Right now, could you prepare a slice of toast with zero embodied carbon emissions?
Right now, could you prepare a slice of toast with zero embodied carbon emissions?
Right now, could you prepare a slice of toast with zero embodied carbon emissions?
Since at least the 2000s, big polluters have tried to frame carbon emissions as an issue to be solved through the purchasing choices of individual consumers.
Solving climate change, we've been told, is not a matter of public policy or infrastructure. Instead, it's about convincing individual consumers to reduce their "carbon footprint" (a term coined by BP: https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oil-coined-carbon-footprints-to-blame-us-for-their-greed-keep-them-on-the-hook).
Yet, right now, millions of people couldn't prepare a slice of toast without causing carbon emissions, even if they wanted to.
In many low-density single-use-zoned suburbs, the only realistic option for getting to the store to get a loaf of bread is to drive. The power coming out of the mains includes energy from coal or gas.
But.
Even if they invested in solar panels, and an inverter, and a battery system, and only used an electric toaster, and baked the loaf themselves in an electric oven, and walked/cycled/drove an EV to the store to get flour and yeast, there are still embodied carbon emissions in that loaf of bread.
Just think about the diesel powered trucks used to transport the grains and packaging to the flour factory, the energy used to power the milling equipment, and the diesel fuel used to transport that flour to the store.
Basically, unless you go completely off grid and grow your own organic wheat, your zero emissions toast just ain't happening.
And that's for the most basic of food products!
Unless we get the infrastructure in place to move to a 100% renewables and storage grid, and use it to power fully electric freight rail and zero emissions passenger transport, pretty much all of our decarbonisation efforts are non-starters.
This is fundamentally an infrastructure and public policy problem, not a problem of individual consumer choice.
#ClimateChange #urbanism #infrastructure #energy #grid #politics #power @green
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@jgkoomey @urlyman @ajsadauskas @green
New technologies can bring efficiency improvements, but can also bring new uses for resources, and that ultimately translates to more demand. Recent decades are the best proof of that. Even though everything is more efficient now, our material footprint and environmental degradation is at its peak as well.
@jackofalltrades @jgkoomey @urlyman @ajsadauskas @green
Even if absolute decoupling is possible, we can no longer view it as a reasonable strategy. If we started in the 60's, sure, *maybe* we could have maintained a slow-growing economy while staying within Earth's biophysical constraints.
But we didn't.
We are now so far outside safe bounds (#overshoot) that the theoretical possibility of absolute decoupleing seems moot, at best. And perhaps a dangerous distraction.
https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html
@FantasticalEconomics @jackofalltrades @jgkoomey @ajsadauskas @green from my reading, efficiencies have a very well-established pattern of feeding Jevons paradox.
And that’s what animals are evolved to do. They pursue energy sources subject to external pressures on them. We think we’re cleverer than that. The last 30 years, in particular, strongly suggest otherwise
@urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @jackofalltrades @ajsadauskas @green No, that is not the case. Efficiency doesn’t cause increases in energy use except on the margin for a limited number of cases. What drives emissions up is people getting wealthier in a mostly fossil energy system. When we transform the system to be much less fossil intensive then emissions can come down even if GDP goes up.
@jgkoomey
"Efficiency doesn’t cause increases in energy use except on the margin for a limited number of cases."
Can you please provide a citation for this?@urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @jackofalltrades @ajsadauskas @green
@urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @jackofalltrades @ajsadauskas @green We need to pursue absolute decoupling of emissions from GDP, and we can, while also doing all the other things forced on us by more than 3 decades of dithering (like carbon removal). That’s the only way out of this mess.
@urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @jackofalltrades @ajsadauskas @green Remember also that absolute decoupling of energy from GDP is harder than absolute decoupling of emissions from GDP. There are many ways to supply energy services without increasing emissions.
@jgkoomey @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green
Let's make sure we're on the same page here. What we're interested in is for the emissions to start dropping. What #decoupling suggests is that this can be achieved with the economy still growing.
Achieving dropping emissions via relative decoupling could be done by the pace of efficiency improvements continuously outpacing economic growth.
1/5
@jgkoomey @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green
Note that for any given efficiency improvement to have the desired effect of reducing emissions it not only must be invented, but it also must be distributed across the world, again at a pace greater than overall economic growth.
2/5
@jgkoomey @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green
As an example, global meat production doubled in the last 30 years. If a new method of factory farming is invented that cuts methane emissions by 10%, for it to actually reduce emissions it would need to be adopted on every farm in the world in less than 3 years.
After which point we'd need another such invention to keep pace with the economic growth.
3/5
@jgkoomey @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green
It's also worth noting that currently all nations follow a recipe for development through industrialization based on fossil fuels. There is not a single country on a "green" path. That means fossil inertia in the system is very high.
On top of that, all our "green" technologies currently require input of fossil fuels in their prodution processes. That includes #solar panels, #wind turbines, hydroelectric dams, EVs, etc.
4/5
@jgkoomey @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green
Absolute decoupling would mean that all sectors of the economy that grow would be fully decarbonized, i.e. growth in the economy would not result in any additional emissions.
Given how our economy looks today (as explained above) and how little time our civilization has left (because of both effects of #ClimateChange and resource depletion) it seems quite implausible that absolute decoupling is a viable way forward.
5/5
@jackofalltrades @jgkoomey @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green
Makes me think of the Jevons Paradox:
@coffee2Di4 @jackofalltrades @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green The Jevons paradox is widely misunderstood and almost always overestimated. Jevons himself made the mistake of attributing to efficiency improvements the rapid adoption of the steam engine, but there were many other reasons why steam engines were widely adopted.
@coffee2Di4 @jackofalltrades @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green These reasons included higher power densities, the ability to store energy, the ability to locate motive power flexibly within factories, the ability to operate underground. Steam engines were what is known as a general purpose technology, which had wide and deep applications across society.
@coffee2Di4 @jackofalltrades @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green Efficiency wasn’t the sole reason for its ascendence, and probably wasn’t the most important reason, but the lesson most people take from this “effect” is that efficiency causes increases in energy use. That conclusion is almost always false.