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The “10 tomato plants per person” number makes things look pretty dire, in my eyes. World population is about 7,800,000,000. The population of Germany is about
by k_sze 6y ago
The “10 tomato plants per person” number makes things look pretty dire, in my eyes.
World population is about 7,800,000,000. The population of Germany is about 83,000,000. That makes roughly 940 tomato plants to offset the CO2 emission of one person.
Even putting that number aside, tomato plants are not exactly small plants. A significant part of world population won’t have the leisure to keep even one, let alone ten, tomato plants (or the equivalent in other plants). Think people who live in slums, people who live in dense areas (e.g. people who subsist with minimum wage in subdivided apartments in HK).
Yes, we should definitely grow plants, but even more so, we need to consume way waaaay less.
- mono-bob 6y agoThe number that the author states is not just "10 tomato plants per person". But it is "10 tomato plants per person per year". So that means to compensate for the stated amount of CO2, you need to plant 10 tomato plants extra each year (the second year you would have 20, the third year you would have 30, etc.).
- roboben 6y agoWhy adding 10 every year? Assuming that emissions of countries will go down...!
- wongarsu 6y agoPlants only really consume CO2 when they grow (for fully grown plants CO2 consumption and creation balances out) Sure, if emissions go down the number of plants goes down. But they aren't going down that much in the near term
- roboben 6y agoSure, you would grow 10 new plants every year since Tomatoes are mostly grown annually (while can be also grown perennial). I should have made that more clear in the blog post.
- foxyv 6y agoCommon domestic tomatoes are annuals. They will stop growing at the end of the year and die after fruiting.
- roboben 6y ago> Yes, we should definitely grow plants, but even more so, we need to consume way waaaay less. Wouldn't it be the best when these two are actually the same? When growing more enables you to consume less? I didn't account for the savings you would do with consuming less in my simple calculation.
- k_sze 6y agoA large part of our consumption is not food. You can’t grow iPhones on a tree. You’re not going to consume less iPhones because you planted hundreds of tomato trees. You could argue that you can offset the total lifecycle energy for owning an iPhone (mining, purification, synthesis of raw materials, manufacture, packaging, transportation, recycling), by planting enough plants, but how many plants is that going to take?
- roboben 6y agoThat's a great idea for another calculation! You want to do this together? hello at permapeople org :)
- k_sze 6y agoUnfortunately I don't really know where to start. I mean, I'm a software engineer by training. Back in university, we had a courses on engineering ethics, environmental responsibility, stuff like that. That's where I learned the concept of lifecycle energy assessment. I know it's a thing, but I never learned how to actually do the assessment (e.g. where to pull figures, the kind of ballpark calculations you do). It might be interesting to make the methodology of lifecycle energy assessment more accessible to the general populace. I think everybody can benefit from a new perspective.
- roboben 6y agoLook what I’ve found of a bit googling: https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/iphone/iPhone_11_PER_sept2019.pdf https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/iphone/iPhone... While it is made by Apple itself it gives a rough idea of how much an iPhone costs.