Python library tracks energy consumption and calculates your carbon emissions
github.com
github.com
Time to watch Carl Sagan discuss climate change in 1985 then explain why 40% of global electricity is generated from coal.
> The use of household carbon footprint calculators originated when oil producer BP hired Ogilvy to create an "effective propaganda" campaign to shift responsibility of climate change-causing pollution away from the corporations and institutions that created a society where carbon emissions are unavoidable and onto personal lifestyle choices. The term "carbon footprint" was also popularized by BP.
They always knew full well that it would never be feasible for the large majority of plastic types but to claim that it 'could' be recyclable somehow makes it seem like it is on you. When really we would have to live an ascetic live to avoid plastic as a consumer.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...
Also a way to deflect blame from rich folks who fly in private jets, are chauffeured in gas-guzzling SUVs, and who also travel too often.
Extraction taxes/bans are the only policy that matters. We need to leave the carbon that's already in the ground in the ground. Expensive new ways to re-sequester a fraction of the extracted carbon are just a shell game. Efficiency efforts will always be hindered by some variant of Jevon's paradox. [0].
Companies (like BP) that are heavily invested in extraction technology and capital - drilling rigs, pipelines, etc. - will try to convince you that we can extract as much as we want indefinitely, and figure out how to get the carbon out of the atmosphere later. It's a stupid, obviously wrong, bad-faith argument from an amoral, economically motivated set of actors.
I wonder why I still strive to limit my carbon footprint. Nobody’s impressed nor inspired by my behaviour.
1. Not all technological developments contribute the the Javon's paradox. I can see how more fuel efficient engines contributes to that, but electric cars (along with renewable energy generation) don't.
2. the point of taxes isn't solely to eliminate fossil fuels, it's also to provide compensation for the damage that fossil fuels create. If we determine that a tonne of carbon emitted causes $100 worth of damage, and we levy a $100 tax on carbon, that means governments can fully offset the damage. That makes for a far better state of affairs, even if we continue burning fossil fuels. I'll even go as far to say that it's a perfectly acceptable state of affairs.
>The only solution I see is banning extraction. But banning something? Unthinkable!
It's unthinkable for good reason. What do you do about critical industries that depend on fossil fuels? The whole point of carbon pricing is to use the market to force the least efficient/easiest to switch carbon users to stop emitting carbon, so that the costs of transitioning is as low as possible.
>I wonder why I still strive to limit my carbon footprint. Nobody’s impressed nor inspired by my behaviour.
Most of what you said applies to voting as well. Do you also wonder why you vote in elections?
Take it to the extreme to verify this effect - a $1000/barrel tax on extracted oil is effectively a ban.
Please don't fall into cynicism and despair. A lot of people are putting efforts into decreasing their environmental impact and you are not alone.
True, we are a minority, but doing the right thing matters.
Big evil corp says something that's false for marketing. Nobody believes it. This is the most common by far, how often do you hear advertising that's way overblown? Probably trillions are sunk into this globally every year.
Alternatively, big evil corp might actually say something true and it's still in their favor so they spend money on spreading the word here, too.
People use this argument "it came from an evil corp" (usually phrased as propaganda, signaling you must be stupid to even listen) as a shortcut for "it must be false". I don't know whether it is in this case: we need to weigh it critically. Is it not possible that this corp saw an advantage and used it, regardless of whether the argument was true?
It seems like a shortcut that's easy to subscribe to and be able to move on with your day because you're not too blame. Maybe true, maybe not. I'm not sure, but this is not the way to find out.
It doesn't add up. If all these consumers shift patterns, of course we'll have a major shift in business priorities. It also sets a good example for your peers if you make one choice per day for the environment, multiplying your individual impact. Either that or the government has to force the issue, so no one can have an unfair advantage by doing a bad thing.
I mean, it's tempting to blame "corporations and institutions" for the lack of climate-friendly options, but how much of that is them being evil, and how much of that is due to aggregate consumer preferences? If say, 70% of consumers chooses the cheapest option available (disregarding climate impact), and the remaining 30% doesn't constitute a critical mass for a separate line of climate-friendly products, can you really blame "corporations and institutions" for following what the majority of consumers want?
Yes, because carbon isn't priced into the economy, and corporations lobby to maintain that status quo. Moreover, consumers can't choose between "cheap" and "environmentally friendly" because corporations don't publish information about the carbon footprint of their products (although they do lots of greenwashing--advertising "environmentally friendly" with no actual accountability).
The solution is pricing carbon emissions into the economy so the market will figure out how to use those emissions most efficiently. The function of "blame" here is to make it less advantageous for corporations to obstruct the path toward averting climate change.
Note also that corporations aren't the only ones who deserve blame: there are also the politicians in their pockets on both sides. Obviously the Republicans who deny climate change, but also those Democrats who preach it and then do next to nothing to stop it (throwing a few billion at the least-effective conceivable climate initiatives) or use it for cover for trillions of dollars of progressive social spending (via "climate justice").
I don't disagree that corporations are blameworthy by lobbying against climate change legislation. That said, you're changing the topic here. The entirety of that sentence was about the "lack of climate-friendly options" and the comment I was replying to was talking about "a society where carbon emissions are unavoidable".
>Moreover, consumers can't choose between "cheap" and "environmentally friendly" because corporations don't publish information about the carbon footprint of their products
Is this really an issue? Just assume anything that doesn't have strongly worded environmental claims is not environmentally friendly. Given that a supermajority of consumers care about the environment (at least in the abstract), if a product is actually environmentally friendly, it's probably going to be predominantly labeled.
I don't see how I'm changing the topic. As you noted, the original topic was "corporations and institutions that created a society where carbon emissions are unavoidable and onto personal lifestyle choices". You seemed to be arguing that the landscape of goods and services is carbon intensive because consumers demand cheap products irrespective of climate concerns. I'm rebutting that with "consumers don't have the information to choose between climate and cost, they can only compare costs". Specifically, I noted (or rather implied) two ways to facilitate that information: require every product to publish information about its carbon footprint (with accountability mechanisms) or just price it into the cost of the item via carbon tax or similar.
> Is this really an issue? Just assume anything that doesn't have strongly worded environmental claims is not environmentally friendly. Given that a supermajority of consumers care about the environment (at least in the abstract), if a product is actually environmentally friendly, it's probably going to be predominantly labeled.
Yes, because "strongly worded environmental claims" is meaningless. There's no accountability that products making these claims outperform their competition at all, and even if they do outperform the competition, a consumer can't know by how much (am I paying 50% more for a product that emits half as much carbon, or only 1% less?). There's virtually no regulation here.
Fair point, I apologize for the accusation.
>Yes, because "strongly worded environmental claims" is meaningless. There's no accountability that products making these claims outperform their competition at all, and even if they do outperform the competition, a consumer can't know by how much (am I paying 50% more for a product that emits half as much carbon, or only 1% less?). There's virtually no regulation here.
But voluntary labeling seem to work fine with "organic"/"non-GMO" products? I agree that being able to compare two conventional products and choose the least bad option has value, but the lack of a pesticide content label didn't prevent the proliferation of organic products on supermarket shelves.
Let's not limit society to just what "consumer preference" determines. We should be using our institutions (ie the government) to make things better.
To emit CO2, someone must be producing fossil fuels, and someone must be paying money to buy and burn it. IMO, everybody is responsible (some more than others), and if anyone starts arguing that it's the responsibility of (those different group of people), I get suspicious because that is a classical stalling tactic.
For example, my airline ticket has a line with how many tons of carbon are emitted by my share of the flight. What the heck is anyone going to do with that? But with the carbon tax on jet fuel, the price of the ticket is definitely going to affect behavior. And, of course, taxing fuel is FAR easier than trying to accurately measure the carbon in the jet blast at every stage of a flight.
An efficient, effective, and practical way to do it is to tax the carbon content of fuels, and let the market do its thing with prices.
Again, the simple, effective solution is just tax the carbon content in the fuel. If there's one thing the government does know how to do, it's tax things.
Right, but that's exactly why we're not doing it... Anything that's actually effective would eat into profits too much and upset the people that the lobbyists and lawmakers work for.
Better if it's done across society but not totally useless to be aware of that info even in the absence of a carbon tax.
Also, if they tax the fuel (which they certainly should) someone still needs to work out how to apportion that to the individual customers. Does the first person signing up pay the full wack, do you average it across all tickets, what if the plane flies half full, and so on. This is the kind of thing airlines do every day for the cost of fuel anyway.
Why is this even a problem? Fuel costs money today, yet airlines are somehow able to "apportion that to the individual customers".
But what makes it all work is the pricing mechanism of the free market, not some auditing system.
See Milton Friedman "Free to Choose"
Obviously they’re going to resist that, so what’s the solution?
A carbon tax high enough to basically kill off all ICE cars and fossil fuel power plants would modestly impact airfare costs. Airlines are convenient and take very direct routes while getting extreme fuel efficiency per passenger.
And airlines have been flying empty planes during the pandemic. That's ridiculously wasteful.
In normal operations they are about 100 passenger miles per gallon of fuel and that’s straight line paths with 80% full aircraft.
As for the fuel efficiency, this says 58mpg. Business class or first class are much worse, of course. And private jets simply shouldn’t exist…
The only global number was: “In 2018, CO₂ emissions totalled 747 million tonnes for passenger transport, for 8.5 trillion revenue passenger kilometres (RPK), giving an average of 88 gram CO₂ per RPK.[2] A 88 gCO₂/km represents 28 g of fuel per km, or a 3.5 L/100 km (67 mpg‑US) fuel consumption.”
Anyway that’s not measuring direct fuel consumption in flight but estimating fuel used by the industry to transport passengers. Sort of like including fuel transportation costs to gas stations as part of a cars fuel efficiency. It’s also using US numbers to do so which likely overstate fuel consumption.
> In 2018, the US airlines had a fuel consumption of 58 mpg‑US (4.06 L/100 km) per revenue passenger for domestic flights
We should take a system-wide view. The relative efficiency of any particular plane is irrelevant if the entire system depends on other, wasteful aspects. Let's consider the energy required to run an airport, including the infrastructure leading to the airport.
Also just like road, rail, and boats aircraft don’t get to fly hypothetically ideal paths from origin to destination. Actual MPG is distance traveled / fuel used not distance from the origin to destination / fuel used.
Not to mention most commercial flights are also moving freight on those same aircraft but that’s secondary.
Why would it? Looking around it looks like fuel makes up 30% of airline's expenditures. Disregarding profits, that means $300 of a $1000 plane ticket is for fuel. The current world wide price for jet fuel is $3.76/gal, and burning a gallon of jet fuel produces 9.57kg of co2. One source says carbon needs to be priced at least $100/tonne[3], which is in line with current prices in the EU. With that price, the price of carbon is expected to add $0.96 per gallon, or a 26% increase in fuel costs. However, it would only raise overall expenditures by 7.7%. I doubt that's doubt that's going to bankrupt airlines. Consumers will probably fully absorb the cost.
[1] https://www.iata.org/en/publications/economics/fuel-monitor/
[2] https://impactful.ninja/the-carbon-footprint-of-aviation-jet...
[3] https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/carbon-needs-cost-least...
That's why I said an appropriately high tax. Any tax that can easily be absorbed by consumers, will not reduce emissions fast enough.
[1] https://www.showyourbudgets.org/?country=united_states_of_am...
Unsustainable business are unsustainable and we can't exterminate humanity to make some CEOs happy.
The problem is, I don't have any say in the matter, while corporations have a lot of power, and rich people depend on airlines.
So, it's unlikely that the beneficiaries of an unsustainable industry will voluntarily decide to drive it to extinction.
Taxing the fuel allows the industry to evolved towards an optimal solution. Regulating it does not.
Just look at how government regulation of the production, distribution, and price of infant formula resulted in mass shortages, as the manufacturers are unable to adapt.
Basically, the same as making packaging which mixes metal, plastic and paper, and then telling you there's two places in your city you can drop it off for "recycling", so they've done their bit.
This argument works in reverse as well:
>Us consumers aren't responsible, it's you corporations for choosing high carbon options! So rather than making lifestyle changes to reduce carbon emissions (not driving a SUV, not eating meat, not living in a McMansion in suburbia), we just call it out and claim it's on them.
Individuals have very little control over most carbon emissions. Outside of choosing to have fewer children, and transportation-related activities, there really is very little an individual can do here. [1]
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[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed...
[1]: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541#...
Blaming individuals may be interesting morally but it makes for terrible public policy. It doesn't produce anything actionable. Imagine trying to fix ozone depletion with a voluntary labelling scheme and "blaming" people who use CFCs.
Marketers and the US government.
Marketers and companies in general have enormous power to manipulate people and yet they dodge responsibilities all the time.
AFAIK SUV sales replacing sedan sales is a trend that has been going on for decades[1]. Blaming it on "[car companies] don't want to put in the engineering effort" doesn't make sense.
[1] https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iukk8bw9OXn...
The concept of "carbon footprint" truly is corporate propaganda and deflection.
That does not imply that individuals are morally entitled to overconsume.
A Citizen’s Footprint: An analysis of the carbon footprint of consumption, investment, and political choices for the UK and Germany
> Voting for climate-friendly political parties in Germany & the UK could be the best way to minimize your carbon footprint
> 2DII’s analysis finds that voting for a climate-friendly party can reduce the carbon footprint of an individual’s voting choice by almost 7,000 kgs of CO2 per year. This compares to around 2,900 kgs of CO2 per year through a combination of going vegan, switching to a zero-carbon electricity provider, cutting out air travel, and switching from a petrol to an electric car. A typical UK citizen will reduce an additional 2,700 kgs of CO2 per year by switching to a low-carbon equity pension plan.
> A key driver of this outcome is the fact that changing consumption patterns will ‘only’ reduce your own footprint, while voting in elections can realize policies that change the footprint of an entire country – including for those voters that voted against climate policies.