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
@jgkoomey @urlyman @ajsadauskas @green
Relative decoupling doesn't really matter. The fact that emissions rise at a pace slower than GDP is not good enough. We need emissions to start dropping, like yesterday.
AFAIK there is no evidence whatsoever of absolute decoupling happening globally, whether we're talking about CO2 or material footprint (which has been accelerating, in fact).
Humans are a part of nature. The idea that we can decouple our economy from environmental impacts is absurd.
@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
@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
@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
@jackofalltrades @jgkoomey @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green
Makes me think of the Jevons Paradox:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
@jgkoomey @coffee2Di4 @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green
What are "the many ways to power modern tech with zero emissions"? Can you list some examples?
@jgkoomey @coffee2Di4 @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green
I see. By that definition hydrogen produced by steam methane reforming or biofuels are also "zero emissions".
How do you know that the embedded emissions are a transient phenomenon? Has a single EV, solar PV or battery been produced without any use of fossil fuels, even in a lab setting as a proof-of-concept?
@jgkoomey @coffee2Di4 @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green
"almost all embedded emissions come from energy use"
That's true if by "almost all" you mean 73%.
Even if you remove *all* emissions from energy, allow the economy to double in the next 30 years and you'll still be left with half the emissions that you started with. Not the place we want to be.
@jgkoomey @coffee2Di4 @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green
That's the thing though: in a green growth scenario it is not enough for a solution to merely *exist*. It must also be cheaper and being able to be deployed worldwide very fast and without hindering economic growth in the process. If any of these conditions are not met, either emissions will keep going up or growth will stop.
@jgkoomey @coffee2Di4 @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green
I appreciate all the references.
They all count externalities though. The producers (and most consumers) don't pay for externalities in our current economic system. That's not the world we live in.
So unless you're suggesting to overthrow #capitalism I don't understand how that argument helps the point you are trying to make.
@jgkoomey @coffee2Di4 @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green
Economic growth is predicated on exploitation and ignoring externalities.
The biggest of which is obviously depletion of non-renewable natural resources, which includes not only fossil fuels, but also copper, aluminum, chromium, nickel, cobalt, etc.
@jgkoomey @coffee2Di4 @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green
OK, "dude".
You sure explained the logical flaws to me.
Thank you for the discussion.
@jgkoomey @coffee2Di4 @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green
"embedded emissions for manufactured products are almost always small compared to direct emissions from their use"
This can't be right, it defies common sense. Most products' emissions come from their manufacturing, not use. In fact, most products don't emit GHGs at all: not my chair, not my pillow, not my carpet, not the roof over my head. Even EVs and PVs take years to pay back their manufacturing emissions.