[fredophile]

From previous discussions I've seen on pollution, but possibly not CO2 specifically, the global shipping industry is one of the bigger contributors. While we may have driven and flown less in the past year I'm pretty sure we didn't buy significantly less so there are still lots of ships out there.

Concrete production also takes a lot of energy. Based on the current costs of other building materials in North America I doubt we've slowed that down either.

Even if everyone in the top global 1% was driving electric cars right now we'd still be contributing a lot to CO2 emissions in other ways.

[Morvan]

>the global shipping industry is one of the bigger contributors

Well, what are they shipping? Goods that supply the consumerist chain at every level. We definitely did buy significantly less given that money velocity has plummeted in 2020, and I would argue this was reflected in the global shipping industry slowdown.

>Based on the current costs of other building materials in North America I doubt we've slowed that down either.

Current costs reflect the reopening boom, not last year's slowdown which witnessed a commodity drawdown!

[gremlinsinc]

Maybe we should require that retail get 80% or more of their products from shipping locations that are in North America or the country of origin.

Globalization as always seems to cause a lot of major pains for the world. Global Warming, lower wages in the USA, legal sweat shops in other countries, etc...