Reading this from Eastern Europe the "you" in:
"You destroy our lands"
"that common enemy is you"
"We call on you to stop what you are doing"
"When your money comes into our communities"
etc sound very wrong. I imagine it also sounds weird for people in America who have no connections with what happens in the Amazon.
I am always a bit baffled when, after decades of living in a globalized economy, people who are part of advanced economies claim they have no connections to events, driven by economics, occurring on the other side of the world.
If you eat meat regularly, you are connected to Brazil's deforestation, either for cattle or for soy feed. If you have invested in the stock market, you are most likely connected to the international flow of capital, which is also driving said deforestation.
Even if you are not doing any of that, you are still connected because you live in the middle of a society that reaps economic and material benefits from the structures that ultimately incentivise said deforestation.
That reasoning is problematic, as it amounts to reviving the concept of "original sin" to apply it to anyone who happens to live in a developed economy. By throwing blanket statements such as that, it is discouraging even the small changes that may help (for we are all "sinners" regardless), and diffuses responsibility from those who truly could make an impact.
I believe a lot of hand-wringing on these topics comes from positions of economic privilege, usually in the richer end of developed economies. I see little awareness of the lifestyles of individuals of mid-to-lower socio-economic status in the developed world, how little their share of impact is compared to those of the middle and upper class, and how little room of manoeuvrer they may have to make a difference even if they had the time and energy to.
Your comment reads like you are projecting your own guilt onto the parent.
They said that you are "connected" to deforestation if you are living in a developed economy - you interpreted that as implying that all people in developed economies are sinning. They didn't say that everyone is guilty, just connected.
They then made two conditions predicated on having high socio-economic status (eating meat regularly, investing in a stock market) and stated that these do imply some level of guilt. I think that does account for the difference in lifestyle between income levels in the global economy and read it as implying that those with the most impactful lifestyle should make the most reductions - agreeing with your statement amount relative room for maneuvering.
EDIT: You said "I believe a lot of hand-wringing on these topics comes from positions of economic privilege" - many agree. Many see environmentalism as a "bourgeois playground" to its detriment. You might find this interesting: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n11/naomi-klein/let-them-drown
> They said that you are "connected" to deforestation if you are living in a developed economy - you interpreted that as implying that all people in developed economies are sinning. They didn't say that everyone is guilty, just connected.
He replied to "if you eat meat regularly, you are connected to Brazil's deforestation, either for cattle or for soy feed. If you have invested in the stock market, you are most likely connected to the international flow of capital, which is also driving said deforestation.". Does this not assume "guilty"? There is the implication in that message that if you are in any way connected to the destruction of X (deforestation in this particular example), then you are at fault (i.e. guilty).
Then the person he replied to went on to "even if you are not doing any of that, you are still connected because you live in the middle of a society that reaps economic and material benefits from the structures that ultimately incentivise said deforestation.", i.e. "everyone who is connected is still at fault".
I read "being "connected" to deforestation" as contributing to it. Is this incorrect? Are we just arguing over words? I believe that in this context "connected" really just means "contributing" (to deforestation, which I assume is "bad").
Now my question is, how do we become unconnected? The part where he says even if we do not eat meat and so forth, we are still contributing to these problems. What is the solution, then? Is there a solution? Am I supposed to live anywhere but not "in the middle of a society that reaps economic and material benefits"? What if everyone did this, would it not lead to the same problem? I do not think that being fatalistic is of any help here.
Stop thinking in terms of individual guilt and how to avoid it, think in terms of collective responsibility. What do we need to do to solve the problem, not what do I need to do to exculpate myself from it.
The only difference is that my behavior is under my control, while what others do is outside of my control (yes, I can have an influence on people, or I could use force, etc. but this really is besides the point).
My question still stands. As an individual, what can I do to stop contributing to say, deforestation? How do I become "unconnected"? If you want, you could also answer this question not in terms of the individual, but the group of people (collective). What should I do? What should we do? These two questions are different, and they may have two entirely different answers. If not, then what does it matter if I asked it from the POV of the individual? Feel free to answer both of them if you wish.
For the sake of the discussion, please do not assume individual guilt. I did not ask what to do to exculpate myself from it.
> Now my question is, how do we become unconnected?
That's easy. The people of the Amazon pass some laws that protect their land.
America has this form of protection vs exploitation. Brazil needs to get with the program. Its not an American problem - I eat corn fed beef and pork from Kansas and Nebraska.
This does not answer my question sufficiently, because it does not address this (posted by propater): "even if you are not doing any of that, you are still connected because you live in the middle of a society that reaps economic and material benefits from the structures that ultimately incentivise said deforestation.".
According to the aforementioned quote, you may eat corn fed beef and pork from Kansas and Nebraska, but you still "live in the middle of a society that reaps economic and material benefits from the structures that ultimately incentivise said deforestation.". I am curious what propater had in mind as a solution to this.
The problem with his question is it assumes the society that is consuming is the one that is to blame for the deforestation. If America quit incentivising through policies, China or some other country would just pick up the supply.
The supply needs to be addressed at the source. That's the only correct solution.
By buying meat in a global market, you are creating demand for meat, which affects all markets.
The only way the purchase of a good can fail to move global markets is to be wholly disconnected from the market. This means you would have to live in a country that neither imports nor exports meat at all.
> This means you would have to live in a country that neither imports nor exports meat at all.
This does not address the issue which is the high demand for meat. This "solution" seems to be forced diet change. I believe it would create a black market for meat instead.
Then by your logic, you are contributing to global warming by just breathing carbon dioxide out, and ought to disconnect yourself from the global atmosphere.
> They didn't say that everyone is guilty, just connected.
That doesn't say anything though. Everybody is connected to everything. It may be direct, indirect, with one or two or twenty hops, but everybody is connected. You can make an argument that the last few uncontacted tribes aren't connected, but everybody else is, especially by the "you're living in a society that reaps the benefits" idea, because pretty much everybody does that to varying degrees (but still connected) with technology, medical advances etc.
>That reasoning is problematic, as it amounts to reviving the concept of "original sin" to apply it to anyone who happens to live in a developed economy.
Well, the original sin never really went away.
People are inherently flawed creatures (which is what the original sin myth meant to capture).
And "anyone who happens to live in a developed economy" contributes to today's climate problem, whether they want/link it or not. They don't even have to be on the top of the hierarchy (although there's probably a powerlaw/pareto distribution of harm).
I guess I am your boogeyman: I eat meat regularly, have investments, grew up and live in the middle of a western society.
By default I'm inclined to stop doing exactly zero of those, and by saying "you're at fault no matter what you do or don't do" you've just removed the sole remaining incentive for me to stop doing it: being able to say "it's not my fault". If I'm to blame no matter what I do, I might as well enjoy it and let the other suckers do the sacrifices for no gain that I'm unwilling to make, completely guilt-free.
This is insane... I react to a post saying "I am not connected to what happens in Brazil" by saying, yes, as a matter of fact, you are very likely to be connected to those events and people jump the gun and talk about sin, guilt and boogeymen...
We have a problem. We have put in place structures, institutions and incentives that are failing us and jeopardizing our capacity to protect our values in the future.
I agree that the individual has a limited impact on what is happening and collective action is needed.
And yet, collective action is not going to happen if every individual is defecting or just stays ignorant of their place in those systems.
And yet, the problem is not going to disappear if no one is implementing at least some changes to one's lifestyle.
You say the only motivation for you is to be able to say "it is not my fault" but reality does not care whose fault it is...
The problem needs to be addressed by those citizens of the country where the deforestation is happening. If they are willing to allow it to happen to their natural resource, why would I assume in arrogance that I have a right to tell them they're wrong and then blame everyone else for what that country is doing?
Lifestyle changes won't change deforestation. The people of Brazil are the ones you need to target your message to.
There are many tools that the international community has to influence domestic policy for a given country. We use economic sanctions all the time.
If the international community decided to stop buying beef and soy from Brazil, the demand would evaporate and it wouldn't be economical for them to continue their practices.
Hello boogeyman - then let me be your counter example.
I eat meat regularly. But it is not that much - compared to the national average. And I know exactly that neither the cattle, nor their food came from anywhere near the Amazonas.
I only eat meat when I know the producer and how they produced it. In my case it is a local farm that is a closed system: They grow what they need to feed their cattle - and use the manure to grow their crops (and so on). And the cattle is treated by very high standards regarding organic meat production in Germany (Bioland standard).
In the winter months I do eat about 50 - 110 grams of meat per week on average. Depending on if I do have a bigger piece of meat on the weekends or "just" some ham (and the like) during the week.
In the summer month my garden produces so much vegetables that I am nearly fully vegetarian - my current meat average for the summer is below 10 grams per week.
Disclaimer: Yes, I have butter at home to cook with. Yes I use dairy, also from said local farm.
But - and that is the interesting aspect for me: A lot more people could do this.
The produced meat is of such a quality, that I can have the ham cut so thin, I could read the newspaper through it - it still tastes way more intensive than the stuff from the big box store.
So per slice of bread - my ham is costing me less than before the switch.I am actually saving money by having a great taste and also supporting local farmers that act in sync with the environment.
Your German organic farm is most likely heavily subsidised (as all EU farms are) so it does in fact take advantage of same system which profits off the actions in Amazon. So you are just one more step removed.
Tbh it sounds like you're guilt-free either way. You're saying that it doesn't matter at all to you when your actions harm others. You would like to be able to say they didn't, but don't feel guilty if they do. Also fwiw as many people who have tried it will tell you, there is a gain in acting selflessly, and it's better than the gain from acting selfishly. The idea that altruism is for suckers is actually harmful to your self-interest.
Human behavior is economic behavior, which is a fancy way of saying "people do things because there's a perceived benefit to doing so". Altruistic behavior usually carries at least a social benefit, besides the "I did good" feeling which is also a personal benefit. Blaming someone for something outside their control and saying that they're always to blame no matter what nullifies both of those incentives: you stop reaping their rewards.
This is a good example: if you're still shamed despite altruistic behavior, why would I possibly keep making sacrifices that I gain nothing for (including feeling good about having done them) when I can go back to my VASTLY more rewarding hedonistic lifestyle?
If you put someone in a situation where they're supposed to feel shame no matter what, they're going to become 100% insensitive to it in record time. In other words: yes, I am guilt-free because there's no other possible state under this framework of inescapable blame.
I think you are too focused on the individual. Reducing your personal meat consumption, your personal emissions and so on is nice and all but it is not going to be enough. You are also embedded in a number of social structures and institutions and those will have to change too if we want to be able to claim to be "guilt free" and those changes require personal involvement.
Individuals tend to focus on the individual. Trying to change everyone's routine is like trying to push water upstream. You'd be better served by targeting a message to the Brazilian people that they should protect their natural resource.
The problem with a post like this is that it tries to guilt the individual and their consumerism - but individuals cannot have enough of an impact. It's up to our chosen representatives to e.g. ban the import of soy and beef from Brazil. The net effect to the individual will be that beef is either more expensive or simply no longer available - and that's fine, there's plenty of local and renewable alternatives.
No, focusing on and guilting the individual is, pardon my conspiracy theory language, what They want. They want you to buy more expensive organic produce, They want you to buy a new lower-emissions car at a premium price, and most importantly, They want to blame you for what They are doing - They don't care about the amazon in particular, They care about profits, and if you're too distracted with changing your own lifestyle, They can push forward with their own policies to make more money.
If a whole country stops e.g. consuming soy from Brazil, there's going to be ten others that will buy it anyway because profits or deals will almost always beat morals.
And even if a country bans importing soy from Brazil, there's plenty of produce laundering going on - China will move their products to e.g. Malaysia and rebrand it as "made in Malaysia" to avoid trade tariffs or quotas.
And it doesn't stop there. A country can claim to recycle plastic in a renewable fashion for example, but what they aren't aware of - or turn a blind eye to - is that the recycling company they trust just bales up the plastics and ships it off to Asia, where they just burn it or chuck it in landfills. As soon as it crosses the border, it's no longer their problem. (Trash exports should be banned worldwide)
I'm curious how you think that a country would ever stop consuming soy from Brazil unless there was a strong desire from the populace of the country to stop doing so.
Markets allow you to vote every time you buy something on what your values are. Every time you choose to buy something from, say Brazil, that will be read as an endorsement of Brazil whenever someone looks at a balance sheet of imports and decides whether they can afford to instigate some kind of ban.
I think that people making personal choices about their own consumption is a very reasonable way for them to signal their desires and so the changes you say (and I agree) are required can be worked towards through grassroots community (e.g. asking people to individually boycott products).
> Every time you choose to buy something from, say Brazil, that will be read as an endorsement of Brazil
But that decision was not made by the consumer. It was made by the executives of Burger King who decided to buy beef from a factory farm that has decided to buy soy from Brazil which has farmers that have decided to exploit the rain forest because the government has decided to not do anything against it.
I don't think consumer choices are good for this at all. Society has to have structure where you can buy the things you need without doing a background check on everything. I don't want to research that each and every piece of electronics I buy is free of conflict minerals and slavery!
It's a job for our chosen representatives. We've given the mandate, it's up to them to create market frameworks with this through policies and trade agreements. And it works: EU doesn't import hormone laden meat, and could similarly decide on environmental requirements too.
Policy can be affected by voting, public discourse, and demonstrations, whereas active consumer choice would be very poor driver for that.
I disagree. All that these types of articles do is attempt to shift responsibility and blame from the people actually capable of doing something about it to a vague and distant "bad actor" elsewhere: the irresponsible consumer, who is somehow expected to deconvolute foreign supply chains, as well as stay abreast of the environmental happenings in the entire world.
The truth is, whether we like it or not, the only people capable of effectively tracking and addressing the responsibility of Brazil's economy and ecology are people living in Brazil.
And this isn't some excuse I've invented for myself. I buy 100% of my groceries from a farmers co-op where everything is sourced within about 500 miles or so. But the fact of the matter is, Brazil needs to do a better job and address their own problems, regardless of the world economy, and this is just an attempt to shift blame. Every single environmental regulation that has been passed, in any country in the world, 1st or 3rd world, occurred at financial loss to that country. Brazil is no exception.
> Even if you are not doing any of that, you are still connected because you live in the middle of a society that reaps economic and material benefits from the structures that ultimately incentivize said deforestation.
Then they are also responsible because their government profit from it?
Everything is connected... the fact that it's connected doesn't means anything.
Your comment won't show anything, it won't change anything, it won't help anyone. You are simply making blanket accusation, like if even someone could simply no longer depends on the economy... that's so absurd.
Except “their government”, in this case, is actively fighting against them. The whole point is that Bolsonaro has declared open season on the Amazon and the tribes living in it.
> Except “their government”, in this case, is actively fighting against them.
It's not because the government is working against them over the Amazon that they don't profit at all from it. All you need is using the government resource once to say that they did profit from it.
Eastern Europe is way past the point of consuming ressources that can be renewed. Europe as a whole is also currently signing a trade deal with south american countries, and eastern europe is going to benefit from it.
From an eastern european point of view, it is easy to focus on western europe and see oneself as disadvantaged, but if you count ressources consumed the picture is very different.
Eastern Europe has similar problems , in Romania, huge areas have been deforestet by german or austrian bussinesses with no consideration whatsoever. A big part of the problem is local corruption and a blind eye to all that comes from the west
The tragic thing is that there's this idea you have to live life as an austere pioneer hippie to address this. You really don't.
A world of mostly-vegetarian people living in modern, timber (for carbon sequestration) flats in mixed-use environments, using renewable electricity to power their heat pumps and AC, traveling primarily via bike, walking, and public transport, and owning less disposable crap would go a long, long way.
You could hire an EV for a weekend excursion or take a slow, internet-connected ship to travel for an overseas holiday.
I don't think living that way sounds especially terrible, to be honest.
Also, make 3 months' vacation the minimum. Turn off Slack at 5 PM. We have so much material crap it's hard to fathom, but many people are horribly starved of time. If I had more time I know I'd cook more and work in the garden more instead of ordering takeaway.
A huge amount of human endeavour is spent helping a relatively few rich people suck a bit more of the Earth before it implodes.
This is a lovely idea, but totally ignorant of global demography[1]. By 2100 there will be >3 billion people living in India and central Africa. Centra Africa in particular will show some of the greatest population growth. There will be another 300 million people living in the Congo, which is one fifth the size of the USA and a nightmarish war zone most of the time. There will be a stunning 600 million more people in Nigeria, which is even smaller. The irony is that these people will be mostly-vegetarian, use renewable energy and travel by bike, just not by their own choosing. Sheer numbers however will ensure global consumption continues to increase rapidly.
I don't know what the solution is, but the lifestyle choices of the Western world will become increasingly irrelevant.
You have totally misconstrued what I am saying. I am NOT blaming anyone. My point is that it is a fantasy to think that wealthy westerners can significantly reduce global consumption by choosing to live a certain way.
As a thought experiment, how much of a difference would it have made to the world today if the British empire decreed in 1700 that all its subjects adopt more eco friendly lifestyles?
No, you have indeed constructed a strawman argument based on prejudiced fears of third world 'population explosion' and poor data. Let me put aside the fact that third world peoples are not sitting around waiting for such explosions to occur and are proactive about and invested in our own resources and prospects. Let me put aside the comparison of the poorest, say, Indians (the strata where such an 'explosion' is likeliest to occur due to a host of social reasons) vs the richest, say, Americans. Even putting all that aside: the per capita consumption of an American is 10 times that of an Indian based on latest data [1].
And this does not at all take into account that so, so much of American consumer goods are manufactured abroad and does not factor into this calculation.
Really, please interrogate the kind of prejudice that leads to projections of the kind you have accepted, and the kind of prejudice that then uses it as a rationalization for not course-correcting own behavior.
You completely missed the parent point. American consumption might be 10 times the Indian per capita, but there are way more Indians than Americans, and soon there will be more Congolese and Nigerians and other Africans, and while American consumption is going down, African and Asian consumption is going up. If both USA and EU disappeared today, it would only reduce global emissions by 25%, and that fraction will go down as African and Asian emissions grow. If USA cut its emissions in half, it would reduce global emissions by something like 7%. So yes, we can try to reduce our consumption, but it won't really change a thing in grand scheme of things.
What you propose is in fact prejudicial by ascribing primary importance to American agency, and then furthermore by assuming other cultures have the same priorities. This is the same mistake as hoping China would turn into 1 billion big mac eating coke drinking bona fide neoliberals.
Also a demographic trend is not political statement or a value judgement, it is a curve fitting exercise. I never used the word explosion, that’s your word. I am not being alarmist. The long term trend is for population growth to slow if you look at the data.
"I'm not going to fix this crash, because next year, there might be a similar bug, and I'm not sure how to fix that yet."
I hope you don't code that way.
Not even that far. Primarily vegetarian diets and less driving would make mountains of difference for the world. As someone who is fairly new to adulthood I dont really see why we work so much - there just doesn't seem like there is much to "get". There should ve a greater focus on tending our environments around us, spending money on experiences and creating art (or even just having a hobby).
Next to everyone doing things - we could also add some regulation for extremely polluting industries/companies.
Like I remember that one European Cruise company's ships produced the same amount of CO2-equivalent than all European Cars combined last year (or was it the year before that?).
All friggin EU cars? This is what I would call a lever.
And for what? For the sake of one company making money by providing a kind of recreation that could at least be discussed as it provides recreation - but recreation could be provided in a more environmental friendly way as well.
Just regulating this one industry would go a long way. And there are probably some other low hanging fruits still undiscussed.
Sadly the whole discussion seems to revolve around what the individual should/could do. Often it seems to me especially to mask the fact that regulating some industries would be a faster and imho more efficient way.
> Like I remember that one European Cruise company's ships produced the same amount of CO2-equivalent than all European Cars combined last year
Seems like BS. Such propositions are sometimes claimed, but they are for SO2/NOx/particulates emissions, not for CO2. Then they got misinterpreted as CO2 emissions.
Regulation is crucial. I worry my original comment was "you should do this". Really it's "we need to build society such that doing this is the easiest option"
When polled, people in Copenhagen don't say they ride a bike to save the planet, it's just the easiest way to get around. The city is also absolutely heavenly to walk in.
Yes, but like parent said, we're starved of time. I would love to bike or take public transport to work but that's over an hour of commute vs 20-25 minutes by car and I don't live in the middle of nowhere but in a medium sized European city.
The problem is the employers who move to the sticks, far away from the cties, where office space is cheapest and assume their workers can afford cars and should commute. Not only that but they actively fight against remote work saying it destroys team effort.
One huge step in the right direction would be governments incentivizing employers to accept remote work for office workers who's jobs are 100% digital. This way we won't all be clogging the streets at rush hour making commutes easier on those who have to drive.
Heck, one friend of mine broke his leg skiing and his company, instead of allowing him to work remote, prefered to pay his taxi fares to and from work for 2 months saying WE DON'T DO REMOTE!. And the company is a top EV supplier that loves to boast how green they're making the world. You can't make this stuff up.
I've got the opposite problem - office in the city centre, home out in the country where I can afford to live.
So, 30 minutes from my house to the city outskirts, 30 more from there to the office, whether it's by car, bus, or a combination. Then, the same in reverse in the evening. These times can be higher and are often unpredictable.
Working from home would be easy and save me a lot of time, but it's very much frowned upon, as you say.
In london commuter trains are over crowded and they spend millions (billions?) every year on upgrading and it costs me about £900 a month to use these trains.
If governments incentivised companies to encourage remote work, this money would be unnecessary as many people wouldn't commute any more - saving money for everyone, saving the environment and allowing people to have a home life and see their kids/partner etc.
Remote working is a massive win-win for everyone, I wish the government realised this.
How is your monthly cost that high? Based on some quick googling, the daily cap for zone 1-6 travel tops out under 20 pounds which would come to 600 pounds for 30 days assuming you travel every day. The 7 day caps top out around 60 pounds which would be 240 pounds for 4 weeks of commuting. You could probably get a small, fuel-efficient car and the total costs of ownership would save you money over what you claim to pay currently.
That would have worked in the days of a job for life but now, once you have a family, you can't keep moving every 2-3 years where your next job will be.
> Primarily vegetarian diets and less driving would make mountains of difference for the world.
No, it wouldn't.
Look at pandas, they are bears (omnivores, like us), living on a primarily vegetarian diet.
They sleep 16 hours a day and when they are awake they eat, because a vegetarian diet is not really energy efficient.
If we are talking about a true vegetarian diet, environmental friendly.
if we are talking about "I can be mostly vegetarian because I buy integrators from the drugstore" that's the same of eating fried chicken intensively farmed 4 times a day, in large quantities, for the environment.
What most western cultures should aim for is eating raw food, completely avoid processed food and, most of all, EAT LESS.
Assuming you genuinely are trying to make a good faith argument (which I strongly feel you're not):
Pandas eat bamboo. Bamboo has practically no nutritional value so, no, Pandas are not very energetic.
None of the vegetarians I know need 16 hours of sleep per day, and I suspect that's because
- They are not bears, and so do not have the metabolism of bears.
- They don't subsist entirely off bamboo, or one foodstuff in general.
Besides, the a primarily vegetarian diet doesn't necessarily mean no meat, it just means realising that meat production is so absurdly energy, land, and water intensive that eating it on a daily basis is simply unsustainable.
The amount of energy that goes into cooking hour meat is negligible compared to the amount of energy needed to produce it in the first place.
> Besides, the a primarily vegetarian diet doesn't necessarily mean no meat
Just eat less.
If you eat less, you automatically balance your diet.
You could live of three pieces of beef junkie a day for a long time, that's not so bad for environment as well.
They made you believe that "meat production is so absurdly energy, land, and water intensive" but that's because our information system is mainly based on the US lifestyle, the land of freedom (to destroy other people lives).
I grew up in places like this, where meat production is almost a natural process.
Look at Indians instead. We eat a primarily vegetarian diet. I assure you we sleep nowhere close to 16 hours a day. We also work in the sweltering heat etc, which our diet seems more than capable of taking on.
Yeah, eating raw food is great, and eating less is also great. "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants" and all that, but Indian cuisine stands as an example that eating vegetarian food need not be a bland affair.
i would against eating all food raw. The following is a comment i made in another thread:
Raw fruit is fine, veggies not really. Many contain substances that should deter animals from eating them. The digestibility of veggies usually increases when they are cooked.
> Primarily vegetarian diets and less driving would make mountains of difference for the world.
Changing diets yes. Changing driving habits, not really. Personal use of passenger vehicles accounts for a tiny fraction of transportation related CO2 emissions. The overwhelming majority comes from cargo ships and associated logistics.
A typical cargo ship will burn about 30 liters of bunker fuel (far more polluting than diesel) to travel 1 meter. 15 typical cargo ships emit as much CO2 as all cars on the planet combined. There are about 15,000 such ships operating today, with a further 30,000 slightly smaller ones. A single cruise ship company like Carnival Cruise emits more CO2 than all of Europe's car's combined.
Even if the entire world converted to zero-emission EVs overnight, it wouldn't make a meaningful dent in these numbers.
The inconvenient truth is that in order to make a serious dent on transportation related CO2 emissions, the entire developed world would have to give up its lavish lifestyle of internationally shipped products and foods. Sadly a harder sell then 'drive an EV to save the planet lol', so our governments continue to focus on inconsequential but easily attainable measures. And that is nothing to say of the fact that cutting down international shipping is at odds with free market capitalism that's driving our civilisation.
Fun fact: bulk carrier shipping is so cheap that in Australia, locally caught fish are shipped to China for processing and freezing and then shipped back here for retail. The pollution associated with this alone is more than the sum pollution of all Australian cars.
Ships individually use vast amounts of fuel, but are small in overall number (there are about 60-80,000 registered cargo vessels), and achieve efficiencies up up to ton-miles per gallon of fuel, as compared with 500 ton-miles/gallon for rail, 100 for trucks, and less than 10 for cars. Moving cargo by water is the most efficient option that exists by a long shot.
Where cargo ships have bad emissions is in particulates and sulfur, based on what fuels are burnt and how. CO2 emissions, however, are quite low relative to any other transport mode.
For those for whom the suspence has been simply unbearable: Marine cargo shipping achieves cargo fuel efficiency rates of as much as 1,000 ton-miles/gallon.
For passenger cars, the low mileage expressed in ton miles is largely due to the very low cargo utilisation. I'm using a single passenger of 150# here. You can increase net efficiency somewhat, but even, say, four 250# passengers and some luggage makes for only a modest improvement, as the starting point is single-digit tmpg.
>Personal use of passenger vehicles accounts for a tiny fraction of transportation related CO2 emissions. The overwhelming majority comes from cargo ships and associated logistics.
while this might represent a small fraction of the global total emissions, the CO2 (and other harmful particles) produced by cars is much more detrimental to human health since it will be concentrated in the cities and near humans live.
The cargo emissions should be less harmful as there are not many people living in the oceans and algae effect should also be considered as it produces most of the oxygen we breath.
This is correct. If we ignore catastrophic climate change, the next worst thing is being directly exposed to personal transportation pollutants - amongst which CO2 is pretty benign but there is far worse stuff.
Living next to major roads or highways significantly reduces life expectancy.
Particulates and SO4 are short-term acute pollutants. They are problems, but the problem is localised (shipping routes, ports), and settles out fairly quickly.
The scope is significant -- you can see shipping lanes simply by the SOx emissions, as the Nullschool Weather Visualiser shows, here, traffic between Indonesia and the Gulf of Aden is clearly visible:
But: CO2 remains resident in the atmosphere for centuries or millennia, affecting long-term climate. It's a vastly larger problem.
Moreover, particulates and SOx can be mitigated with improved fuel quality and stack scrubbers, at relatively low (though nonzero) costs. CO2 emissions are intrinsic to hydrocarbon combustion. We either have to stop burning anything with carbon in it, or switch to biomass (present-cycle carbon) rather than fossil-fuel based sources. Which is its own problem, though potentially tractable for shipping using various biomass wastestream sources.
But at this point we need to prioritize, and climate change is arguably becoming more important than direct exposure to personal transportation pollutants.
Do you have a source for your claim? Here[1] is a link I found breaking down the fuel consumption by sector. Seems Motor Oil vastly outscores Residue Fuel Oil, which I believe is what tankers use. I may be wrong, though, and would be interested in being corrected.
My actual job is in the shipping route optimisation space. Sub-percentile improvements in fuel consumption for a single route result in hundreds of millions of dollars of fuel savings. Of a fuel that's both cheaper and far more polluting than diesel. It's pretty obvious that shipping fuel consumption and associated emissions eclipse personal transportation.
Your sources are in error. Particularly the first, which I believe is confusing particulate and/or sulfer emissions with CO2 emissions. It cites several further news articles, not a primary source.
The inews source compounds this error, and is cited by the Medium blog.
The newatlas source confirms this: "The low grade bunker fuel used by the worlds 90,000 cargo ships contains up to 2,000 times the amount of sulfur compared to diesel fuel used in automobiles." The measurement is sulfur emissions and NOT CO2.
FT likewise discusses sulfur and not CO2: "Sulphur dioxide emissions from cars was 3.2m kt versus 62m kt from cruise ships, with Carnival accounting for half that, the study found."
The AFR link discusses seafood and not shipping emissions.
True, shipping is absolutely filthy. This was a big part of why I mentioned "less disposable crap".
Though how much is ghg and how much a matter of particulates? Seems most analysis shows the drive to the grocery store emits more carbon than shipping the fish.
Also fish is generally a disaster, but that's a separate topic. (Eating carnivores full of plastic dumping concentrated waste and disease in to the ocean is suboptimal)
>The tragic thing is that there's this idea you have to live life as an austere pioneer hippie to address this. You really don't. A world of mostly-vegetarian people living in modern, timber (for carbon sequestration) flats in mixed-use environments, using renewable electricity to power their heat pumps and AC, traveling primarily via bike, walking, and public transport, and owning less disposable crap would go a long, long way.
That means a reduction of production and consumer spending by 50% or more, and the end of the "no limits progress" which is beyond the pale for modern business interests, and the 10% well off part of the population that does their biding (executives, intellectuals, politicians, media people, and so on).
It's better in today's prevalent culture that the world end in flames (perhaps while waiting for some magic technology to fix it all) than go back on consumption...
I think it is a dire logical error to equate capitalism, which arises naturally out of fair and mutually consensual dealing between humans, and the neverending consumer consumption drive epitomized by the global west.
They are not the same thing, and the former does not necessitate the latter. Same goes for all the other ills of our society that people misguidedly invoke under the “capitalism” umbrella, like intellectual property, patents, and regulatory capture.
Military-industrial complex-flavored capitalism is the problem. It sounds like that is part of the problem described in the article, too.
>I think it is a dire logical error to equate capitalism, which arises naturally out of fair and mutually consensual dealing between humans, and the neverending consumer consumption drive epitomized by the global west.
I don't think "really existing capitalism" "arises naturally out of fair and mutually consensual dealing between humans".
We should not confuse trade (which always existed) with capitalism, which is a relatively recent development (circa 14-16 century and spread from then), tied to banking, stock market, industrialization, the "protestant work ethic" and so on.
For millennia civilizations had trade but no capitalism.
Plus histories of early capitalism mention how rural populations had to be pushed, by government decrees, unfavorable ad-hoc laws, manufactured famines, and so on to go and become workers.
And of course, modern capitalism, with rampant commercialization of all fields of life, advertising, the stock market, etc is another thing entirely.
They are exactly the same thing. Capitalism requires endless growth, which requires endless production and consumption. Those in turn require imperialism, to have a supply of desperate workers and consumers. Imperialism is not always overtly military, but it is always a threat of violence in order to assert power.
Read Lenin's "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism", he makes it very easy to understand.
This is incorrect. Just the particular way some countries have their capitalist systems and priorities set up requires endless growth.
But even then, if you'd just allow for bankruptcy to weed out the worst performers, forfeiting outstanding debt, you can do without it. Another way is compensating for it with inflation. But instead debt tends to be funneled upwards until governments are left holding the bag with no other option but to grow their way out of it for fear of causing inflation.
Well, you kind of have to - otherwise people starve.
There's lot of excesses and pointless elements to economies worldwide, but ultimately, at minimum they have to grow to compensate for population growth, or people will starve. And they really have to grow more than that, because a lot of people live in bad conditions and they justifiably want to earn their way out of it.
Growth is currently needed in the world we live in; trying to eliminate it wholesale is self-destructing. But growth doesn't have to be as environmentally taxing as it is today, and we should strive to fix that.
>There's lot of excesses and pointless elements to economies worldwide, but ultimately, at minimum they have to grow to compensate for population growth, or people will starve.
Several issues with this.
There's no requirement that we need to have "population growth" above replacement rate. In fact we should probably have below for a while - and in many western countries we do. In which case "we need growth because we need to cater for the population growth" is a moot point.
Second, "a lot of people living in bad conditions" does not necessarily means growth is required to get them out. Especially since we have unprecedented inequality and hoarding of resources by tiny elites. More equality / better distribution (and no grabbing from ex-colonial powers of developing world resource) would go a long way.
RE second point, you can shift wealth from the richest to the poorest, but if you equalize everything and now everyone is miserable, you'll still need growth to correct this further.
>You could hire an EV for a weekend excursion or take a slow, internet-connected ship to travel for an overseas holiday.
I think part of the reason air travel is so popular is that people are trying to make the best of what little vacation time they have. Slow travel would be so much nicer if one could afford an extra week dedicated to the journey.
I feel this is a factor, but contributes very little. Having a choice between 1 week travel + 2 weeks at the destination, vs. 1 day travel + 2 weeks and 6 days at the destination, I'd chose the latter.
Unless travel is a special experience in itself, people will consider it just means to an end, and pick the most convenient one affordable.
For things like a transcontinental flight, etc. this is very true. But for things like, say, my recent trip from Portland OR to Sacramento, having vacation measured in weeks and not days makes it feasible to do things like take a train (highly recommended - a sleeper car is a MUCH nicer experience with an infant than an airplane)
> You could hire an EV for a weekend excursion or take a slow, internet-connected ship to travel for an overseas holiday.
> Also, make 3 months' vacation the minimum. Turn off Slack at 5 PM. We have so much material crap it's hard to fathom, but many people are horribly starved of time. If I had more time I know I'd cook more and work in the garden more instead of ordering takeaway.
In the words of the Maria Antoinette "Let them eat cake"!
No doubt. But who claimed otherwise? The closest I could find is that CalRoberts said thay theyd'd spend more time gardening and cooking if they had the time, which is hard to refute unless you know them personally, is not an overgeneralisation -- and even if it was, growing a few tomatoes is a far fetch from subsistence farming.
Am I? Because that's what one winds up with if one dispenses with buying all that stuff people were induced to want by industry.
Besides, it's a mite presumptuous to claim that people are wasting their lives acquiring things they are induced to want, rather than actually wanting.
My original intent was to suggest that wealthy people consume more (after all, they have the wealth to do so) and ultimately a lot of our current economic system is designed to serve those needs. There's the classic example of "rich nerds in SF trying to solve problems for other rich nerds" but ultimately it's a matter of who controls most of the income that can be spent on non-necessities.
> ultimately a lot of our current economic system is designed to serve those needs.
I simply don't buy that. The market for VWs is far, far larger than the market for Ferraris/Bentleys. McDonald's made orders of magnitude more money than any luxury restaurant chain. The same for shoes, pots, pans, watches, computers, jewelry, soap, etc. The luxury yacht business is microscopic.
I'm at less than a third of the typical US footprint. I offset the rest.
That involves, in its totality, not jetting around, not driving an ICE, and not eating meat. My country uses primarily renewables.
A whole bunch of the rest of that is related to industrial processes and transport of food/materials that can be addressed. It would not impact me severely if my fruits came from different places or I had to eat different fruits.
I don't think my life is "worse" at all than the typical American lifestyle. People talk about quality of life, but what they actually mean is that they've chosen some arbitrary metric to maximise (e.g. overseas holidays particularly to very far flung places or whatever) and if they don't have that then QoL would be lower.
To me that sounds like a boring life, not a quality life.
Before someone trots out the 'but EVs are expensive'; 'but solar will take time' stuff; sure, it's not trivial for people to do this stuff in isolation, the point is that reducing carbon doesn't mean living in a cave. It means some small mindful adjustments, that's it.
When I look at what I'm using honestly it could be way lower making more substitutions; it'd just be the companies that provide services to me substituting instead of me, e.g. regulation.
My family and I have changed our ways. I used to live a typically American lifestyle - spending 4 hours every day in the car, mostly parked on a freeway, to get to work. Ordering takeout 5 times a week because I was too exhausted to cook for myself. Buying useless crap that filled my house, only to get a bigger house for more useless crap.
But, after the 9/11 attacks, I took a good hard look at myself. You could say, the blowback factor was real.
Now I live in a modest house just outside the city where I work, and I can cycle into the city in 40 minutes through a green landscape when the weather is good. My family and I are avid gardeners and grow our own veggies for 4/5th's of the year - sourcing it from local farmers for the rest of the time when our garden is sleeping for winter. We cook for ourselves like demons, and have massively improved health as a result. My children are taller and stronger than their peers, because they've been raised on home cooking and fresh vegetables where their peers were not.
I also ride electric, always and only - a small, weak, underpowered electric moped gets me through the city comfortably, and I recharge it every few days from house power, derived from renewables (solar and wind). Its pretty much ideal in terms of carbon footprint.
It took a big change however. I had to leave the USA and now live in middle Europe (Vienna, Austria) - a country that has long since decided to upgrade the standard of living of its people through smart economic policies designed to reduce dependence on petroleum. Its not perfect - there is still a lot of work to do in my community - but its certainly better than the, frankly disturbing, lifestyle I led in the USA.
The point is, the resources are there. People can actually massively reduce their carbon footprint if needed. You may have to move - far and wide - to escape the city trap. If you are spending more than an hour every day in your car, just to support your lifestyle, this is a clue that you MUST change. Every hour spent in traffic is a crime against the planet.
Would love to compare notes! Left the US in 2013, and living on a bit of land in Ireland at the moment. Remote work helps a lot.
The city trap is a big problem for a few reasons, and I LOVE cities. Sadly we have artificially constrained them (especially in the US, where it's illegal to build a real city and not just a zombie stretch of suburbia). In short, if you're in debt for the necessities of life (i.e. you have a mortgage) you are not free to choose your actions, and instead must choose them in a way that helps in servicing your debt.
Debt is indeed a big part of the trap. The only way to avoid it is to work ones ass off. Such is the nature of the world.
Cities have their pros and cons. A lot of cities, especially in my neighbourhood, have their amazing cons, and I don't mean conveniences. Living as though ones external geometry was governed by the size of a horses ass, for example, can be a real drag. (Vienna is a horse town.)
> (Vienna, Austria) - a country that has long since decided to upgrade the standard of living of its people through smart economic policies designed to reduce dependence on petroleum.
As someone from a bordering country, that is a surprising statement. Could you expand on that point a bit?
Austria's Green Electricity Act 2012 has been regarded as pretty much successful.
It helps that Austria has a tradition of strong ecological standing - it has very much protected its natural resources and its forests have been maintained (by their private owners) for centuries now, as a form of renewable energy.
Austria is pretty well regarded as a hydroelectric producer, and from where I stand here now, I see fields of wind power production far off in the distance. My immediate energy supply is 100% renewable - house solar, charged from the aforementioned grid when necessary - but installed on the basis of a government subsidy.
Not a day goes by when I don't see new electric vehicles on the road. Not just Tesla's, but also mopeds. In fact, this year the European electric moped revolution seems to have kicked off ..
The problem with your reasoning is this is being done by corrupt governments and cattle and lumber industries in a country making consumer goods for themselves. I can do all those things here and it won't do anything to fix the problem there, the problems are local and will continue to be local as long as the people of Brazil tolerate it. How many people have donated to funds to preserve the Amazon, and what exactly has that gotten us? We sit here in a our affluent country and tell those in another country that they shouldn't exploit their natural resources to have what we have? This is backwards and naive thinking. Until the people locally value what they have more than they do economic prosperity, even if only temporary, it will continue no matter what life style Americans or Europeans choose to adopt.
> A world of mostly-vegetarian people living in modern, timber (for carbon sequestration) flats in mixed-use environments, using renewable electricity to power their heat pumps and AC, traveling primarily via bike, walking, and public transport, and owning less disposable crap would go a long, long way
Can you quantify that into something more precise than a fuzzy feeling?
It is clear that the proposal would lead to a lot less energy usage and less pollution and thus to a cleaner environment, places where most energy generates little pollution would see the fewer benefits, which would help to ameliorate the effects of climate change.
Like degrees of avoided warming. Because the proposal above is not sufficient to avoid climate change in any significant respect, especially a counting for increased living standards in India and China.
People are rarely actually blind to the consequences of their actions. Most people know exactly what they're doing, especially if they're not working alone.
If someone is doing something you believe is bad it's because they have prioritised something else (usually, but not always, personal gain).
Not just personal gain. The benefits of industrialisation and capitalism have been tremendous for people’s quality of life, stability of their food supply, access to medicine, work hours, work conditions. If it has an impact on the climate it is regrettable and should be mitigated as possible, but it is still a major net positive.
The benefits of industrialisation and capitalism have been tremendous for people’s quality of life, stability of their food supply, access to medicine, work hours, work conditions.
While it's true that workers have better and easier lives now than they have had in the past, I don't believe many early entrepreneurs pushed for industrialization for the societal benefits. They did it because those changes made them massive great piles of cash. If your workers are healthier, better educated, and don't hate going to work so much the business benefits far more than the workers do individually.
Better conditions, health, etc are a side effect of industrialization. They were never the goal.
When you see HR making out something is a benefit for the workers you can be fairly sure the management bought in because it will also improve the bottom line in some measurable way.
I've noticed this is a general bait-and-switch our civilization makes about the economy, to which we're all exposed since childhood.
As a kid you're led to believe that various careers have value because of nice benefits to society they create. Maybe you wanted to become a pilot, because you read that pilots fly planes that carry people and passengers to the places they need to be, and those pilots get to enjoy being up there with the birds and all. Then you become a pilot, and you learn that it was all a lie. The airline doesn't care about people or freight, they care about numbers in a spreadsheet, and it just so happens they fly planes to make those numbers grow. As a pilot, you're not enjoying freedom of flying and being with the birds, you're operating a semi-automated machine according to a checklist, and do what the airline tells you to do so that their numbers go up. People? Freight? Them needing to be elsewhere? Nobody cares about that.
One of the saddest discovery in my life was the realization that a similar thing is the case with all careers. Every thing that's valuable to people, once it gets scaled up and incorporated into the economy, suddenly loses all its meaning, and becomes driven primarily by considerations of profit.
I'm not sure whether it's a good thing or bad thing. Maybe it's inevitable. But I do know that nobody told me as a kid that society uses money and markets as a proxy for decision making purposes, and we assume that making money is the best indicator that you're doing good through whatever it is that you're doing.
the only thing that really worries me is humanity going back to pre-modern technology levels, this time with full-on communism added for good measure, all in the name of climate protection.
otherwise i find climate change to be something that prepares us for colonising other places: planets and climates change; 300 million years ago Venus was the place to be, today it's Earth, tomorrow it will be the outer planets, specifically their satellites. we weren't really aware of these changes, especially their magnitudes.
climate change brought it all out. it's up to us to learn from it so that we can control it. especially for the moment when we will unshackle ourselves from this solar system.
yes, i am extremely optimistic about the human race.
we gotta stop using palm oil, that's gonna be a challenge but I'm more conscious now on product that contain it and try to do my part from where I'm at cause for sure if be volunteering to fight the fire if I was there.
> Most importantly, it gives the highest yield per acre of any oilseed crop – almost five times as much oil per acre as rapeseed, almost six times as much as sunflower and more than eight times as much as soybeans. Boycotts of palm oil will only lead to its replacement by other crops needing far more farmland and likely more deforestation.
They are right to be full of fear. Their way of living will very likely be destroyed.
I doubt the rest of the world will even notice much.
However, maybe to protect the Amazonas, the thing to do is to give the indigenous people guns. Who else is going to prevent deforestation? The government seems to be unwilling to protect the rain forest. The indigenous people claim they want to protect it.
The Guardian is giving a voice to people who are at a disadvantage. This is not virtue signaling, this article is written by an indigenous brazilian... they don't have the money to buy ad space like e.g. the brazilian farmer lobby has.
Dog-whistle? No, but I agree with the implicit point that the use of the phrase “virtue signalling” as an insult is itself virtue signalling, specifically signalling a dislike of things generally associated with the American left.
Brazil exports loads of food. Not buying meats from Brazil (not so common in Western countries, though) is one of the most effective ways to change the situation.
Indeed. Just eat meat that's been produced locally. It's not difficult. It is, however, more expensive. If it's too expensive, perhaps consider the option that you're eating too much of it.
