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I ride a bike (have never owned a car) and am vegan and I think both of those are awesome, at least if you live in a place where both are common so that things

by schoen 3y ago

I ride a bike (have never owned a car) and am vegan and I think both of those are awesome, at least if you live in a place where both are common so that things are at least moderately convenient. But I also flew about 100,000 km per year in the time before COVID and am still on track to fly about 30,000-50,000 km this year. This puts me right back among the people with the highest carbon footprints in the whole world. There are lots of different things that people might be asked to sacrifice, not just one. And the general trend of development and rising wealth is a trend of greater energy intensity. You can find exceptions and substitutes where you can reduce energy intensity in some area without major sacrifice, but if you have to do it across the board over and over again, that's really a loss of material standard of living.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
> But I also flew about 100,000 km per year in the time before COVID and am still on track to fly about 30,000-50,000 km this year. This puts me right back among the people with the highest carbon footprints in the whole world. You were going to fly 30k-50k km regardless of if you biked or drove. The fact that you biked cut your emissions quite a bit. A cut in emissions is still a success. And before anyone says, but what about my electric car!? 1) it produces a ton of carbon to build your car (a year's worth of emissions for a Westerner)... 2) for at least the next 10-years, in most of the US and the EU, your car is charged by ~50% fossil fuels. The average person's emissions are almost ~1/10th just from building their car...
thunky 3y ago
> But I also flew about 100,000 km per year in the time before COVID and am still on track to fly about 30,000-50,000 km this year Can I ask why? I struggle to think of a legitimate reason anyone would need to travel that much. Please don't say it's for meetings.
- schoen 3y ago
  In the time before COVID I frequently spoke at conferences and would go in person to several conferences per year, often in foreign countries. This year is family visits and vacations. My travel patterns were still rather low for self-conscious "frequent flyers", who would, for example, feel an absolute requirement to fly at least 50,000 or 100,000 miles on a single airline each year in order to "maintain status" so that that airline would reward them with various perks. I have "only" ever done this once. Of course, I expect even approaching the low end of a frequent flyer status is probably the top 1% carbon footprint in the world.

by schoen 3y ago

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

> But I also flew about 100,000 km per year in the time before COVID and am still on track to fly about 30,000-50,000 km this year. This puts me right back among the people with the highest carbon footprints in the whole world. You were going to fly 30k-50k km regardless of if you biked or drove. The fact that you biked cut your emissions quite a bit. A cut in emissions is still a success. And before anyone says, but what about my electric car!? 1) it produces a ton of carbon to build your car (a year's worth of emissions for a Westerner)... 2) for at least the next 10-years, in most of the US and the EU, your car is charged by ~50% fossil fuels. The average person's emissions are almost ~1/10th just from building their car...

thunky 3y ago

> But I also flew about 100,000 km per year in the time before COVID and am still on track to fly about 30,000-50,000 km this year Can I ask why? I struggle to think of a legitimate reason anyone would need to travel that much. Please don't say it's for meetings.

schoen 3y ago
In the time before COVID I frequently spoke at conferences and would go in person to several conferences per year, often in foreign countries. This year is family visits and vacations. My travel patterns were still rather low for self-conscious "frequent flyers", who would, for example, feel an absolute requirement to fly at least 50,000 or 100,000 miles on a single airline each year in order to "maintain status" so that that airline would reward them with various perks. I have "only" ever done this once. Of course, I expect even approaching the low end of a frequent flyer status is probably the top 1% carbon footprint in the world.