12 ms·

It is very uncomplicated in fact: Most people here on HN are rationally capable of understanding the challenges humanity faces right now. What many aren't cap

by atoav 3y ago

It is very uncomplicated in fact: Most people here on HN are rationally capable of understanding the challenges humanity faces right now. What many aren't capable of is accepting the conclusion that we all have to change the way we live and quite possibly even the way we organize society in order to mitigate the irreperable problems our way of living has already caused. Deep down they might suspect this is necessary, but it is much more comfortable to believe in a solution that is only technological and go on as we did. That is why discussions around such technological silver bullets are always toxic: people want to believe.

matsemann 3y ago
Especially since HNers mostly are the top top top earners in the world, having unsustainable lifestyles. No one likes to accept it can't be like this forever.
- CalRobert 3y ago
  It's really frustrating that I had to work really hard, study the right things, and get lucky to be able to afford to live somewhere my direct emissions are minimal. More people should be able to afford to live car free in well insulated homes.
- fasterik 3y ago
  This doesn't seem right. Most of the world's new carbon emissions are coming from developing countries. On the other hand, the HN crowd is much more likely to live in dense cities (which are more climate friendly), have access to public transportation, drive electric cars, and can afford to pay for carbon offsets. The only thing unsustainable about the first world lifestyle is the fact that we don't have the political will to invest in real solutions like nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, etc.
  - lordnacho 3y ago
    > Most of the world's new carbon emissions are coming from developing countries. Isn't this because we're paying them to make stuff for us? Or is there some accounting of this where its their own consumption that causes it?
    - omnimus 3y ago
      Also why would developing countries have to limit carbon emissions more than non developing ones?
      - Contusion3532 3y ago
        Exactly. The cumulative emissions of the United States dwarf the rest of the countries in the world[1]. The powerhouse that is the United States was built on the externality of carbon emissions. Now that the West has built their economies of this externality, they're trying to prevent developing nations from catching up by utilizing the same externality. [1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/The-20-largest-contributors-to-cumulative-CO2-emissions-1850-2021.png https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/The-2...
    - fasterik 3y ago
      It's because they're industrializing, have higher population growth, and are primarily building coal power plants to keep up with it.
  - matsemann 3y ago
    Well, you're saying "new carbon emissions", of course those are coming from developing countries. It's not the same statement as I said. And of course they should be allowed to improve their quality of life. My point is that an average HNer lives in a country where per capita co2 per person is >10x as much as the poorer countries. And since the average HNer is a well off person with a lavish lifestyle, international travels etc., it's probably closer to 100x the amount of a person in a developing country. Either this lifestyle should only belong to us few and developing countries should remain developing. Or we need to cut back to a sustainable level everyone can share. Which is a reality people don't want to face. > The only thing unsustainable about the first world lifestyle is the fact that we don't have the political will to invest in real solutions like nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, etc. It's not about "political will". Would you pay more for a product if it's external effects were priced in? Probably not. Hence unsustainable. Our level of consumption is only possible because we don't pay the true price, someone else is.
    - fasterik 3y ago
      Carbon emissions per capita is going down in developed countries. It's going up in developing countries. Your implication was that the current problem is the level of consumption in the richest countries. But in reality that only accounts for a small portion of the expected carbon emissions over the next century. We don't need to "cut back" to a sustainable level. A sustainable level is whatever amount of energy we can produce without increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. If we built more nuclear, solar, and wind power, and invested more in carbon capture and storage, we could sustain a much higher level of consumption than we currently are, while emitting less carbon.
      - matsemann 3y ago
        You're kinda proving my point. Instead of facing reality as that would mean changes to your lifestyle, you want to keep on going as if nothing is happening and just hope technology will save us.
        fasterik 3y ago
  - benhurmarcel 3y ago
    CO2 emissions per capita (tons/person/year): Canada 18.72 United States 15.32 China 7.44 Brazil 2.24 Indonesia 2.02 India 1.89
    - detourdog 3y ago
      I’m sure Canada is driven by heating load.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        What drives it doesn't matter. Some areas may simply not be habitable sustainably.
        pclmulqdq 3y ago
        We do seem to be working hard on making sure Canada is nice and temperate, though.
        jacquesm 3y ago
        It beats -45 I guess... (that's the lowest I ever saw on my outside thermometer on St. Josephs Island). You make a good point though: what is and what isn't habitable will change and as a result there will be substantial movement of people, displaced either by choice or by need.
        detourdog 3y ago
        I understand I was just trying to explain to myself how they were #1 in usage. I was surprised. I was also trying to define the problem since they were outpacing the USA. Looks like Niagara falls only produces about 16 billion BTUs or 4.9 Million kWs.
        jacquesm 3y ago
        Up North there are stacks of firewood everywhere and prepping for winter is an exercise in logistics. Also still many oil furnaces in active use.
CalRobert 3y ago
I want everyone to be able to live in a well insulated flat powered by renewable energy walking and biking distance from their daily needs, and with public transport (and rarely-needed EV share) for the rest. Combined with a low meat low dairy diet and less disposable consumer junk it seems like we could get a long ways with an arguably better quality of life. Maybe work half time too.
- adaml_623 3y ago
  Who's building that well insulated flat and where is the insulation coming from? I sometimes worry that the pyramid of infrastructure and labour required to create that flat is not scalable
  - detourdog 3y ago
    I just did it. Definitely possible. Every project is a compromise. The biggest and easiest compromise to make is location. Opportunities are everywhere if one is looking and prepared. I don't understand why so many people choose to believe things are impossible. https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0Y5oqs3qnakFd https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0Y5oqs3qnakFd
    - CalRobert 3y ago
      How's public transport and bike infra?
      - detourdog 3y ago
        we have a bike path that crosses town and the next town over is working to connect. Once tbat is connect it will be 22 mile bike ride to pittsfield. Public transit exists but luckily there arn’t many places to go. If it’s not within 3 miles mostly likely you have to travel 20 miles. This helps keep the carbon footprint low because it is easy to go without.
- concordDance 3y ago
  "Stop eating nice food" is a nonstarter, as is "give up personal all weather mobility", have these as a policy positions and we'll get 3 degrees rises as those would be a smaller quality of life decrease for the average American.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Why would I accept that there's this doomsday barreling towards us at high speed, and the only way to avoid it is economic devastation and serfdom for my grandchildren? That sounds an awful lot like a long con. Most rational people have arrived at the very reasonable conclusion that the more extreme the danger is, the more justified we are in attempting cutting edge countermeasures. So when the response we get back is "oh no, you can't do that, anything but that!"... the more it sounds like it was a grift all along. This requires no conspiracy, by the way. Large groups of people can subconsciously coordinate in these ways without even realizing they're doing it. Just takes a bit of groupthink and a small dab of neuroticism.
- ImHereToVote 3y ago
  Personally I can't wait for the democracy is white supremacy memes coming at us in a couple of months/years.
concordDance 3y ago
> What many aren't capable of is accepting the conclusion that we all have to change the way we live and quite possibly even the way we organize society in order to mitigate the irreperable problems our way of living has already caused That's because this has never actually been shown. So many people think it has, but almost none have ever seen an actual attempt at a QALY calculation for no climate change mitigation. If you've actually seen one I'd love you to link it! Mostly it's lots of handwaving, but attempting to quantify things is actually important so we can know what measures are worthwhile (e.g. if climate change was an existential risk this century then threatening with nukes any country emitting CO2 would be reasonable).
fasterik 3y ago
>That is why discussions around such technological silver bullets are always toxic: people want to believe. On the flip side, some people reject technological solutions on principle because for them, it's not about solving problems, it's about atoning for the sins of humanity. What does the alternative future look like where we solve the climate crisis by changing the way we live and organize society? Personally, I would prefer to continue having electricity, heat, running water, sewage treatment, shipping, transportation, and the internet. It seems to me that if we really wanted to, we could keep these things around while putting a substantial portion of GDP into building nuclear reactors and removing carbon from the atmosphere. But that's not a satisfying answer for people who have made the climate crisis into a religious issue.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Bluntly: far fewer people, sustainability built into every process, no more oil, very high cost for transportation unless it is by ship, personal transport will be very costly and you won't do it unless you really have to. Think '1850' but with transistors.
  - fasterik 3y ago
    >far fewer people Also bluntly: how would we do that ethically without severely restricting reproductive rights or "cleansing" populations?
    - titzer 3y ago
      What part of birthing billions of children into poverty was ethical again?
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        That's the problem right there: by asking the question like that you are essentially saying 'children are for the wealthy'. And that's also not how it should be. This is a super hard problem to resolve in a fair way that works in an international setting because you need everybody on board otherwise it will not work. It's the tragedy of the commons endgame.
hkt 3y ago
The thing that is galling is that we already have the technology to live sustainably if people do change their lifestyles.
detourdog 3y ago
Plenty of people I know talk the talk but understand that they’re a special case and need say incandescent flood light in the kitchen.
RhysU 3y ago
> ...we all have to change the way we live... It is negligently irrational to believe the entirety of the human race can be convinced to do, in perpetuity, what you suggest. The conclusion to accept is the cat's out of the bag. Two weeks won't stop the spread. Nuclear weapons will never be uninvented. Etc etc etc. And, like, yawn. This has long been obvious. We'll adapt in some manner whatever the horrors. I would bet against a human but not against humanity.
at_a_remove 3y ago
Ha! You sort of slid a miracle in there like it was a checkbox. "We all have to change the way we live and quite possibly even the way we organize society ..." Your solution to this problem involves Universal Agreement and Cooperation Among Humanity. People can't even agree not to murder each other. Any solution which requires UAaCOAH might as well have unobtanium as its focal point. It's just not going to happen. We can't agree on metric versus imperial, on language, on such weirdly silly things like an afterlife, on oppressive things like what women should be allowed to wear (in the face of the collapse of the biosphere, right now, you can find interviews with men who have chucked acid onto the faces of their wives because their peers taunt them about said wives wearing modern and "immodest" clothing: a real top priority for civilization). We can't agree on who owns what rock and we can't agree on how to govern, and our governance can't agree with its populace on little things like not lying to them about practically everything. We are a divisive, fiercely independent species with our own thoughts about everything, however trivial, whether or not it is good for us. Forget three nines, ignore a couple of standard deviations, getting even four-fifths of humanity to suddenly snap on to an agenda which will be personally uncomfortable to them is too much to ask. Any plan which requires that level of agreement is absolutely doomed unless you've got some kind of high-level AGI in your pocket with just one priority: stop the oncoming several catastrophes valued over the preferences, choices, comfort, even reproductive lives of each person on the planet ... and some way of enforcing it. Lacking Forbin and his Colossus, we will not unite on much of anything besides "we all want to do what we individually want." Once you realize this, it's going to be the small (in terms of populace) projects which do not require universal consent which might have any shot whatsoever, rather than getting the bulk of humanity together, for the first time in history, to cooperate.
ericd 3y ago
I’m pretty sure there’s no chance that people in aggregate are going to voluntarily reduce consumption - on the contrary, the billions in developing countries are moving toward the western lifestyle, and they’re not going to accept westerners trying to tell them not to. We have to work to make this lifestyle sustainable by making clean power, cement, steel, synthetic fuel, etc cheaper than the polluting alternatives, because hoping that we’ll reduce our way out of this is wishful thinking. We need to get to negative new carbon, not just less carbon.
llsf 3y ago
THIS! As we will grasp the effective impact of the past century of burning fossil fuel, we will first go in denial, hoping for a technological miracle. While there might be a way to produce 84% of the energy currently used without involving fossil fuel, it would not reasonably be implemented in the next decades. So, we might have to change the way we live. The sooner we adapt, the less painful it would be. If this is not for the climate, it would be as we reach peak oil/gas/coal.
majormajor 3y ago
> What many aren't capable of is accepting the conclusion that we all have to change the way we live and quite possibly even the way we organize society in order to mitigate the irreperable problems our way of living has already caused. This seems like a euphemism for "a lot of people 'have' to die" - when phrased that way it becomes obvious the reason that many will search for active measures to take to try to prevent that.
tmnvix 3y ago
Spot on. The amount of cognitive dissonance with regard to environmental concern continues to amaze me. Many people seem to have strong concerns about their environmental impact but few acknowledge just how damaging (relative to others) certain activities are. The obvious example is driving. People know it is bad but few seem to be aware of just how much co2 is produced per litre of petrol used (about 234g - so about 1kg every 5km traveled). Let that sink in. At an average of 20,000km per year that is about 4,000kg. Per capita co2 emissions in the US is 14,000kg. Sorting your recycling is so much easier than acknowledging that.

by atoav 3y ago

matsemann 3y ago

Especially since HNers mostly are the top top top earners in the world, having unsustainable lifestyles. No one likes to accept it can't be like this forever.

CalRobert 3y ago
It's really frustrating that I had to work really hard, study the right things, and get lucky to be able to afford to live somewhere my direct emissions are minimal. More people should be able to afford to live car free in well insulated homes.
fasterik 3y ago
This doesn't seem right. Most of the world's new carbon emissions are coming from developing countries. On the other hand, the HN crowd is much more likely to live in dense cities (which are more climate friendly), have access to public transportation, drive electric cars, and can afford to pay for carbon offsets. The only thing unsustainable about the first world lifestyle is the fact that we don't have the political will to invest in real solutions like nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, etc.
- lordnacho 3y ago
  > Most of the world's new carbon emissions are coming from developing countries. Isn't this because we're paying them to make stuff for us? Or is there some accounting of this where its their own consumption that causes it?
  - omnimus 3y ago
    Also why would developing countries have to limit carbon emissions more than non developing ones?
    - Contusion3532 3y ago
      Exactly. The cumulative emissions of the United States dwarf the rest of the countries in the world[1]. The powerhouse that is the United States was built on the externality of carbon emissions. Now that the West has built their economies of this externality, they're trying to prevent developing nations from catching up by utilizing the same externality. [1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/The-20-largest-contributors-to-cumulative-CO2-emissions-1850-2021.png https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/The-2...
  - fasterik 3y ago
    It's because they're industrializing, have higher population growth, and are primarily building coal power plants to keep up with it.
- matsemann 3y ago
  Well, you're saying "new carbon emissions", of course those are coming from developing countries. It's not the same statement as I said. And of course they should be allowed to improve their quality of life. My point is that an average HNer lives in a country where per capita co2 per person is >10x as much as the poorer countries. And since the average HNer is a well off person with a lavish lifestyle, international travels etc., it's probably closer to 100x the amount of a person in a developing country. Either this lifestyle should only belong to us few and developing countries should remain developing. Or we need to cut back to a sustainable level everyone can share. Which is a reality people don't want to face. > The only thing unsustainable about the first world lifestyle is the fact that we don't have the political will to invest in real solutions like nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, etc. It's not about "political will". Would you pay more for a product if it's external effects were priced in? Probably not. Hence unsustainable. Our level of consumption is only possible because we don't pay the true price, someone else is.
  - fasterik 3y ago
    Carbon emissions per capita is going down in developed countries. It's going up in developing countries. Your implication was that the current problem is the level of consumption in the richest countries. But in reality that only accounts for a small portion of the expected carbon emissions over the next century. We don't need to "cut back" to a sustainable level. A sustainable level is whatever amount of energy we can produce without increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. If we built more nuclear, solar, and wind power, and invested more in carbon capture and storage, we could sustain a much higher level of consumption than we currently are, while emitting less carbon.
    - matsemann 3y ago
      You're kinda proving my point. Instead of facing reality as that would mean changes to your lifestyle, you want to keep on going as if nothing is happening and just hope technology will save us.
      - fasterik 3y ago
- benhurmarcel 3y ago
  CO2 emissions per capita (tons/person/year): Canada 18.72 United States 15.32 China 7.44 Brazil 2.24 Indonesia 2.02 India 1.89
  - detourdog 3y ago
    I’m sure Canada is driven by heating load.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      What drives it doesn't matter. Some areas may simply not be habitable sustainably.
      - pclmulqdq 3y ago
        We do seem to be working hard on making sure Canada is nice and temperate, though.
        jacquesm 3y ago
        It beats -45 I guess... (that's the lowest I ever saw on my outside thermometer on St. Josephs Island). You make a good point though: what is and what isn't habitable will change and as a result there will be substantial movement of people, displaced either by choice or by need.
      - detourdog 3y ago
        I understand I was just trying to explain to myself how they were #1 in usage. I was surprised. I was also trying to define the problem since they were outpacing the USA. Looks like Niagara falls only produces about 16 billion BTUs or 4.9 Million kWs.
        jacquesm 3y ago
        Up North there are stacks of firewood everywhere and prepping for winter is an exercise in logistics. Also still many oil furnaces in active use.

CalRobert 3y ago

I want everyone to be able to live in a well insulated flat powered by renewable energy walking and biking distance from their daily needs, and with public transport (and rarely-needed EV share) for the rest. Combined with a low meat low dairy diet and less disposable consumer junk it seems like we could get a long ways with an arguably better quality of life. Maybe work half time too.

adaml_623 3y ago
Who's building that well insulated flat and where is the insulation coming from? I sometimes worry that the pyramid of infrastructure and labour required to create that flat is not scalable
- detourdog 3y ago
  I just did it. Definitely possible. Every project is a compromise. The biggest and easiest compromise to make is location. Opportunities are everywhere if one is looking and prepared. I don't understand why so many people choose to believe things are impossible. https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0Y5oqs3qnakFd https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0Y5oqs3qnakFd
  - CalRobert 3y ago
    How's public transport and bike infra?
    - detourdog 3y ago
      we have a bike path that crosses town and the next town over is working to connect. Once tbat is connect it will be 22 mile bike ride to pittsfield. Public transit exists but luckily there arn’t many places to go. If it’s not within 3 miles mostly likely you have to travel 20 miles. This helps keep the carbon footprint low because it is easy to go without.
concordDance 3y ago
"Stop eating nice food" is a nonstarter, as is "give up personal all weather mobility", have these as a policy positions and we'll get 3 degrees rises as those would be a smaller quality of life decrease for the average American.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

Why would I accept that there's this doomsday barreling towards us at high speed, and the only way to avoid it is economic devastation and serfdom for my grandchildren? That sounds an awful lot like a long con. Most rational people have arrived at the very reasonable conclusion that the more extreme the danger is, the more justified we are in attempting cutting edge countermeasures. So when the response we get back is "oh no, you can't do that, anything but that!"... the more it sounds like it was a grift all along. This requires no conspiracy, by the way. Large groups of people can subconsciously coordinate in these ways without even realizing they're doing it. Just takes a bit of groupthink and a small dab of neuroticism.

ImHereToVote 3y ago
Personally I can't wait for the democracy is white supremacy memes coming at us in a couple of months/years.

concordDance 3y ago

> What many aren't capable of is accepting the conclusion that we all have to change the way we live and quite possibly even the way we organize society in order to mitigate the irreperable problems our way of living has already caused That's because this has never actually been shown. So many people think it has, but almost none have ever seen an actual attempt at a QALY calculation for no climate change mitigation. If you've actually seen one I'd love you to link it! Mostly it's lots of handwaving, but attempting to quantify things is actually important so we can know what measures are worthwhile (e.g. if climate change was an existential risk this century then threatening with nukes any country emitting CO2 would be reasonable).

fasterik 3y ago

>That is why discussions around such technological silver bullets are always toxic: people want to believe. On the flip side, some people reject technological solutions on principle because for them, it's not about solving problems, it's about atoning for the sins of humanity. What does the alternative future look like where we solve the climate crisis by changing the way we live and organize society? Personally, I would prefer to continue having electricity, heat, running water, sewage treatment, shipping, transportation, and the internet. It seems to me that if we really wanted to, we could keep these things around while putting a substantial portion of GDP into building nuclear reactors and removing carbon from the atmosphere. But that's not a satisfying answer for people who have made the climate crisis into a religious issue.

jacquesm 3y ago
Bluntly: far fewer people, sustainability built into every process, no more oil, very high cost for transportation unless it is by ship, personal transport will be very costly and you won't do it unless you really have to. Think '1850' but with transistors.
- fasterik 3y ago
  >far fewer people Also bluntly: how would we do that ethically without severely restricting reproductive rights or "cleansing" populations?
  - titzer 3y ago
    What part of birthing billions of children into poverty was ethical again?
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      That's the problem right there: by asking the question like that you are essentially saying 'children are for the wealthy'. And that's also not how it should be. This is a super hard problem to resolve in a fair way that works in an international setting because you need everybody on board otherwise it will not work. It's the tragedy of the commons endgame.

hkt 3y ago

The thing that is galling is that we already have the technology to live sustainably if people do change their lifestyles.

detourdog 3y ago

Plenty of people I know talk the talk but understand that they’re a special case and need say incandescent flood light in the kitchen.

RhysU 3y ago

> ...we all have to change the way we live... It is negligently irrational to believe the entirety of the human race can be convinced to do, in perpetuity, what you suggest. The conclusion to accept is the cat's out of the bag. Two weeks won't stop the spread. Nuclear weapons will never be uninvented. Etc etc etc. And, like, yawn. This has long been obvious. We'll adapt in some manner whatever the horrors. I would bet against a human but not against humanity.

at_a_remove 3y ago

Ha! You sort of slid a miracle in there like it was a checkbox. "We all have to change the way we live and quite possibly even the way we organize society ..." Your solution to this problem involves Universal Agreement and Cooperation Among Humanity. People can't even agree not to murder each other. Any solution which requires UAaCOAH might as well have unobtanium as its focal point. It's just not going to happen. We can't agree on metric versus imperial, on language, on such weirdly silly things like an afterlife, on oppressive things like what women should be allowed to wear (in the face of the collapse of the biosphere, right now, you can find interviews with men who have chucked acid onto the faces of their wives because their peers taunt them about said wives wearing modern and "immodest" clothing: a real top priority for civilization). We can't agree on who owns what rock and we can't agree on how to govern, and our governance can't agree with its populace on little things like not lying to them about practically everything. We are a divisive, fiercely independent species with our own thoughts about everything, however trivial, whether or not it is good for us. Forget three nines, ignore a couple of standard deviations, getting even four-fifths of humanity to suddenly snap on to an agenda which will be personally uncomfortable to them is too much to ask. Any plan which requires that level of agreement is absolutely doomed unless you've got some kind of high-level AGI in your pocket with just one priority: stop the oncoming several catastrophes valued over the preferences, choices, comfort, even reproductive lives of each person on the planet ... and some way of enforcing it. Lacking Forbin and his Colossus, we will not unite on much of anything besides "we all want to do what we individually want." Once you realize this, it's going to be the small (in terms of populace) projects which do not require universal consent which might have any shot whatsoever, rather than getting the bulk of humanity together, for the first time in history, to cooperate.

ericd 3y ago

I’m pretty sure there’s no chance that people in aggregate are going to voluntarily reduce consumption - on the contrary, the billions in developing countries are moving toward the western lifestyle, and they’re not going to accept westerners trying to tell them not to. We have to work to make this lifestyle sustainable by making clean power, cement, steel, synthetic fuel, etc cheaper than the polluting alternatives, because hoping that we’ll reduce our way out of this is wishful thinking. We need to get to negative new carbon, not just less carbon.

llsf 3y ago

THIS! As we will grasp the effective impact of the past century of burning fossil fuel, we will first go in denial, hoping for a technological miracle. While there might be a way to produce 84% of the energy currently used without involving fossil fuel, it would not reasonably be implemented in the next decades. So, we might have to change the way we live. The sooner we adapt, the less painful it would be. If this is not for the climate, it would be as we reach peak oil/gas/coal.

majormajor 3y ago

> What many aren't capable of is accepting the conclusion that we all have to change the way we live and quite possibly even the way we organize society in order to mitigate the irreperable problems our way of living has already caused. This seems like a euphemism for "a lot of people 'have' to die" - when phrased that way it becomes obvious the reason that many will search for active measures to take to try to prevent that.

tmnvix 3y ago

Spot on. The amount of cognitive dissonance with regard to environmental concern continues to amaze me. Many people seem to have strong concerns about their environmental impact but few acknowledge just how damaging (relative to others) certain activities are. The obvious example is driving. People know it is bad but few seem to be aware of just how much co2 is produced per litre of petrol used (about 234g - so about 1kg every 5km traveled). Let that sink in. At an average of 20,000km per year that is about 4,000kg. Per capita co2 emissions in the US is 14,000kg. Sorting your recycling is so much easier than acknowledging that.