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Some consumption is good, i.e. replacing and old appliance or a car with a more efficient one, or you can buy a video game on Steam rather than driving to a pic

Some consumption is good, i.e. replacing and old appliance or a car with a more efficient one, or you can buy a video game on Steam rather than driving to a picnic. It is not always apparent what behaviour is the most energy-wasteful. For example airplanes emit tons of CO2, but if the same 300 people in a plane drove the same distance it could be much worse. Advanced economies have grown their GDPs, but have also reduced their emissions since about 1990. The best policies to counter climate change like carbon taxes and schemes like cap and trade, which align people's incentives to emit less, but also don't damage the potential for growth and consumption as much.

mrpopo 7y ago
> For example airplanes emit tons of CO2, but if the same 300 people in a plane drove the same distance it could be much worse. Technically true, however airplanes provoke a rebound effect. By making travel so efficient and fast, it makes people travel more. If airplanes didn't exist all people would simply travel less, not drive more.
- lenova 7y ago
  And not to be pedantic, but when the above poster said "or you can buy a video game on Steam rather than driving to a picnic", that discounts the amount of times the game developers had to drive to work to create said game. As well, replacing an old appliance or car isn't a straight-forward net savings, you need to take into account the materials harvested and factories that need to be built to produce those new items.
  - gutnor 7y ago
    The average game on Steam sells 32000 copies. It takes some seriously poluting developer to offset the picnic of thousands of people. Also (pedantic but you started it), the society we currently live in is based around work. So if games weren't being developed it is more likely the developers would still travel to work.
    - austhrow743 7y ago
      That's only if you cut out games. An overall lifestyle change of much less consumption would slash jobs.
- floatrock 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    I've thought as far as congestion is concerned cheap electric and self driving cars could make things worse. Especially if is as expected the price of EV's drops below the price of gasoline powered cars. Probably not that make effect in the US but in countries like India and China on the other hand.
- NathanKP 7y ago
  I think you are underestimating how much people travelled before airplanes were a thing. First of all pre airplane there was a lot of sea travel, which was accomplished by burning ludicrous amounts of coal to generate steam power. And long road trips used to be a cultural pass time. This is why Route 66 is to some extent still such a cultural / historical icon. It used to be that American middle class families loaded into a gas guzzling vehicle to drive cross country for vacation.
- helij 7y ago
  I would travel the same. Just with a car. I do three big trips a year of around 1,600km one way.
- option 7y ago
  yes this (traveling and growth) is great. Also, amount of energy consumed historically correlates with quality of life. Emissions are bad, but technology plus well thought-through policy has a potential to reduce them dramatically while both stimulating growth and energy consumption (nuclear + renewables and storage, electric cars, trains, etc.)
geoka9 7y ago
> Some consumption is good, i.e. replacing and old appliance or a car with a more efficient one Isn't buying a used (ICE) car better for the environment than a new EV one?
- skybrian 7y ago
  Counterfactual reasoning can be tricky. We do want electric vehicles to be manufactured instead of other kinds of vehicles, and they won't be if nobody buys them. So, maybe you're doing your bit to make sure they're successful, versus less efficient vehicles? If you buy used then you're accepting other people's decisions about which new cars should be successful. On the other hand, maybe you're thinking the total number of cars to be manufactured should go down, and this will happen if people stop buying them.
VBprogrammer 7y ago
> Advanced economies have grown their GDPs, but have also reduced their emissions since about 1990. Isn't there an element of offloading their emissions to the 'less advanced' economies who make all of the new energy efficient nuggets?
- thinkcontext 7y ago
  Production of traded goods account for about 20% of GHG emissions. So, significant but not decisive.
5db8db 7y ago
There was recently a CCC talk [1] about sustainability of software,... there was mentioned, streaming a video is almost as toxic as driving 20 km forth and back. For sure, this is super vague, but i guess it's still good to consider all those internet traffic. local internet-caching could be a good solution to keep things more regional... 1: https://media.ccc.de/v/thms-49-ber-die-nachhaltigkeit-von-software#t=1425 https://media.ccc.de/v/thms-49-ber-die-nachhaltigkeit-von-so...

mrpopo 7y ago

> For example airplanes emit tons of CO2, but if the same 300 people in a plane drove the same distance it could be much worse. Technically true, however airplanes provoke a rebound effect. By making travel so efficient and fast, it makes people travel more. If airplanes didn't exist all people would simply travel less, not drive more.

lenova 7y ago
And not to be pedantic, but when the above poster said "or you can buy a video game on Steam rather than driving to a picnic", that discounts the amount of times the game developers had to drive to work to create said game. As well, replacing an old appliance or car isn't a straight-forward net savings, you need to take into account the materials harvested and factories that need to be built to produce those new items.
- gutnor 7y ago
  The average game on Steam sells 32000 copies. It takes some seriously poluting developer to offset the picnic of thousands of people. Also (pedantic but you started it), the society we currently live in is based around work. So if games weren't being developed it is more likely the developers would still travel to work.
  - austhrow743 7y ago
    That's only if you cut out games. An overall lifestyle change of much less consumption would slash jobs.
floatrock 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  I've thought as far as congestion is concerned cheap electric and self driving cars could make things worse. Especially if is as expected the price of EV's drops below the price of gasoline powered cars. Probably not that make effect in the US but in countries like India and China on the other hand.
NathanKP 7y ago
I think you are underestimating how much people travelled before airplanes were a thing. First of all pre airplane there was a lot of sea travel, which was accomplished by burning ludicrous amounts of coal to generate steam power. And long road trips used to be a cultural pass time. This is why Route 66 is to some extent still such a cultural / historical icon. It used to be that American middle class families loaded into a gas guzzling vehicle to drive cross country for vacation.
helij 7y ago
I would travel the same. Just with a car. I do three big trips a year of around 1,600km one way.
option 7y ago
yes this (traveling and growth) is great. Also, amount of energy consumed historically correlates with quality of life. Emissions are bad, but technology plus well thought-through policy has a potential to reduce them dramatically while both stimulating growth and energy consumption (nuclear + renewables and storage, electric cars, trains, etc.)

geoka9 7y ago

> Some consumption is good, i.e. replacing and old appliance or a car with a more efficient one Isn't buying a used (ICE) car better for the environment than a new EV one?

skybrian 7y ago
Counterfactual reasoning can be tricky. We do want electric vehicles to be manufactured instead of other kinds of vehicles, and they won't be if nobody buys them. So, maybe you're doing your bit to make sure they're successful, versus less efficient vehicles? If you buy used then you're accepting other people's decisions about which new cars should be successful. On the other hand, maybe you're thinking the total number of cars to be manufactured should go down, and this will happen if people stop buying them.

VBprogrammer 7y ago

> Advanced economies have grown their GDPs, but have also reduced their emissions since about 1990. Isn't there an element of offloading their emissions to the 'less advanced' economies who make all of the new energy efficient nuggets?

thinkcontext 7y ago
Production of traded goods account for about 20% of GHG emissions. So, significant but not decisive.

5db8db 7y ago

There was recently a CCC talk [1] about sustainability of software,... there was mentioned, streaming a video is almost as toxic as driving 20 km forth and back. For sure, this is super vague, but i guess it's still good to consider all those internet traffic. local internet-caching could be a good solution to keep things more regional... 1: https://media.ccc.de/v/thms-49-ber-die-nachhaltigkeit-von-software#t=1425 https://media.ccc.de/v/thms-49-ber-die-nachhaltigkeit-von-so...