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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

The problem with that is that most of the CO2 emissions we depend on as individuals are beyond our control. Things like the emissions generated in growing, processing, packaging and transporting the goods we buy, our food and clothing, our mail, the utility resources we consume, the services we depend on, public transport. Yes we can do thing in our daily lives but in reality it’s a tiny fraction of our actual CO2 footprint. That’s why societal and industrial level action, and therefor public policy is so important.

The biggest environmental issue we can affect in our daily lifestyle is recycling and reducing household rubbish. It’s another important issue and one where we really can make a difference in our everyday behaviour.

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You bring up "public transport" as one of the emissions sources beyond people's control, without bringing up the biggest source which is under our control: cars. US per capita CO2 emissions are 20 tons/year, of which a typical passenger car is 5 tons/year. If you're worried about the carbon footprint of your stuff...it is possible to buy less stuff.

There was a journalist in the UK that lives for 3 months, with his family, doing everything they could manage to reduce their carbon footprint, and they got it down by about 5%.

There are roughly 2 passenger cars per person in the US, so cars are about 12% of emission, but even if you had no car you’d still need to travel somehow. You’d never get your travel footprint to zero. I am not saying don’t try or don’t bother, I’m just saying firstly we are not going to solve this with public policy action. And second, sometimes there are other valid environmental issues we can focus on in our personal behaviour.

Did that journalist ever do plane trips? I recall reading that for many people that is the single biggest thing that accounts for their emissions.

So I can find that the US has about 16 tons/year of CO2 emissions per capita. Do you have a source for how much the passenger cars contribute?

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...

It isn't beyond our control if we actually baked in the cost of co2 emissions into the cost of the goods and services we use. That said, these things end up being very hard to calculate.

I think it makes more sense to put the cost on the emissions themselves (i.e. their production), not on the end-products. In a perfect world these two approaches would be equivalent, but since there are relatively few emission sources compared to end products, I think it would be easier to enforce.

The problem with mixing carbon taxes with global trade in general is that if some countries don't participate in carbon taxation, then carbon-intensive production will just shift to those countries. Game-theoretically, it's a relatively unstable equilibrium because if all countries are participating, then a country that suddenly refuses carbon taxation could stand to benefit enormously.

Well, there is a solution to that: border tax adjustments.

Carbon taxes — and I mean at the well, not those bureaucratic, corruption-prone cap-and-trade schemes – are the simplest, cheapest, fastest way to get a carbon-free economy off the ground. And if you make them revenue-neutral, you can get conservatives on board as well (look up "fee and dividend").

How would you make it work in practice? Would every country sign a global accord to tax oil wells, coal mines, etc?

Or would you have an import tax on such materials? How exactly would you adjust taxes at the border?

I also think this is the best solution, but I'm not exactly sure how you'd implement it without loopholes.

Yes, import taxes would be the temporary solution. This is my go-to resource: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-fee-and-dividend/

Different foods have different carbon intensity. My current small apartment has a smaller utility bill than the large house I used to own. These are choices.

That's why, if you really want to limit your carbon footprint, you have to do it by conscientious consumption.

Buy less meat or no meat.

Never buy a car new. Used are more cost effective anyway.

Same goes for clothes.

Choose an electricity supplier that uses a green source of power or buys offset certificates for all the power they produce.

If your employer is going to pay to send you to a conference of your choice, pick the one that is 300 miles away over the one that is 3000 miles away.

I recall reading that cargo and fishing vessels (or is that all seafaring vessels? Or all ships and boats?) produce at least as much CO2 and particulates as the cars we drive, as the ships aren't nearly as clean as road vehicles.

I've no source for that, though, it was quite some time ago that I read it.

According to the EPA, 27% of total greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation, with only 2% of transportation emissions coming from boats. https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-...

However, I also recall reading that boats produce a ton of emissions (I'm pretty sure it was a popular reddit post about how the huge oil tankers and shipping containers account for almost all ship-related emissions). One explanation: the maritime emissions may be underestimated due to the practice of ships using flags of convince. This website, and wikipedia and a few other sources, claim that the global contribution of maritime transportation to GHG/CO2 emissions is around 2% http://www.airclim.org/acidnews/new-figures-global-ship-emis...

2% of the total is still nothing to sneeze at, though. Since tankers and container ships are so big, it's likely that individual ships are some of the largest individual contributors to emissions. Maybe we should allow/subsidize these ships to use nuclear energy

If you trace that number used in the quick facts website to the report its data is based "Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks 1990–2015" you get the following explanation for the data Note that these totals include CO2, CH4 and N2O emissions from some sources in the U.S. Territories (ships and boats, recreational boats, non-transportation mobile sources) and CH4 and N2O emissions from transportation rail electricity. and An ongoing planned improvement is to develop improved estimates of domestic waterborne fuel consumption. The Inventory estimates for residual and distillate fuel used by ships and boats is based in part on data on bunker fuel use from the U.S. Department of Commerce. Domestic fuel consumption is estimated by subtracting fuel sold for international use from the total sold in the United States. It may be possible to more accurately estimate domestic fuel use and emissions by using detailed data on marine ship activity. The feasibility of using domestic marine activity data to improve the estimates will continue to be investigated.

Given this, I'm doubtful the report measures all cargo ships internationally.

> flags of convince

<pedantry>flags of convenience</pedantry>

No, this misleading stat refers to sulfur and soot emissions, not CO2. It's true that ships at sea burn a cheap sulfurous fuel, "bunker fuel", because there's nobody to inhale it out there. But it's misleading because people think this stat refers to CO2, which it doesn't. Ground transport produces far more CO2 than ships, which by weight are the most efficient way of moving anything.

But CO2 isn't the only green house gas. There are gasses with >>1 CO2eq

That's true, but the sulfur emissions from ships do not have this effect. They actually have a slight negative greenhouse effect, because they reflect light in the upper atmosphere.

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