[samatman]

This can only be sloppy accounting, and I'm disappointed to see it here of all places.

If every person on earth was carbon neutral, that would mean GHG emissions were decreased by 100% once every sink was accounted for.

That's definitional, that's tautological, if you're only counting 9% of someone's carbon budget as "theirs" that's on your model.

[shakezula]

The point is that not every emission can be blamed on the end consumer. Some can and should be, yes, like commercial flights.

Even if every consumer ate vegan and only used a bike, industrial emissions will continue chugging away because the vast majority of those emissions are not serving the end consumer.

We didn't blame the end consumer for CFCs even when they were buying and spraying them into the air in record numbers. CO2 is no different and the blame should not solely reside on us in some hypercapitalistic guilt trip.

[samatman]

Blame isn't a useful concept and isn't an excuse for being sloppy in carbon accounting.

A person's carbon footprint is the amount of CO2 emitted to support that person's lifestyle. It doesn't matter whether it's the exhaust from delivering the widget or the amortized emissions from pouring the base of the factory, that's the carbon footprint.

Pretending that industrial emissions don't serve the end consumer is much worse than pretending that lifestyle interventions are sufficient. At least riding a bike gets you in shape; ignoring the bike factory and the whole trucking and shipping infrastructure which creates and transports the bike is, well, solving 9% of the problem.

[shakezula]

The fact of the matter is that every citizen in the world could do all of the "green" things in their daily lives that they can and it would barely tick the needle on emissions down. The U.S. military itself is one of the worst polluters in the world.

A person's "carbon footprint" cannot extend all the way to the CO2 emitted when pouring the base of the factory that produces the gas in their car, in the same way that buying clothes at the GAP cannot condemn you for child slavery that the corporation benefits from.

You cannot put the onus for ethical business on the end consumer when the corporation pursues and benefits from unethical behavior, often times without the end consumer ever knowing about that behavior. It's ridiculous, and completely ignores the class element in the whole discussion.

This is a problem that must be solved from the top down, and corporate messaging to saddle the responsibility on the end user is disingenuous at best, incredibly maligned at worst.

[shakezula]

It is not sloppy accounting. The fact of the matter is that every citizen in the world could do all of the "green" things in their daily lives that they can and it would barely tick the needle on emissions down.

A person's "carbon footprint" cannot extend all the way to pouring the base of the factory that produces the gas in their car, in the same way that buying clothes at the GAP cannot condemn you for child slavery that the corporation benefits from. You cannot put the onus for ethical business on the end consumer when the corporation pursues and benefits from unethical behavior.

This is a problem that must be solved from the top down, and corporate messaging to saddle the responsibility on the end user is ridiculous.