It is articles like this that remind me that we so desperately need a carbon tax.
Making a t-shirt in China, shipping to the US, wearing it for a few times, and then shipping it to Africa should not be economically viable.
Making a t-shirt in China, shipping to the US, wearing it for a few times, and then shipping it to Africa should not be economically viable.
I couldn't find some ready numbers, so I tried some estimations.
26% of all energy goes into transportation[1]. Automobiles are about 60% from that, so about 15% of total energy is spent moving automobiles[2].
1 https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/index.php?tbl=T...
2 https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201...
This does not include land use and agriculture emissions.
Looking at it another way, US has close to 300 million vehicles, and the average automobile emits 4.8 tonnes [3] of CO2 a year. It comes down to 1.5 gigatons of CO2 each year. Total US emissions are about 5 gigatons. This would make it a 30% part of CO2 emissions. It's higher than the number above because that was based on European values of 60% of all transportation emissions coming from automobiles. The US automobiles are bigger and consume more.
3. https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...
I think it's safe to say it's somewhere in the ballpark of 15-30% of all CO2 emissions are from automobiles.
I don't consider the manufacturing of the automobiles, because people will need moving regardless. It's either a battery powered car, plane, train etc. Those all need manufacturing and maintaining.
To max 0.5% sulfur in fuel from max 3.5% in maritime fuel:
https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Sulphur-2...
The time during pandemic lockdown where traffic levels plummeted and how quickly the air cleared pretty much proves that personal auto traffic is huge contributor to bad air quality.
The thing that people noticed during the 'rona was almost exclusively the latter... especially the noise and particulates. I could hear birds outside when the windows were open, the street-facing windows accumulated a lot less dust.
This is just a sad way to look at things. Changes have to start somewhere. They can start small, and then grow larger. People like you saying "too small, not effective" just need to sit down and be quiet, thank you very much.
The focus on "individual action" is a talking point that BP invented in the 70s (see https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sh...). I won't stop anyone from reducing their footprint, but we have tried this shit for decades now and it clearly hasn't worked a single bit.
We need to hold the big emitters of greenhouse gases accountable, they haven't been for about half a century. Remember the "ozone hole" and the CFC ban? That one worked, because the companies bringing CFCs into circulation were tackled instead of pushing the blame to consumers.
If all low quality fast fashion were $20 instead of $7 across the board people would still gorge themselves on it.
They're not buying stuff for the need to have clothes, they're buying things for the experiences of buying it and the novelty of something new.
>Nest, Echo, Homepod...
Just get up and turn off the damn lights yourself.
>Drones
How many people bought one or two, flew it around for a while and crashed it. Very few are making videos or doing something interesting with them.
>Starbucks
Do we really need separate stores, trucks shipping product all over for someone to have the convenience of a cup of coffee?
>TV/Netflix
If we want to talk about the utility of something, this one is amazing. How much money, time and energy has been spent so that someone can watch a 30 minute show on demand. And we have to keep spending money and energy because the novelty of the old stuff has worn off.
We've driven world abject poverty from >90% to <10% in half a century. End the products you mention (and the like), and those buying them won't themselves have customers enough to fund their own work. End Starbucks etc, and coffee farms worldwide will crash.
Money is the ultimate arbiter of value. Many deride whatever as "trinkets and gadgets" etc, but they're not putting up the sustenance calories to support life otherwise.
I just don't think paying money to someone who can't even solve the problem that is being caused is going to solve anything.
Declaring that the cornerstones of modern, industrialized life should not be economically viable is basically calling "game over" and giving up. We can do much better. Climate defeatism should be replaced by climate entrepreneurism. If you don't like something, make something better!
We've been selling timber from somebody else's forest for too long. It is time to charge for the trees.