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How do you come to the conclusion that biking to work does anything significant to offset the 20 tons of co2 emission you produce? Let alone bring it anywhere n

How do you come to the conclusion that biking to work does anything significant to offset the 20 tons of co2 emission you produce? Let alone bring it anywhere near 0? If you want to get a sense of what 0 per capita emissions looks like you need to look at countries that have 0 co2 emissions per capita. Here's a list of countries with less that 0.1 tons of co2 per capita: Burundi, Somalia, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo Dem. Rep., Ethiopia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Rwanda,South Sudan, Uganda Biking to work is hardly the sacrifice that would be required to seriously offset global co2 emissions. It's not just about driving in your car, it's about the transportation energy required to sustain your entire lifestyle. The food you eat, the goods you consume, the income you make, the concrete that grows the city around you. All of this requires moving things around the globe which in requires substantial amounts of high energy density fuels. It turns out that, independent of how environmentally conscious you are, emissions foot print is closely tied to personal income [1]. But nobody wants to hear that to live sustainably we must live a dramatically reduced quality of life. The fact that my comment is being downvoted is evidence of how strongly people don't want to hear this. And again, I don't blame anyone for not wanting to reduce the quality of their life. But it's ridiculous to be dishonest about how much our civilization has overshot what a truly sustainable civilization looks like. [1]. https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/12/1/16718844/green-consumers-climate-change https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/12/1/1671884...

btrettel 8y ago
> How do you come to the conclusion that biking to work does anything significant to offset the 20 tons of co2 emission you produce? Let alone bring it anywhere near 0? I never claimed that it did. I think it helps, but I don't know how much. It was only an example of one thing that people think is a sacrifice that I don't. As for the Vox article you linked to, a correlation between income and energy usage is just that, a correlation. I don't see any particular reason why that needs to hold in the future. Anyway, as a graduate student I don't make a lot of money, so perhaps by your own estimates I'm relatively green, even ignoring the cycling.
- Arnt 8y ago
  You live and work in buildings whose construction needed a lot of energy, for example, and the construction business uses a lot of fossil fuel. But I agree. Belgium is richer than Burundi, but not because construction in Belgium uses cement mixers driven by petrol engines while those in Burundi use electric power. It's richer because it has structures such as your university (buildings and institutions) that educates people to a level quite different from Burundi. The dirty or clean power used to build is a detail. Like, in a way, your cycling. Compared to a car, your cycling cuts the relevant emissions drastically with ~zero impact on your actual quality of life. Belgium didn't turn poor like Burundi when it stopped burning coal, it kept the good parts (like that university) and just used less dirty power sources. It didn't even grow poorer.

btrettel 8y ago

> How do you come to the conclusion that biking to work does anything significant to offset the 20 tons of co2 emission you produce? Let alone bring it anywhere near 0? I never claimed that it did. I think it helps, but I don't know how much. It was only an example of one thing that people think is a sacrifice that I don't. As for the Vox article you linked to, a correlation between income and energy usage is just that, a correlation. I don't see any particular reason why that needs to hold in the future. Anyway, as a graduate student I don't make a lot of money, so perhaps by your own estimates I'm relatively green, even ignoring the cycling.

Arnt 8y ago
You live and work in buildings whose construction needed a lot of energy, for example, and the construction business uses a lot of fossil fuel. But I agree. Belgium is richer than Burundi, but not because construction in Belgium uses cement mixers driven by petrol engines while those in Burundi use electric power. It's richer because it has structures such as your university (buildings and institutions) that educates people to a level quite different from Burundi. The dirty or clean power used to build is a detail. Like, in a way, your cycling. Compared to a car, your cycling cuts the relevant emissions drastically with ~zero impact on your actual quality of life. Belgium didn't turn poor like Burundi when it stopped burning coal, it kept the good parts (like that university) and just used less dirty power sources. It didn't even grow poorer.