4 ms·
Your math seems to be off, 250kcal apparently yields 8.8kg difference a day. Anyway, the idea that personal consumption has no use is absurd. It portrays a fa
by mrtksn 5y ago
Your math seems to be off, 250kcal apparently yields 8.8kg difference a day.
Anyway, the idea that personal consumption has no use is absurd. It portrays a false idea that these pipes and factories and what not are made for the personal use of the affluent when in fact all these machinery produce items demanded by the masses. That's why the owners are rich, they produce(facilitate could be a better word) the stuff we want and we give them money to receive the output. Obviously, reducing personal consumption or making choices directly reduces the output of the machinery of the rich.
If you want to blame a class, you are better off blaming private jets, mega yacht and golf courses if you are after the rich. These are the only emissions that are significantly different from the rest.
Then you come to transportation and large homes of the middle class in western countries, especially the USA.
- TremendousJudge 5y agoThe point is that they could still produce the exact same thing, and just _plug their leaks_, and everybody would be better off.
- mrtksn 5y agoWhy do you think they don't do that? Could it be because they are evil or because not enough people will care enough to pay for the price difference due to clean production efforts? It comes down the masses demanding it or not demanding it. You say that personal consumption doesn't make a difference then those who believe you go for the cheaper option even if they can afford the cleaner option. You say that personal efforts can't make a difference then they vote for the party that promises tax reductions instead of the one that promises to enforce fixed gas leaks.
- mojzu 5y agoAre there that many industries where consumer choice would encourage companies to make those kinds of pro-humanity choices? I'd like to buy electronics that aren't manufactured in part by children but it isn't like companies advertise whether they do that or not. So outside of occasional investigative journalism or assuming that they (or one of their suppliers) probably do what choices am I left with?
- mrtksn 5y agoThey actually do, that's why some companies also engage in Greenwashing, which is the practise of pretending to be environmentally friendly when you are actually not. Because the brand of these companies is so valuable, once exposed they actually take steps to fix issues. Perfection is enemy of the good though, but things are actually moving for the better when there is a trend to demand the better. There's of course counter trends, like eat more meat burn more fuel, screw the foreigners etc. I bet you, if these become dominant, the same brand will be all over it. "For every phone you buy from us, we kill a baby seal and throw a battery in the ocean" could be the next campaign if the ant-environmentalism catches up.
- mojzu 5y agoI agree this kind of consumerism moves the needle, however I'm not sure that this mechanism can be relied on at the scale required to help with problems like climate change. Millions of consumers in many countries would have to be convinced to do research/change their purchasing habits and potentially inconvenience themselves or even increase their cost of living, even to environmentally concious people I'd guess that's a hard sell
- keymone 5y agoWell guess what, a tax on ghg emissions will make both those that don’t care about environment and those that pretend to care about it, suffer economic consequences. Win-win, isn’t it?
- ethbr0 5y ago> Why do you think they don't do that? Because they're a company, and the regulatory authorities (EPA & MMS successors) don't have enough funding and will for reliable enforcement. There are already branches of government tasked with doing this. They just need Congressional support and/or prodding to make it a higher priority.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago"because not enough people will care enough to pay for the price difference" the emissions are invisible, and thus people don't have the choice whether to pay more or not. Especially as a lot of the consumption is indirect - you don't buy the gas, but you buy a meal in a restaurant that was cooked using that gas, or a car whose manufacturer bought the dashboard from a company that bought the plastic from a company that made it using gas from the national gas market, where all gas is fungible and it doesn't matter how it was produced.
- SilasX 5y agoBut it wouldn't produce the exact same thing. Going by the original figures, which were yearly, methane leaks have a harm magnitude of 28 kg/person/year, while the vegan switch would be 1 kg/day, which is 365 kg/person/year, still much more impactful than the savings from sealing leaks. With that said, the OP's [tgsovlerkhgsel's] general point is still sound, that there is much lower hanging fruit for reducing emissions that would be revealed by a neutral penalty system applied universally, and also show lifestyle changes to be a disproportionately burdensome measure.
- jcranberry 5y agothe article says thats 10% of methane emissions. Good progress but not enough.
- titzer 5y agoThe personal carbon footprint is just a dodge for the elite, a way to push the problem off onto us rubes. The reality is that the producers have far more power over CO2 output than consumers ever will. "Let the market decide" does not work with large, hugely imbalanced indirect externalities.
- thatfrenchguy 5y agoSeems like a good fallacy to keep running a old diesel and est meat at every meal because “the corporations do it” to me
- adamrezich 5y agoit only seems that way because you've been conditioned to feel shamefully personally responsible for things far outside of your control
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bcrosby95 5y ago"the corporations" have spent hundreds of millions in marketing and advertising pushing the idea of a personal carbon footprint. Just so we can point our fingers at eachother rather than them. Money well spent I guess.
- JacobThreeThree 5y ago>The personal carbon footprint is just a dodge for the elite, a way to push the problem off onto us rubes. Some other questions that come to mind: Who decides what the carbon footprints of everyone's behaviors are? What level of surveillance is needed to enforce everyone's behaviors? To what extent will carbon credits markets be subject to regular market events like boom/bust cycles, speculators and other market manipulators?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago> Your math seems to be off, 250kcal apparently yields 8.8kg difference a day. The difference per 1000 kcal seems to be 5.15 - 1.17 = 3.98 kg. Where do you get 8.8 kg per 250 kcal? Maybe you were looking at the least-efficient beef? 8.8*4 = 35.2 kg per 1000 kcal would match the "beef (beef herd)" value.
- mrtksn 5y agoYeah sorry, I was looking at beef. For some reason I kept reading pork as beef. So it's not 9 or 1 but 4, we met at the middle.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago4 per 1000 kcal, so 1 per 250 kcal.