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It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production. Some are high-pain, low-gain (switching devices off instead of standby?), some are op

It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production. Some are high-pain, low-gain (switching devices off instead of standby?), some are opposite (cycling instead of driving when possible etc). For that if for no other reason, I’d rather if consumer prices included an explicit CO2 tax. The here can be a rebate for poorer people, or personal allowance, whatever, but there would be a fixed yardstick for measuring your personal impact. Off the top of my head, I have no idea which if my activities generates the most CO2. My car? Energy use? Diet? Going skiing once a year? No idea. Newspaper articles only help a little, they usually present an incomplete picture, and optimising against an incorrect utility function is often counterproductive. I’m imagining something like VAT, where “value added/carbon” adds up over the lifetime of product/service production.

shadowfaxRodeo 5y ago
Even if every person on the planet did what you reasonably expect of yourself, we would still not even be close to reducing CO2 production. By all means do those things. But if you want to make a real difference you need to look beyond your own activities. Change your community, your company, your industry. What can you do that changes the defaults for everyone else? Try and find low-hanging fruit. Join your local climate activist group e.g. 350.org — they'll be full of people with solutions.
- rob_c 5y ago
  Not sure what solutions that group is supposed to be espoucing but they're mostly just a political lobbying group. Frankly until the shouting and arguing stops and someone who can make a difference comes to the table I'm out. There is was too much posturing which makes no difference and is bad on both sides from plastic signs complaining about pollution to politicians who travel from ecological disaster to ecological disaster via private jet, and that's even before you realise just how in the pocket mainstream politicians of both sides are to the current status quo.
  - shadowfaxRodeo 5y ago
    350.org have done a bunch of stuff — as for plastic signs complaining about pollution. Yes that's annoying, (it annoys me that 350.org's website is incredibly bad for environment https://www.websitecarbon.com/website/350-org/ https://www.websitecarbon.com/website/350-org/) If you want to make a difference, do something local. That's where the biggest shifts are happening — and you're unlikely to encounter any real arguments. People tend to only have those arguments when they have an audience, e.g. Twitter, TV
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    What a disingenuous comment. Of course they are a political lobbying group! No shame in that, if they weren't they would be stupid. Shouting and arguing is how human beings deliberate since the beginning of our species - and it's how plenty of things have gotten done historically. Waiting until your age of enlightened and reasoned debate around climate issues comes ensures that you never have to take action at all, which, I suspect, might be your point.
    - mistermann 5y ago
      > Shouting and arguing is how human beings deliberate since the beginning of our species - and it's how plenty of things have gotten done historically. What if humanity has run into a problem where that is not enough to solve the problem? What if the true (but unknowable) state of affairs is that our traditional ways of communicating, even at their best, are not enough? What if it's even worse, what if our traditional ways of collective decision making are also not enough? Or even more worse, what if the very way we traditionally think must be improved adequately in order to adequately address this problem? As a thought experiment, imagine that these premises are literally true...what shall we do? What are some plausibly adequate responses to this set of problems?
    - rob_c 5y ago
      Action is worth a thousand words. Take it and sensible men will follow. Be the change you want to see in the world not the people arguing about it. Take public transport. Repair rather than discard. Take up a new skill and improve a thing rather than buying a new one. Reduce you own energy footprint (frankly given how at turns into more money in your pocket this should be common sense not a talking point among midwits). I'm not talking about going off the grid and living off turnips. Make 90% changes and then share these with others to enable and empower them to do the same.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  It's a start though. It makes the CO2 use visible and transparent. I reckon so many people would care a lot about carbon in electricity if their itemised power bill included a fat slice of 'carbon'. Suddenly there would be pressure to decarbonise etc. Large companies could optimise their (significant at scale) bill for carbon use. Do the PCs really have to run 24/7 for example? It's the old 'you cannot improve what you cannot measure'.
  - shadowfaxRodeo 5y ago
    Totally. For me it's a matter of credibility. Nobody wants to listen to the climate activist who flies around in a private jet.
  - spockz 5y ago
    Yes, sure, make it visible! I think the GP was that many things happen outside the normal consumer flow and the choices of impeach individual have a minimum direct impact. Also, I’m not sure just forwarding the CO2 tax to the consumer is the best way to go, it still puts to responsibilities with the consumers instead of everyone.
    - zarzavat 5y ago
      Passing the CO2 tax to the consumer is exactly the solution. In the UK we had a sugar tax. Soft drinks were taxed by the amount of sugar inside. Practically overnight it became impossible to buy drinks containing more sugar than the tax minimum limit. It wasn't illegal to sell them, but no corporation would waste money on a silly thing like taste. The point is that the profit motive that has got us into this mess, can get us out of it too. Price in the externalities.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        > Practically overnight it became impossible to buy drinks containing more sugar than the tax minimum limit. It wasn't illegal to sell them, but no corporation would waste money on a silly thing like taste. Oh yes. Poland introduced a sugar tax recently, and I've never seen so many low-sugar offerings in the shops in my life. Marketing people of course got to work spinning this; a well-known brand of fruity beverages that advertises to children suddenly started highlighting how their products are healthy for children because they're sugar free. That's despite the fact that until few months earlier, they were the symbol of sugar-full beverages for children. This is to say, profit motive is reality and sanity-bending, it should definitely be put to use through carbon taxation.
- lukastr0 5y ago
  Small changes to personal consumption are not the best way to contribute to fighting climate change. A significantly more effective actionstep would be to donate a small portion of your income to highly effective climate charities [1]. I'm not against changing personal consumption - for example, I went vegan. But this is not where the majority of my impact on the world lies, as even a small donation vastly outweighs the effect that my veganism has. [1] https://founderspledge.com/stories/climate-and-lifestyle-report https://founderspledge.com/stories/climate-and-lifestyle-rep...
czzr 5y ago
The inability of the US to pass a carbon tax will be one of humanities great tragedies. That they are the theoretical champions of the free market is just piling cruel irony on top of that.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  It's not just US. Is there a real carbon tax anywhere at all?
  - zejn 5y ago
    It is. EU has CO2 emissions trading at about 50 EUR per ton and rising. Even China has just recently established a national CO2 trading scheme.
    - rich_sasha 5y ago
      I believe the EU has an allowance program too, largely handed out on the basis of CO2 emission, so that would be a bit of a wash.
    - zelphirkalt 5y ago
      Although one should mention that raising that CO2 tax in EU seems to always be an uphill battle against lobbyism and corruption in the EU as well and according to many the CO2 tax is laughably low still. We have a long way to go before we can pat ourselves on the shoulder for a working CO2 tax.
    - ThalesX 5y ago
      This is infuriating for me as an Eastern European… they keep piling taxes and adding expenses. Soon steel and no more ICE cars. Who do you think absorbs the 50€ / ton and rising shock better, a German making 4000€ / month or an East European making 300€ / month? We either go at this together, in a thought out way, or we don’t go at all. The EU distrusts nuclear energy; we’ve been advised against nuclear energy projects. The EU dislikes coal; we’ve been advised against coal. So what can we do? We can’t build nuclear, we can’t work with coal. What do our workers do? Do we just continue to be meat for the betterment of the west? I can’t even imagine the difference between the American standard of living and someone in Africa barely hanging on by a thread. I don’t have a point, I’m sick and tired of being late to the western party (industry? services? startups?) and then we can’t even catch up because the persons in the high castle know better… and now, after burning the world for tens of years, the west is still the saving grace swooping down and imposing global restrictions in order to further protect their lifestyles. Sickening…
ianai 5y ago
Agree, though the ability to add a tax to goods/services for carbon seems unlikely in the US. I suspect people might be more agreeable if they knew there was a direct relationship between carbon tax and carbon abatement-and couldn't be squandered on something else (like cutting taxes for wealthy/multi-national corps). i.e. $1 of tax means $1 toward sequestration, or something like that.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Surveys have shown Americans have basically 0 inclination to pay more than $10/mo even if it would completely solve climate change for sure. It's a good thing we don't live in a real democracy, because hopefully elites will wake up faster than that.
nosianu 5y ago
> It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production Not really. For some reason the actually quite simple problem is needlessly complicated in the discussions. Stop digging up ANY carbon from below ground where it was safely buried. Any carbon above ground is part of the cycle that includes atmospheric CO2. You need huge effort to change how much of it is in CO2 form at any time while still having no certainty that it won't change very quickly (into CO2 atmospheric form), e.g. through fires (like the many burning forests just now). The earth's solution to removing the CO2 from the atmosphere was to bury it deep underground. Getting it back out from there is the BIG problem. The details of the above-ground carbon cycle are a small problem with very little impact compared to the big issue of getting more and more of the ancient carbon back up into the cycle. Of course, it's no use discussing the stop of all coal, gas, and oil digging, because there is zero chance of it happening. Coal at most and not even that looks likely, globally. It's like not caring about the huge hole in the hull of the ship while arguing about how to "safely" store all the water coming in.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  You're describing the objective function, but ignoring the constraints. Stop digging up coal - fine. Cut off power to people who have no other power sources? Erm... What about emergency diesel generators for hospitals, diesel use for shipping goods (lowest-carbon-emitting means of transport). It's just not that simple.
  - johnchristopher 5y ago
    I am pretty sure emergency diesel generators use a tiniest fraction of energy used by tankers moving goods around.
    - rich_sasha 5y ago
      Indeed. But simply closing down everything that pumps fossil fuel out of the ground breaks things we like and need. It's not that simple. Or is the medicine still better than the disease? I don't know anymore.
zelphirkalt 5y ago
If you have children, then that is probably the most impactful. They will need/want the same living standards as other people. They get the full package of other impactful things you mention plus some more like house building. For example a young family does no longer live in the same small 2 person flat, but instead builds a house (or lets build). Especially in first world countries and developing to first world countries, where everyone wants to have the high living standard, having children will be the most impactful action. Perhaps there should be a high CO2 tax on having children, which one needs to continue to pay, while the children live?
- Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago
  Children are part of the goal. I mean, what's the point of preserving the planet for the future generations if we don't make future generations? If you follow your logic to the extreme, the most beneficial actions would be things like euthanasia or just plain suicide.
  - w_t_payne 5y ago
    Given the state of the world, and a desire to be as helpful as possible, the latter feels quite appealing to me right now.
    - admg 5y ago
      We're living through a strange time but please do not be defeatist and try not to let alarmist (it's trying to push certain actors into action quite rightly) make you feel that like that should ever be appealing.
  - scbrg 5y ago
    > If you follow your logic to the extreme, the most beneficial actions would be things like euthanasia or just plain suicide. Absolutely. Any logic followed to the extreme will yield extreme results. It could, however, be argued without much difficulty that people that exist have more rights than people that never will exist, so expecting someone to commit suicide (an extremely angst filled action that is also likely to cause an incredible amount of suffering within the person's close social circles) is not really at all comparable to asking them to not procreate - something that may not happen anyway for a number of reasons, and which does not inflict any particular amount of extra suffering. It could also be argued that we don't really need to be eight billion, so some/most of us not procreating does not imply that there will be no future generations. And, it could also be argued that all other life forms on earth are not worthless, and their well being alone - sans humans - could be worth preserving a reasonable climate for.
oliwarner 5y ago
I think we all have a fairly good idea of some things that would help, it's the scale we struggle to comprehend. But even if you could find out the magic threshold for what it would take, if there's anything that lockdown and covid restrictions in the UK have taught me in the past 18 months, it's that we all need to follow the rules or it's pointless. It's so disheartening to see others not pay these taxes, to not restructure and restrict their lifestyles. It seems that unless things change globally, why are we even considering making changes? 1000 people in Quatar generate over seven times as much CO2 as 1000 people in the UK. Luxembourg, the US, Canada, Australia (and more) all generate three times as much CO2 as the UK per 1000 residents. The US has no carbon taxes. They've long been able to buy fuel and fly domestically for ridiculously low prices. Yeah, I'm having a whinge, but this is my point. If we're not all in this together, what's the point?
- wffurr 5y ago
  Long past time to start enforcing carbon tariffs on non-compliant countries.
  - oliwarner 5y ago
    I'm not sure how that would work. One country's power to enforce anything like that would —I think— just look like trade tariffs. This can be effective, but they sometimes just make things more expensive (and in doing so, seem like yet another sacrifice). But maybe there are enough countries to form a pact, with enough alternative producers available to make this effective.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      Make things more expensive for both sides and meanwhile incentivize producers to switch to more carbon neutral methods. Yes, it requires sacrifice, but it would also require sacrifice if the other unilaterally switched to more carbon neutral production methods without a tariff.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  > If we're not all in this together, what's the point? The point is that while we are squabbling over the most fair division of the burden, we are screwing future generations. Qatar has 0.03% of the worlds population. We can't let climate renegade states preclude us from taking action, and we can't sit around until we have a world government.
zejn 5y ago
The easiest way to approach this is to "stop burning stuff". Is a material being burned? Then it almost certainly emits CO2. Do you call it fuel? Stop using it or use it as little as possible. Most personal energy use is for heating living spaces and transportation. EVs are great for transportation, e-bikes are even better. Heat pumps are great for heating and cooling living spaces. Using these one can drastically reduce direct personal CO2 emissions. Sure, you're then buying electricity and part of electricity is produced by burning stuff. If possible, you should then get solar panels, to at least offset the amount of electricity used. With regard to purchasing one should regard objects that have been over temperature of boiling water as things that took a significat amount of energy to be created: food is cooked, metals and glass are melted, and so on. Is there a way to reuse them, or at least recycle?
- smt88 5y ago
  Cows and concrete don't involve burning things, but they do produce a large percentage of total CO2 emissions.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    A long way behind heating homes and transport though.
  - guerby 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cement_kiln https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cement_kiln 1400 degree to make the cement part of concrete. You could may be reach this by solar concentration, but currently we do burn stuff to make concrete.
    - stephen999 5y ago
      Could you not use resistive heating powered by solar/wind/hydro? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_heating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_heating
  - zejn 5y ago
    Correct. With meat the important thing is to know the turnaround time, eg. how much time does it take for an animal to reach adult size. Bigger animals tend to have longer lives. More lifetime means more food, water, energy. Beef has really long turnaround time, pork is not much better, poultry is quite good, insects are really hard to beat. Eggs are also a great source of protein. Having your own chicken coop is not a bad idea, if you have the space for it. Cement is problematic because the CO2 comes from the process even if you use non-CO2 emitting fuels for heating up the raw materials, which eventually become cement. Alternative to cement is to use wood for construction, which I think is quite popular in the US.
captainmuon 5y ago
I don't think conscious customers can steer the economy quickly enough. If we stop emitting any greenhouse gases today, global warming will still accelerate for more than a decade. (And I don't believe very much in boycotts anyway - when a customer decides to switch to a different product, marginal price changes are likely to cause another customer to switch the other way, simply speaking.) I think at this point we need an international coalition that slams the breaks and sets a strict deadline for ceasing CO2 emission. If there are not severe shortages, it means we are not strict enough and can go faster. And then let the market work. If a steak costs $100 or you have to wait 3 years for a car, that's sucks, but so be it.
pjerem 5y ago
In France and in Europe we have online emissions calculator. If you happen to live in France, you can make the simulation on the « Mes Gestes Climat » website. I don’t know if it exists in USA (since those things are highly country-dependent) but I suppose it may exists. Those are interesting tools to get actionable feedback.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  This is good, but ultimately opt-in. I think you need something much wider-ranging than this.
lcam84 5y ago
The dividend from the taxes should be evenly distributed to everyone. This would compensate people who have good environmental lifestyle and allow local business that produce low carbon (due low distribution) to be more competitive
kebman 5y ago
The emphasis many countries take is to focus on car owners and drivers by taxing private commuters to death, with dubious environmental gains outside of increasing state income. Meanwhile one cargo ship or cruise liner arguably pollutes way more than millions(!) of cars. I'm not sure that's a great route to take politically, no pun intended. They seem to go for the lowest hanging cash grab before going after those where it's actually the easiest to get the biggest gains in terms of environment and actually lowering of negative emissions.
- adrianN 5y ago
  Cargo ships "pollute" as much as millions of cars, but that pollution is sulphur, not carbon.
  - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
    Shipping is responsible for lots of noise pollution which is extremely detriment to marine wildlife.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      Let's not muddy the waters. Right now, we are talking about GHG and we have to be focusing on that with an eagle eye.
- tpxl 5y ago
  Same with garbage bags and plastic straws. Stuff comes in stores absolutely wrapped in tons of plastic and they go and ban plastic straws. Not to mention stuff that's triple wrapped (sweets for example).
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure plastic straws were a trash problem, not a climate problem. Related, but not the same thing.
    - 5y ago
tiagorbf 5y ago
> It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production I felt exactly the same a couple of months ago... I spent hours researching what actions could we individually do and what was its impact. Then I created an app that compiles all this information. You can check it out here https://changeit.app https://changeit.app Hope it helps :D
TigeriusKirk 5y ago
The most impactful thing you can do as an individual is devote yourself to improving clean energy resources and carbon sequestration technologies. If you're here there's a good chance you have the ability to help engineer these techs. That's going have way, way more impact than riding your bicycle.
- menesss 5y ago
  Do you have any suggestions on how to get started on this?
MildlySerious 5y ago
Here's a small parametric projection you can adjust to get a rough idea[1]. The conclusion is that we need to work on all ends, starting with heavy carbon taxing. We have pretty much squandered the time for anything but a drastic 180 degree turn. The best thing you can do as an individual is to be vocal about those concerns and put pressure on your political representatives to take action, CCL[2] being one example of that. I'm not a big proponent of the individual carbon footprint thing, it's mostly an attempt to shift responsibility to the individual when the ones that can actually get meaningful action on the way are corporations and governments. Despite that, avoiding meat (if you can't avoid all, focus on beef), buying local produce and avoiding flights where possible are still beneficial things to do and the biggest contributions you can make. I would add not driving a 20 year old car, but a lot of time you not driving it just means someone else will be driving that car instead. [1] https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html [2] https://citizensclimatelobby.org/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/
- bamboozled 5y ago
  I love how corporations can pollute the absolute shit out of the atmosphere, but when it comes to me having a steak, I’m the bad guy, this is one of the biggest cons of our time. Could you imagine how much more damage cheap air travel, coal fired power generation etc has done compared to people eating food ? Do you know who eats all the beef they like ? Oil company executives.
  - sethammons 5y ago
    The steak one is usually more nuanced. Not all land that raises cows can be productive for crops. I tend to buy beef that is locally sourced, which also reduces a carbon footprint.
- NumberWangMan 5y ago
  To be very specific -- if you want a carbon fee & dividend, which is strongly supported by both economists and scientists as the most efficient, effective way to get the USA to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, call and write your senator as soon as you can using this link which will help you out with instructions (as well as explain more details if you're interested): https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/ It only takes about 10 minutes! Right now we have the best chance we've had in a long time to get meaningful climate legislation passed.
VoodooJuJu 5y ago
It's not hard to know what actions impact CO2 production. Like nosianu else said, just stop taking carbon fuel out of the ground. Anything above ground is part of the carbon cycle and is fair game - manure, trees (to a point), etc. But I think what's hard about this is not understanding what causes CO2 production, but understanding what it means to stop burning buried carbon fuel. It means no more computer, cel phone, cars, no flying, no 2-day shipping for [ANY PRODUCT!], no container ships and planes shipping food and products all over the world. It might mean abandoning air-conditioning and having to hand-wash your clothes. It means abandoning modern comforts (not necessities). It means abandoning a hyper-consoomer lifestyle and becoming more localist, which most of us simply cannot fathom doing.
benjaminwootton 5y ago
Not sure if I’ll get voted down as a conspiracy theorist, but some kind of mobile app “passport” or “digital ID” would be a great way of tracking your carbon budget. Especially with a bit of big tech surveillance supporting the whole programme. I wonder how they could get something like that adopted quickly?
api 5y ago
Coal is 60% of all carbon emissions. Phase out coal for electricity production. Just doing that would go far.
agumonkey 5y ago
Switching what devices ? High pain to me is no more transport, overheat, empty shelves. Reducing devices seems like a freebie
agumonkey 5y ago
Fair point, it's blurry From the top of my head, most cited ones are Concrete production Heating / cooling (unless designed to be physically smart) Beef production Worldwide transportation (fruits all year long) Cars If you eat a Mediterranean die, move by foot or bike and have a well insulated house with no AC you're good
- adolph 5y ago
  Why pick on AC? How about adding no heat?
  - i_haz_rabies 5y ago
    Heat is necessary, AC is not necessary (I realize this is not entirely true, but I think it's fair to say a lot more people would die without heat than without AC).
    - adolph 5y ago
      Living in inhospitable environments is a choice, not a necessity, that is causing environmental degradation. Let’s say an ideal human environment temp is around 60-80 degrees. In 110° weather, you just need to move 30°. In freezing weather you’ve gotta move 48°. That’s 50% more delta.
      - i_haz_rabies 5y ago
        I think trying to fit the populations of North America, Europe, Russia, China, Japan, Korea, the Stans, Mongolia, the Baltics, New Zealand, Chile, and Argentina, not to mention alpine countries like Nepal, into the ideal human habitability zone would go poorly.
belorn 5y ago
There were a study done in Sweden a few years ago that looked at the question about an individuals actions and the corresponding CO2 production. No car > skipping flight > buy green energy > Get a electric car > diet. https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/four-lifestyle-choices-most-reduce-your-carbon-footprint https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/four-lifestyle-choi...
- npteljes 5y ago
  How could you leave out the one with the biggest impact, which is basically "less humans"?
  - cranekam 5y ago
    *fewer
    - ajryan 5y ago
      I wonder how much energy we waste on pedantry.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        Probably not as much as we waste on resolving confusion caused by playing fast and loose with shared rules/understanding of things.
      - npteljes 5y ago
        Sometimes it has its place. Can you imagine a public speaker making errors like this? I think it detracts from the message. Public, and especially popularly read stuff should be as correct as humanely possible. Good grammar is a habit, improved by repeat exposure.
    - npteljes 5y ago
      I appreciate this, I want my snappy sentences to be grammatically correct.
  - 5y ago
sundvor 5y ago
Do what we do in Vic, Australia: Add usage tax for EVs, with only a narrow timed limited vehicle discount for standard range EVs. And not a single ICEV co² tax in sight. That'll help (the oil companies).
jussij 5y ago
For anyone concerned about climate change, the most important thing you can do is cast a vote for a political party that the issue seriously.
- timmg 5y ago
  I think the reality is that even parties who take the issue seriously know the solutions are difficult. Making difficult decisions is a great way to get voted out in the next term. An example from the US: During discussions for the recent bipartisan infrastructure deals, Republicans wanted to raise the gas tax to help pay for the bill. Progressives felt it would affect the middle class too much so they pushed it out. Gas tax isn't exactly a carbon tax. But it is close. So here's a case where the party on the Right wanted a "CO2 tax" but the party on the Left scuttled it. (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/us/politics/what-is-in-the-infrastructure-plan.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/us/politics/what-is-in-th...) I think France saw something similar with the "Yellow Vest" movement. I'm definitely not knowledgeable about French politics, but I think a lot of that protest was around an increase in gas tax.
- city41 5y ago
  In the US, any party that takes the issue seriously does not get elected in an meaningful capacity. Maybe a city representative, even state representative here and there, but that's about it.
  - jussij 5y ago
    And until that changes there will be very little in the way of action on climate change as the problem is just kicked down the road. However all that delay just makes the problem harder to fix. So the choice really is simple. Find a way to make your government representatives take the issue seriously, or accept the 'catastrophic train wreck' that is just some decades away.
- NumberWangMan 5y ago
  This helps, but there's a time lag, and the person you voted for does not know why you voted for them over the other party. Letting your congressperson know that you care about it by calling them or writing them directly is much, much more effective at getting policies you care about implemented. You should vote (in every election!) because they know who votes and who doesn't, and want to make voters happy -- but you also need to know that this is an issue of interest to you. Right now, here's a very straightforward way to do that for climate change: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/
snomad 5y ago
We don't even need a carbon tax per se; we just need consumption based tax system (as the US had until 1913), instead of a productivity based tax system.
fsflover 5y ago
> It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production. Some are high-pain, low-gain (switching devices off instead of standby?), some are opposite (cycling instead of driving when possible etc). http://www.kimnicholas.com/uploads/2/5/7/6/25766487/fig1full.jpg http://www.kimnicholas.com/uploads/2/5/7/6/25766487/fig1full... But the tax is probably more important still. Also, political action.
modmans2nd 5y ago
How about makign a masive push to gen 4 nuclear reactors that can burn what we today call "waste" and then dump coal?
coliveira 5y ago
The day true environmental costs are embedded in every item, is the day capitalism will come to an end. The nature of the system is to underpay for items that are not helping certain groups. Take just the example of food. 90+% of the price you pay go to middlemen. Real producers make close to nothing on each food item. But food contributes to a large percentage of global warming. Suddenly you will have to start paying lots of money to producing countries of most food consumed in the world. And this is just one item of the things we consume every day.
- pas 5y ago
  And why would that make "capitalism" "come to an end"? It opens up new niches for food production. Especially more capital intensive ways (eg vertical farming). The trend of less and less people being employed in food production continues.
the_lonely_road 5y ago
If I do all of the things that I can do to reduce my families CO2 output, and I mean really dig into sacrificing our quality of life, how much CO2 will I prevent for all of that hardship and sacrifice? How much CO2 was put out in service of President Trump's endless rallies? How much CO2 was put out in service of President Obama's birthday bash this last week? As long as the elites, including the goddamn political elites, are living in opulence and emitting immensely more CO2 than my family could ever hope to save with even a barebones existence, I will choose to be damned to hell with the rest of humanity before I make one more sacrifice of my family. Carbon needs to be taxed and it needs to be fair. There will be no future for us if we continue down this opt in path. That much is crystal clear.
tpm 5y ago
I found Project Drawdown's Solutions Table quite good: https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions
chadlavi 5y ago
Actions everyday people can take are a drop in the bucket. The answer is in stopping major polluting corporations. And it's also the one thing America will never do, because that's who has the money.
- jhrmnn 5y ago
  Only people are final consumers in every production chain, not corporations. (Even if indirectly, say, by driving on a freshly built highway.) So people’s everyday decisions could have a major impact, if collective. Often it’s very hard to understand how CO2 emissions flow along the production chains though.
NumberWangMan 5y ago
I think others have mentioned CCL already, but if you live in the USA want a specific, concrete, easy action you can take RIGHT NOW to move us toward a carbon tax & dividend, check this out: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/ Right now we have the best chance in a long time to actually get a carbon tax passed, but it depends on lots of us calling and writing our senators to make sure they know we want one! If you support this, please do it as soon as you have a chance. And I very much agree -- even for people who are willing to take individual action, without including environmental impact into the price of things, it's very hard to figure out where you can best make a difference.
- guilhas 5y ago
  Carbon tax is a scam. It is exactly what economists not worried about the environment would invent
  - andrekandre 5y ago
    > Carbon tax is a scam. why?
    - guilhas 5y ago
      There will be companies exempt, banks making "carbon tax loans", the rich will be paying it easily, while the poor, and small companies, as always, will have to make the most concessions. Why give even more money to the people that lead the world here
      - andrekandre 5y ago
        what should we do instead?
        guilhas 5y ago
        That is a good question, which I can't exactly answer There is this link from other comments, which I am not sure how good it is: https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions But in general if you create regulation for companies to produce less trash, explore all natural resources responsibly. Invest all public money and outsource contracts to the most environmentally friendly companies... You don't need to punish the market If you just keep the current public investment in environmental R&D and eventually you'll have the better product, and who invested will be rich... just standard stuff really Also people in general were always in favour of clean and green. The only issue has been and will be corporate greed A Corporate carbon tax would be interesting if all profits went local first. And people decided where it should go
thehappypm 5y ago
The rebate-for-poor-people thing is really the main issue. the West is already on its way towards reducing CO2 emissions and it's accelerating with new technologies, without austerity forcing the hand. Meanwhile the developing world (the poor people) are growing CO2 dramatically. It's irrelevant where CO2 comes from. That's why this is so damn hard.
cblconfederate 5y ago
If the premise is that it is caused by humans, then start by reducing them
dleslie 5y ago
If you fly to go skiing then it's the vacation. Jet fuel isn't clean burning by any means. Car is next. Depending on how your power is generated, that energy use may be carbon neutral.
triceratops 5y ago
> It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production To a first approximation, every time you pull out your wallet, you're emitting carbon. The bigger the $ sign, the more carbon you're emitting. New car > used car New furniture > used furniture High energy bill > low energy bill High grocery bill > low grocery bill Big house > small house Long commute > short commute Expensive vacation > cheap vacation After you've gotten past the big stuff, there are nuances. Burning your trash is cheaper than paying for trash removal but obviously worse for the environment (better yet; generate less trash). A diet of Twinkies is cheaper than a diet of leafy greens but it'll cost you on healthcare in the long run, so likely worse carbon emissions. Try to run your household budget as lean as you can, and vote for politicians who support collective action against climate change. I think that's as much as any individual can do.

shadowfaxRodeo 5y ago

Even if every person on the planet did what you reasonably expect of yourself, we would still not even be close to reducing CO2 production. By all means do those things. But if you want to make a real difference you need to look beyond your own activities. Change your community, your company, your industry. What can you do that changes the defaults for everyone else? Try and find low-hanging fruit. Join your local climate activist group e.g. 350.org — they'll be full of people with solutions.

rob_c 5y ago
Not sure what solutions that group is supposed to be espoucing but they're mostly just a political lobbying group. Frankly until the shouting and arguing stops and someone who can make a difference comes to the table I'm out. There is was too much posturing which makes no difference and is bad on both sides from plastic signs complaining about pollution to politicians who travel from ecological disaster to ecological disaster via private jet, and that's even before you realise just how in the pocket mainstream politicians of both sides are to the current status quo.
- shadowfaxRodeo 5y ago
  350.org have done a bunch of stuff — as for plastic signs complaining about pollution. Yes that's annoying, (it annoys me that 350.org's website is incredibly bad for environment https://www.websitecarbon.com/website/350-org/ https://www.websitecarbon.com/website/350-org/) If you want to make a difference, do something local. That's where the biggest shifts are happening — and you're unlikely to encounter any real arguments. People tend to only have those arguments when they have an audience, e.g. Twitter, TV
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  What a disingenuous comment. Of course they are a political lobbying group! No shame in that, if they weren't they would be stupid. Shouting and arguing is how human beings deliberate since the beginning of our species - and it's how plenty of things have gotten done historically. Waiting until your age of enlightened and reasoned debate around climate issues comes ensures that you never have to take action at all, which, I suspect, might be your point.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    > Shouting and arguing is how human beings deliberate since the beginning of our species - and it's how plenty of things have gotten done historically. What if humanity has run into a problem where that is not enough to solve the problem? What if the true (but unknowable) state of affairs is that our traditional ways of communicating, even at their best, are not enough? What if it's even worse, what if our traditional ways of collective decision making are also not enough? Or even more worse, what if the very way we traditionally think must be improved adequately in order to adequately address this problem? As a thought experiment, imagine that these premises are literally true...what shall we do? What are some plausibly adequate responses to this set of problems?
  - rob_c 5y ago
    Action is worth a thousand words. Take it and sensible men will follow. Be the change you want to see in the world not the people arguing about it. Take public transport. Repair rather than discard. Take up a new skill and improve a thing rather than buying a new one. Reduce you own energy footprint (frankly given how at turns into more money in your pocket this should be common sense not a talking point among midwits). I'm not talking about going off the grid and living off turnips. Make 90% changes and then share these with others to enable and empower them to do the same.
rich_sasha 5y ago
It's a start though. It makes the CO2 use visible and transparent. I reckon so many people would care a lot about carbon in electricity if their itemised power bill included a fat slice of 'carbon'. Suddenly there would be pressure to decarbonise etc. Large companies could optimise their (significant at scale) bill for carbon use. Do the PCs really have to run 24/7 for example? It's the old 'you cannot improve what you cannot measure'.
- shadowfaxRodeo 5y ago
  Totally. For me it's a matter of credibility. Nobody wants to listen to the climate activist who flies around in a private jet.
- spockz 5y ago
  Yes, sure, make it visible! I think the GP was that many things happen outside the normal consumer flow and the choices of impeach individual have a minimum direct impact. Also, I’m not sure just forwarding the CO2 tax to the consumer is the best way to go, it still puts to responsibilities with the consumers instead of everyone.
  - zarzavat 5y ago
    Passing the CO2 tax to the consumer is exactly the solution. In the UK we had a sugar tax. Soft drinks were taxed by the amount of sugar inside. Practically overnight it became impossible to buy drinks containing more sugar than the tax minimum limit. It wasn't illegal to sell them, but no corporation would waste money on a silly thing like taste. The point is that the profit motive that has got us into this mess, can get us out of it too. Price in the externalities.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      > Practically overnight it became impossible to buy drinks containing more sugar than the tax minimum limit. It wasn't illegal to sell them, but no corporation would waste money on a silly thing like taste. Oh yes. Poland introduced a sugar tax recently, and I've never seen so many low-sugar offerings in the shops in my life. Marketing people of course got to work spinning this; a well-known brand of fruity beverages that advertises to children suddenly started highlighting how their products are healthy for children because they're sugar free. That's despite the fact that until few months earlier, they were the symbol of sugar-full beverages for children. This is to say, profit motive is reality and sanity-bending, it should definitely be put to use through carbon taxation.
lukastr0 5y ago
Small changes to personal consumption are not the best way to contribute to fighting climate change. A significantly more effective actionstep would be to donate a small portion of your income to highly effective climate charities [1]. I'm not against changing personal consumption - for example, I went vegan. But this is not where the majority of my impact on the world lies, as even a small donation vastly outweighs the effect that my veganism has. [1] https://founderspledge.com/stories/climate-and-lifestyle-report https://founderspledge.com/stories/climate-and-lifestyle-rep...

czzr 5y ago

The inability of the US to pass a carbon tax will be one of humanities great tragedies. That they are the theoretical champions of the free market is just piling cruel irony on top of that.

rich_sasha 5y ago
It's not just US. Is there a real carbon tax anywhere at all?
- zejn 5y ago
  It is. EU has CO2 emissions trading at about 50 EUR per ton and rising. Even China has just recently established a national CO2 trading scheme.
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    I believe the EU has an allowance program too, largely handed out on the basis of CO2 emission, so that would be a bit of a wash.
  - zelphirkalt 5y ago
    Although one should mention that raising that CO2 tax in EU seems to always be an uphill battle against lobbyism and corruption in the EU as well and according to many the CO2 tax is laughably low still. We have a long way to go before we can pat ourselves on the shoulder for a working CO2 tax.
  - ThalesX 5y ago
    This is infuriating for me as an Eastern European… they keep piling taxes and adding expenses. Soon steel and no more ICE cars. Who do you think absorbs the 50€ / ton and rising shock better, a German making 4000€ / month or an East European making 300€ / month? We either go at this together, in a thought out way, or we don’t go at all. The EU distrusts nuclear energy; we’ve been advised against nuclear energy projects. The EU dislikes coal; we’ve been advised against coal. So what can we do? We can’t build nuclear, we can’t work with coal. What do our workers do? Do we just continue to be meat for the betterment of the west? I can’t even imagine the difference between the American standard of living and someone in Africa barely hanging on by a thread. I don’t have a point, I’m sick and tired of being late to the western party (industry? services? startups?) and then we can’t even catch up because the persons in the high castle know better… and now, after burning the world for tens of years, the west is still the saving grace swooping down and imposing global restrictions in order to further protect their lifestyles. Sickening…

ianai 5y ago

Agree, though the ability to add a tax to goods/services for carbon seems unlikely in the US. I suspect people might be more agreeable if they knew there was a direct relationship between carbon tax and carbon abatement-and couldn't be squandered on something else (like cutting taxes for wealthy/multi-national corps). i.e. $1 of tax means $1 toward sequestration, or something like that.

whimsicalism 5y ago
Surveys have shown Americans have basically 0 inclination to pay more than $10/mo even if it would completely solve climate change for sure. It's a good thing we don't live in a real democracy, because hopefully elites will wake up faster than that.

nosianu 5y ago

> It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production Not really. For some reason the actually quite simple problem is needlessly complicated in the discussions. Stop digging up ANY carbon from below ground where it was safely buried. Any carbon above ground is part of the cycle that includes atmospheric CO2. You need huge effort to change how much of it is in CO2 form at any time while still having no certainty that it won't change very quickly (into CO2 atmospheric form), e.g. through fires (like the many burning forests just now). The earth's solution to removing the CO2 from the atmosphere was to bury it deep underground. Getting it back out from there is the BIG problem. The details of the above-ground carbon cycle are a small problem with very little impact compared to the big issue of getting more and more of the ancient carbon back up into the cycle. Of course, it's no use discussing the stop of all coal, gas, and oil digging, because there is zero chance of it happening. Coal at most and not even that looks likely, globally. It's like not caring about the huge hole in the hull of the ship while arguing about how to "safely" store all the water coming in.

rich_sasha 5y ago
You're describing the objective function, but ignoring the constraints. Stop digging up coal - fine. Cut off power to people who have no other power sources? Erm... What about emergency diesel generators for hospitals, diesel use for shipping goods (lowest-carbon-emitting means of transport). It's just not that simple.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  I am pretty sure emergency diesel generators use a tiniest fraction of energy used by tankers moving goods around.
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    Indeed. But simply closing down everything that pumps fossil fuel out of the ground breaks things we like and need. It's not that simple. Or is the medicine still better than the disease? I don't know anymore.

zelphirkalt 5y ago

If you have children, then that is probably the most impactful. They will need/want the same living standards as other people. They get the full package of other impactful things you mention plus some more like house building. For example a young family does no longer live in the same small 2 person flat, but instead builds a house (or lets build). Especially in first world countries and developing to first world countries, where everyone wants to have the high living standard, having children will be the most impactful action. Perhaps there should be a high CO2 tax on having children, which one needs to continue to pay, while the children live?

Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago
Children are part of the goal. I mean, what's the point of preserving the planet for the future generations if we don't make future generations? If you follow your logic to the extreme, the most beneficial actions would be things like euthanasia or just plain suicide.
- w_t_payne 5y ago
  Given the state of the world, and a desire to be as helpful as possible, the latter feels quite appealing to me right now.
  - admg 5y ago
    We're living through a strange time but please do not be defeatist and try not to let alarmist (it's trying to push certain actors into action quite rightly) make you feel that like that should ever be appealing.
- scbrg 5y ago
  > If you follow your logic to the extreme, the most beneficial actions would be things like euthanasia or just plain suicide. Absolutely. Any logic followed to the extreme will yield extreme results. It could, however, be argued without much difficulty that people that exist have more rights than people that never will exist, so expecting someone to commit suicide (an extremely angst filled action that is also likely to cause an incredible amount of suffering within the person's close social circles) is not really at all comparable to asking them to not procreate - something that may not happen anyway for a number of reasons, and which does not inflict any particular amount of extra suffering. It could also be argued that we don't really need to be eight billion, so some/most of us not procreating does not imply that there will be no future generations. And, it could also be argued that all other life forms on earth are not worthless, and their well being alone - sans humans - could be worth preserving a reasonable climate for.

oliwarner 5y ago

I think we all have a fairly good idea of some things that would help, it's the scale we struggle to comprehend. But even if you could find out the magic threshold for what it would take, if there's anything that lockdown and covid restrictions in the UK have taught me in the past 18 months, it's that we all need to follow the rules or it's pointless. It's so disheartening to see others not pay these taxes, to not restructure and restrict their lifestyles. It seems that unless things change globally, why are we even considering making changes? 1000 people in Quatar generate over seven times as much CO2 as 1000 people in the UK. Luxembourg, the US, Canada, Australia (and more) all generate three times as much CO2 as the UK per 1000 residents. The US has no carbon taxes. They've long been able to buy fuel and fly domestically for ridiculously low prices. Yeah, I'm having a whinge, but this is my point. If we're not all in this together, what's the point?

wffurr 5y ago
Long past time to start enforcing carbon tariffs on non-compliant countries.
- oliwarner 5y ago
  I'm not sure how that would work. One country's power to enforce anything like that would —I think— just look like trade tariffs. This can be effective, but they sometimes just make things more expensive (and in doing so, seem like yet another sacrifice). But maybe there are enough countries to form a pact, with enough alternative producers available to make this effective.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Make things more expensive for both sides and meanwhile incentivize producers to switch to more carbon neutral methods. Yes, it requires sacrifice, but it would also require sacrifice if the other unilaterally switched to more carbon neutral production methods without a tariff.
whimsicalism 5y ago
> If we're not all in this together, what's the point? The point is that while we are squabbling over the most fair division of the burden, we are screwing future generations. Qatar has 0.03% of the worlds population. We can't let climate renegade states preclude us from taking action, and we can't sit around until we have a world government.

zejn 5y ago

The easiest way to approach this is to "stop burning stuff". Is a material being burned? Then it almost certainly emits CO2. Do you call it fuel? Stop using it or use it as little as possible. Most personal energy use is for heating living spaces and transportation. EVs are great for transportation, e-bikes are even better. Heat pumps are great for heating and cooling living spaces. Using these one can drastically reduce direct personal CO2 emissions. Sure, you're then buying electricity and part of electricity is produced by burning stuff. If possible, you should then get solar panels, to at least offset the amount of electricity used. With regard to purchasing one should regard objects that have been over temperature of boiling water as things that took a significat amount of energy to be created: food is cooked, metals and glass are melted, and so on. Is there a way to reuse them, or at least recycle?

smt88 5y ago
Cows and concrete don't involve burning things, but they do produce a large percentage of total CO2 emissions.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  A long way behind heating homes and transport though.
- guerby 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cement_kiln https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cement_kiln 1400 degree to make the cement part of concrete. You could may be reach this by solar concentration, but currently we do burn stuff to make concrete.
  - stephen999 5y ago
    Could you not use resistive heating powered by solar/wind/hydro? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_heating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule_heating
- zejn 5y ago
  Correct. With meat the important thing is to know the turnaround time, eg. how much time does it take for an animal to reach adult size. Bigger animals tend to have longer lives. More lifetime means more food, water, energy. Beef has really long turnaround time, pork is not much better, poultry is quite good, insects are really hard to beat. Eggs are also a great source of protein. Having your own chicken coop is not a bad idea, if you have the space for it. Cement is problematic because the CO2 comes from the process even if you use non-CO2 emitting fuels for heating up the raw materials, which eventually become cement. Alternative to cement is to use wood for construction, which I think is quite popular in the US.

captainmuon 5y ago

I don't think conscious customers can steer the economy quickly enough. If we stop emitting any greenhouse gases today, global warming will still accelerate for more than a decade. (And I don't believe very much in boycotts anyway - when a customer decides to switch to a different product, marginal price changes are likely to cause another customer to switch the other way, simply speaking.) I think at this point we need an international coalition that slams the breaks and sets a strict deadline for ceasing CO2 emission. If there are not severe shortages, it means we are not strict enough and can go faster. And then let the market work. If a steak costs $100 or you have to wait 3 years for a car, that's sucks, but so be it.

pjerem 5y ago

In France and in Europe we have online emissions calculator. If you happen to live in France, you can make the simulation on the « Mes Gestes Climat » website. I don’t know if it exists in USA (since those things are highly country-dependent) but I suppose it may exists. Those are interesting tools to get actionable feedback.

rich_sasha 5y ago
This is good, but ultimately opt-in. I think you need something much wider-ranging than this.

lcam84 5y ago

The dividend from the taxes should be evenly distributed to everyone. This would compensate people who have good environmental lifestyle and allow local business that produce low carbon (due low distribution) to be more competitive

kebman 5y ago

The emphasis many countries take is to focus on car owners and drivers by taxing private commuters to death, with dubious environmental gains outside of increasing state income. Meanwhile one cargo ship or cruise liner arguably pollutes way more than millions(!) of cars. I'm not sure that's a great route to take politically, no pun intended. They seem to go for the lowest hanging cash grab before going after those where it's actually the easiest to get the biggest gains in terms of environment and actually lowering of negative emissions.

adrianN 5y ago
Cargo ships "pollute" as much as millions of cars, but that pollution is sulphur, not carbon.
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  Shipping is responsible for lots of noise pollution which is extremely detriment to marine wildlife.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Let's not muddy the waters. Right now, we are talking about GHG and we have to be focusing on that with an eagle eye.
tpxl 5y ago
Same with garbage bags and plastic straws. Stuff comes in stores absolutely wrapped in tons of plastic and they go and ban plastic straws. Not to mention stuff that's triple wrapped (sweets for example).
- Sebb767 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure plastic straws were a trash problem, not a climate problem. Related, but not the same thing.
  - 5y ago

tiagorbf 5y ago

> It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production I felt exactly the same a couple of months ago... I spent hours researching what actions could we individually do and what was its impact. Then I created an app that compiles all this information. You can check it out here https://changeit.app https://changeit.app Hope it helps :D

TigeriusKirk 5y ago

The most impactful thing you can do as an individual is devote yourself to improving clean energy resources and carbon sequestration technologies. If you're here there's a good chance you have the ability to help engineer these techs. That's going have way, way more impact than riding your bicycle.

menesss 5y ago
Do you have any suggestions on how to get started on this?

MildlySerious 5y ago

Here's a small parametric projection you can adjust to get a rough idea[1]. The conclusion is that we need to work on all ends, starting with heavy carbon taxing. We have pretty much squandered the time for anything but a drastic 180 degree turn. The best thing you can do as an individual is to be vocal about those concerns and put pressure on your political representatives to take action, CCL[2] being one example of that. I'm not a big proponent of the individual carbon footprint thing, it's mostly an attempt to shift responsibility to the individual when the ones that can actually get meaningful action on the way are corporations and governments. Despite that, avoiding meat (if you can't avoid all, focus on beef), buying local produce and avoiding flights where possible are still beneficial things to do and the biggest contributions you can make. I would add not driving a 20 year old car, but a lot of time you not driving it just means someone else will be driving that car instead. [1] https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html [2] https://citizensclimatelobby.org/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/

bamboozled 5y ago
I love how corporations can pollute the absolute shit out of the atmosphere, but when it comes to me having a steak, I’m the bad guy, this is one of the biggest cons of our time. Could you imagine how much more damage cheap air travel, coal fired power generation etc has done compared to people eating food ? Do you know who eats all the beef they like ? Oil company executives.
- sethammons 5y ago
  The steak one is usually more nuanced. Not all land that raises cows can be productive for crops. I tend to buy beef that is locally sourced, which also reduces a carbon footprint.
NumberWangMan 5y ago
To be very specific -- if you want a carbon fee & dividend, which is strongly supported by both economists and scientists as the most efficient, effective way to get the USA to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, call and write your senator as soon as you can using this link which will help you out with instructions (as well as explain more details if you're interested): https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/ It only takes about 10 minutes! Right now we have the best chance we've had in a long time to get meaningful climate legislation passed.

VoodooJuJu 5y ago

It's not hard to know what actions impact CO2 production. Like nosianu else said, just stop taking carbon fuel out of the ground. Anything above ground is part of the carbon cycle and is fair game - manure, trees (to a point), etc. But I think what's hard about this is not understanding what causes CO2 production, but understanding what it means to stop burning buried carbon fuel. It means no more computer, cel phone, cars, no flying, no 2-day shipping for [ANY PRODUCT!], no container ships and planes shipping food and products all over the world. It might mean abandoning air-conditioning and having to hand-wash your clothes. It means abandoning modern comforts (not necessities). It means abandoning a hyper-consoomer lifestyle and becoming more localist, which most of us simply cannot fathom doing.

benjaminwootton 5y ago

Not sure if I’ll get voted down as a conspiracy theorist, but some kind of mobile app “passport” or “digital ID” would be a great way of tracking your carbon budget. Especially with a bit of big tech surveillance supporting the whole programme. I wonder how they could get something like that adopted quickly?

api 5y ago

Coal is 60% of all carbon emissions. Phase out coal for electricity production. Just doing that would go far.

agumonkey 5y ago

Switching what devices ? High pain to me is no more transport, overheat, empty shelves. Reducing devices seems like a freebie

agumonkey 5y ago

Fair point, it's blurry From the top of my head, most cited ones are Concrete production Heating / cooling (unless designed to be physically smart) Beef production Worldwide transportation (fruits all year long) Cars If you eat a Mediterranean die, move by foot or bike and have a well insulated house with no AC you're good

adolph 5y ago
Why pick on AC? How about adding no heat?
- i_haz_rabies 5y ago
  Heat is necessary, AC is not necessary (I realize this is not entirely true, but I think it's fair to say a lot more people would die without heat than without AC).
  - adolph 5y ago
    Living in inhospitable environments is a choice, not a necessity, that is causing environmental degradation. Let’s say an ideal human environment temp is around 60-80 degrees. In 110° weather, you just need to move 30°. In freezing weather you’ve gotta move 48°. That’s 50% more delta.
    - i_haz_rabies 5y ago
      I think trying to fit the populations of North America, Europe, Russia, China, Japan, Korea, the Stans, Mongolia, the Baltics, New Zealand, Chile, and Argentina, not to mention alpine countries like Nepal, into the ideal human habitability zone would go poorly.

belorn 5y ago

There were a study done in Sweden a few years ago that looked at the question about an individuals actions and the corresponding CO2 production. No car > skipping flight > buy green energy > Get a electric car > diet. https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/four-lifestyle-choices-most-reduce-your-carbon-footprint https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/article/four-lifestyle-choi...

npteljes 5y ago
How could you leave out the one with the biggest impact, which is basically "less humans"?
- cranekam 5y ago
  *fewer
  - ajryan 5y ago
    I wonder how much energy we waste on pedantry.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      Probably not as much as we waste on resolving confusion caused by playing fast and loose with shared rules/understanding of things.
    - npteljes 5y ago
      Sometimes it has its place. Can you imagine a public speaker making errors like this? I think it detracts from the message. Public, and especially popularly read stuff should be as correct as humanely possible. Good grammar is a habit, improved by repeat exposure.
  - npteljes 5y ago
    I appreciate this, I want my snappy sentences to be grammatically correct.
- 5y ago

sundvor 5y ago

Do what we do in Vic, Australia: Add usage tax for EVs, with only a narrow timed limited vehicle discount for standard range EVs. And not a single ICEV co² tax in sight. That'll help (the oil companies).

jussij 5y ago

For anyone concerned about climate change, the most important thing you can do is cast a vote for a political party that the issue seriously.

timmg 5y ago
I think the reality is that even parties who take the issue seriously know the solutions are difficult. Making difficult decisions is a great way to get voted out in the next term. An example from the US: During discussions for the recent bipartisan infrastructure deals, Republicans wanted to raise the gas tax to help pay for the bill. Progressives felt it would affect the middle class too much so they pushed it out. Gas tax isn't exactly a carbon tax. But it is close. So here's a case where the party on the Right wanted a "CO2 tax" but the party on the Left scuttled it. (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/us/politics/what-is-in-the-infrastructure-plan.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/us/politics/what-is-in-th...) I think France saw something similar with the "Yellow Vest" movement. I'm definitely not knowledgeable about French politics, but I think a lot of that protest was around an increase in gas tax.
city41 5y ago
In the US, any party that takes the issue seriously does not get elected in an meaningful capacity. Maybe a city representative, even state representative here and there, but that's about it.
- jussij 5y ago
  And until that changes there will be very little in the way of action on climate change as the problem is just kicked down the road. However all that delay just makes the problem harder to fix. So the choice really is simple. Find a way to make your government representatives take the issue seriously, or accept the 'catastrophic train wreck' that is just some decades away.
NumberWangMan 5y ago
This helps, but there's a time lag, and the person you voted for does not know why you voted for them over the other party. Letting your congressperson know that you care about it by calling them or writing them directly is much, much more effective at getting policies you care about implemented. You should vote (in every election!) because they know who votes and who doesn't, and want to make voters happy -- but you also need to know that this is an issue of interest to you. Right now, here's a very straightforward way to do that for climate change: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/

snomad 5y ago

We don't even need a carbon tax per se; we just need consumption based tax system (as the US had until 1913), instead of a productivity based tax system.

fsflover 5y ago

> It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production. Some are high-pain, low-gain (switching devices off instead of standby?), some are opposite (cycling instead of driving when possible etc). http://www.kimnicholas.com/uploads/2/5/7/6/25766487/fig1full.jpg http://www.kimnicholas.com/uploads/2/5/7/6/25766487/fig1full... But the tax is probably more important still. Also, political action.

modmans2nd 5y ago

How about makign a masive push to gen 4 nuclear reactors that can burn what we today call "waste" and then dump coal?

coliveira 5y ago

The day true environmental costs are embedded in every item, is the day capitalism will come to an end. The nature of the system is to underpay for items that are not helping certain groups. Take just the example of food. 90+% of the price you pay go to middlemen. Real producers make close to nothing on each food item. But food contributes to a large percentage of global warming. Suddenly you will have to start paying lots of money to producing countries of most food consumed in the world. And this is just one item of the things we consume every day.

pas 5y ago
And why would that make "capitalism" "come to an end"? It opens up new niches for food production. Especially more capital intensive ways (eg vertical farming). The trend of less and less people being employed in food production continues.

the_lonely_road 5y ago

If I do all of the things that I can do to reduce my families CO2 output, and I mean really dig into sacrificing our quality of life, how much CO2 will I prevent for all of that hardship and sacrifice? How much CO2 was put out in service of President Trump's endless rallies? How much CO2 was put out in service of President Obama's birthday bash this last week? As long as the elites, including the goddamn political elites, are living in opulence and emitting immensely more CO2 than my family could ever hope to save with even a barebones existence, I will choose to be damned to hell with the rest of humanity before I make one more sacrifice of my family. Carbon needs to be taxed and it needs to be fair. There will be no future for us if we continue down this opt in path. That much is crystal clear.

tpm 5y ago

I found Project Drawdown's Solutions Table quite good: https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions

chadlavi 5y ago

Actions everyday people can take are a drop in the bucket. The answer is in stopping major polluting corporations. And it's also the one thing America will never do, because that's who has the money.

jhrmnn 5y ago
Only people are final consumers in every production chain, not corporations. (Even if indirectly, say, by driving on a freshly built highway.) So people’s everyday decisions could have a major impact, if collective. Often it’s very hard to understand how CO2 emissions flow along the production chains though.

NumberWangMan 5y ago

I think others have mentioned CCL already, but if you live in the USA want a specific, concrete, easy action you can take RIGHT NOW to move us toward a carbon tax & dividend, check this out: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/senate/ Right now we have the best chance in a long time to actually get a carbon tax passed, but it depends on lots of us calling and writing our senators to make sure they know we want one! If you support this, please do it as soon as you have a chance. And I very much agree -- even for people who are willing to take individual action, without including environmental impact into the price of things, it's very hard to figure out where you can best make a difference.

guilhas 5y ago
Carbon tax is a scam. It is exactly what economists not worried about the environment would invent
- andrekandre 5y ago
  > Carbon tax is a scam. why?
  - guilhas 5y ago
    There will be companies exempt, banks making "carbon tax loans", the rich will be paying it easily, while the poor, and small companies, as always, will have to make the most concessions. Why give even more money to the people that lead the world here
    - andrekandre 5y ago
      what should we do instead?
      - guilhas 5y ago
        That is a good question, which I can't exactly answer There is this link from other comments, which I am not sure how good it is: https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions https://drawdown.org/solutions/table-of-solutions But in general if you create regulation for companies to produce less trash, explore all natural resources responsibly. Invest all public money and outsource contracts to the most environmentally friendly companies... You don't need to punish the market If you just keep the current public investment in environmental R&D and eventually you'll have the better product, and who invested will be rich... just standard stuff really Also people in general were always in favour of clean and green. The only issue has been and will be corporate greed A Corporate carbon tax would be interesting if all profits went local first. And people decided where it should go

thehappypm 5y ago

The rebate-for-poor-people thing is really the main issue. the West is already on its way towards reducing CO2 emissions and it's accelerating with new technologies, without austerity forcing the hand. Meanwhile the developing world (the poor people) are growing CO2 dramatically. It's irrelevant where CO2 comes from. That's why this is so damn hard.

cblconfederate 5y ago

If the premise is that it is caused by humans, then start by reducing them

dleslie 5y ago

If you fly to go skiing then it's the vacation. Jet fuel isn't clean burning by any means. Car is next. Depending on how your power is generated, that energy use may be carbon neutral.

triceratops 5y ago

> It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production To a first approximation, every time you pull out your wallet, you're emitting carbon. The bigger the $ sign, the more carbon you're emitting. New car > used car New furniture > used furniture High energy bill > low energy bill High grocery bill > low grocery bill Big house > small house Long commute > short commute Expensive vacation > cheap vacation After you've gotten past the big stuff, there are nuances. Burning your trash is cheaper than paying for trash removal but obviously worse for the environment (better yet; generate less trash). A diet of Twinkies is cheaper than a diet of leafy greens but it'll cost you on healthcare in the long run, so likely worse carbon emissions. Try to run your household budget as lean as you can, and vote for politicians who support collective action against climate change. I think that's as much as any individual can do.