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by jonplackett 2342 days ago
Have you come across any lists of what the most carbon emitting things are - on a personal level?

I’m kinda curious what difference different lifestyle choices really make. Eg going vegan for a year vs no flights for a year vs getting green electricity.
3 comments
svara 2342 days ago
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_action_on_climate...

""" Several scientific studies have shown that when people, especially those living in developed countries but more generally including all countries, wish to reduce their carbon footprint, there are a few key "high-impact" actions they can take such as: having one fewer child (58.6 tonnes), living car-free (2.4 tonnes), avoiding one round-trip transatlantic flight (1.6 tonnes), and eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tonnes). These differ significantly from much popular advice for "greening" one's lifestyle, which seem to fall mostly into the "low-impact" category. """

... although I have seen air travel clearly dominate car use in other sources. Obviously it depends on how you use the car and what type it is.

Also, not having children being so impactful seems to assume that emissions are proportional to population, which seems doubtful to me (haven't looked into the original sources though).

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dmurray 2342 days ago
There are a few "carbon footprint calculators" out there which can give you an idea based on your lifestyle.

Here's one that looks reasonable: https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx. The largest share of my emissions was from flights, making up 7 tons of my 14 ton total.

So you might think the best single change I could make would be to stop flying. But the same website quotes $8/ton to offset my carbon footprint. So an even better single change would be to donate $100/year to some initiative to upgrade cooking stoves in Africa, or whatever the current best-value project is.

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derefr 2342 days ago
The Effective Altruism answer is probably to take all the energy you’d put into lifestyle changes, and put it instead into earning money to donate to environment lobbyists, so as to change corporate behavior.
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jonplackett 2342 days ago
Do you (or anyone else reading) have any info on the personal VS corporate proportion of the problem?

Like, how much difference does it make to do anything personally?

What's the lowest hanging fruit on corporate action?

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