frustrated the whole time and my "solution" would have felt impractical. But by remaining open to the possibility that I could have fun in a way I wouldn't normally expect, I managed to have a wonderful trip.
This nonprofit does some great analysis on the widespread issues with carbon offsets. I don't know of any that are the "real deal" with a high degree of individual confidence:
https://carbonplan.org/research/offset-disclosure-needs
Only slightly related speculation, GiveWell used to set the donation price of saving a human life at around $3k, and now it's around $5k. I don't think it's because organizations got worse at what they do or all the "low hanging fruit" lives got saved already. Doing good reliably at scale with high confidence is hard and usually costs a lot. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
This is what baffles me most.
It's been proven to be a lie, most if not all companies involved in carbon offset are either fake or straight up tell you that they can't really ensure you're making an impact. How is this even being remotely entertained? I genuinely cannot see the moral argument for doing something that never mattered and won't matter so long as there aren't sweeping governmental crackdowns on fossil fuels. When you look at the numbers it just doesn't matter right now what most of us do.
When the billionaires stop flying hundreds of times a year in their private jets I'll stop taking my once every two years vacation, thanks.
Carbon offsets are a farce. There’s a Last Week Tonight about it. There was also an article from the guy that said play more trees that could be summarized as, “that’s not remotely close to what I meant by that.”
They're bullshit and we lack the means of reasonable enforcement to make them anything else (and probably should as actually reliably tracking that it's being done is a nearly impossible task).
Carbon offsets are an imperfect but good solution. Ultimately humanity needs to reduce emissions, no question. But carbon offsets are a good way of leveraging our current system (capitalism) for good.
In their current implementation, they're often an awful solution. The same thing gets sold to multiple people, and even worse, a carbon offset is really just "I will not do xyz if you pay me." It does not mean the forest is protected, just that the people you're paying aren't going to burn it down themselves.
If that's the case, it's just false advertising.
Good luck bringing a lawsuit against some company in Sierra Leone that technically owns the land that some village lives on where none of the residents have ever heard of carbon offset credits.
What about offsets that aren't tree-based? I think there's also a clear bimodal market - with one really cheap set of offsets that will tell you you've covered your footprint for dollars a month, and others that will be $50/month or more.
Mirror, for those hit by the paywall:
https://archive.is/ReVDN