Shipping can certainly be made much less impactful, if that’s what you are thinking. A lot of shipping is overland trucking, and a lot of overland trucking can be replaced with trains, and a lot of trains can be replaced with electrified trains. That would make quite a bit of difference
I think, as individuals; we all need to pick up our game and do our part in polluting and destroying the planet more. We can’t let the corporations do all the heavy lifting after all.
Yes. Our 12% will really make a difference vs corporations’ 80%. And we can get to that 12% if so 8 billion of us work together. I’m doing my 0.0000001% part!
But we are. According to the USDA, food waste makes up 22% of the food industries 26% CO2 emissions. And don’t forget the diseases food waste produces.
Honestly corporations are only producing what consume. We are using corporations as scapegoats. If we don’t realize this soon and don’t change it ways…
If you haven’t seen it, The Good Place is a great show and they discuss this basically. Should we be responsible for tracking the output of every company before we buy any product?
(The answer is: of course not. We don’t have enough time in the world for that. The correct solution is regulation and taxing for negative externalities during the production process. If the cost of negative externalities is built into the cost of the product, then it will be less benificial to purchase a product with a dirty supply chain.)
How do you tax Saudi Arabia corporations? How do you tax Russian corporations? They just make up the difference we don’t produce. Is it wise to send all that money to those countries because we won’t stop consuming? How is taxing our corporations helping them be competitive on the world market? We give everyone else a free pass but bill our corporations.
Not sure how to edit a post but will add this. I agree with you. We absolutely should be adding the cost of externalities. The only way to do this effectively is to add that cost at the consumption level. We should pay twice the cost for conventional fuel at the pumps. Heating your home should be far more expensive. Something that would also encourage people to take on roommates and fix housing issues. Taxing only or corporations simply means Russia or Saudia Arabia will increase their output while they laugh at us.
There are more efficient, greener ways to go about producing pretty much everything we use that doesn’t destroy the earth. Problem is is that it’s not as profitable for share holders.
For most categories, yes, but when it comes to something like meat production mentioned in the title here, that’s not really the case. Meat production is massively inefficient in its best case. We are going to have to reduce production which means having changes in consumption in one way or another
If I source my beef or lamb from low-impact producers, could they have a lower footprint than plant-based alternatives?
The evidence suggests, no: plant-based foods emit fewer greenhouse gases than meat and dairy, regardless of how they are produced.
[…]
Plant-based protein sources – tofu, beans, peas and nuts – have the lowest carbon footprint. This is certainly true when you compare average emissions. But it’s still true when you compare the extremes: there’s not much overlap in emissions between the worst producers of plant proteins, and the best producers of meat and dairy.
Plant-based foods have a significantly smaller footprint on the environment than animal-based foods. Even the least sustainable vegetables and cereals cause less environmental harm than the lowest impact meat and dairy products [9].
If it was so efficient, why are not everyone doing it and building it? If it was so efficient, why are energy prices increasing? If it is more efficient, then it would be also more profitable but you say the opposite.
It requires a front-loaded investment in infrastructure, which means lower returns for a few quarters.
Most companies wanted people to use horses for as long as possible because that meant they had to adapt, change, and invest. Why do something that’s difficult when you can just do the same thing? This works out when you don’t really have competition because the cost to enter the market is so high due to decades of mergers and acquisitions, consolidating all means of production and materials to a select-few companies.
Well, we kind of have to get basic necessities, so often buying stuff from corporations is necessary. Yes, we shouldn’t buy useless shit, but why are we making useless shit in the first place?
I do agree that we as inviduals should take some responsibility, such as not littering and trying to minimise our waste, but we have to hold corporations accountable for their actions.
Also there are a lot of more ethical and responsible ways for corporations to produce their goods, but they choose to not to. Why? Because it would take more money, and they don’t give a shit about anything else than their money.
The company I work for makes power infrastructure for data centres and the like, 3 phase 400v conductors, the smallest we make is 1000 amp rated and we go up to 6000 amp rated, that is a hell of a lot of power and we run 24 hours a day 7 days a week pumping out miles of these to power the data centres that run the internet so we can be shitty to each other
How else are they supposed to assuage the feeling that they’re not some immortal magical beings living some divine simulation/game as the chosen ones players?
Malthus was wrong about this too. It’s not the population that’s a problem, it’s miles of strip malls, filled with cheap trash, and meat and dairy every meal of the day.
They emit a lot, but they transport … a very lot. Trucks are higher emitters per comodity.
Still both should be powered by something else like hydrogen (more interesting for ships I guess) or batteries…
And cruise ships should be IMHO taxed so high (the tax should probably directly go to countermeasures), such that only very rich people are able to (not that I grant them the fun, but they should finance this climate disaster in every possible way…)
I looked into carbon offsets of shipping containers from China to the US as part of my job. I was shocked at how little was emitted per container - Probably cost around $40 of offsets for one 45 footer.
Like you said, the bigger issue is the trucks needed for last mile / between distribution centers.
Based on what a reasonable carbon price should be, I don’t think you would need to tax them to oblivion. They would just need to pay their fair share.
This website suggests that it is about 0.4 tonne of CO2 per passenger per day. Canada’s current carbon tax is $65 per tonne. So a 7 day cruise would be $182 per passenger in carbon pricing. This is just ballpark and yes you can argue that carbon prices should be higher.
For whom though? I think if your product is going to be very expensive because of that you,ll try to find ways (less carbon emissive) to make it cheaper, and for others, who have low emissions already, they get an advantage. Also rich people generally emit much more carbon than poor people.
I’m a little bit tired of the argument, that everything gets expensive, like the money just goes to nirvana, it’s a tax and a tax should steer industries (mostly) to do the right thing (in this case emit less CO2). The money can go directly to people e.g. in the form of a universal basic income.
For the ability to produce enough food. It’s not the tax that’s the issue it’s that the climate will make industrial food production unviable. We will rapidly exit the conditions that underpin the viability of the modern economy. The only work of value will be making food and related tools in a volatile climatic environment. The bill will not be payable in money, is my point. That is, a tax will be woefully inadequate.
Certainly, it will be really “interesting” how to produce food for ~10 billion people in this uncertain future. But if we finally learn to accept that e.g. cattle isn’t the way forward, I think it may be possible with plant-based food. Although something like vertical farming etc. is definitely not viable today, it may be in the future. And at least currently it’s totally possible to sustainably produce enough (plant-based) food.
I think we’ll learn to adapt, that much I trust in agricultural-technological advancement etc.
But it will be “meaty” for most people and conflicts will arise (as they already are, see e.g. the conflict in Sudan that is indirectly related to climate change already, similarly as Syria previously (there were quite a few droughts the years before))
Trucks, like cars are on a transition to become EVs, with Tesla leading the industry there as well. Of course people will then complain regarding lithium and other bullshit, hence why I think we should stop listening to extremists.
Lol, trash reasoning. “Extremists” that want to start building communities that dont require you to drive everywhere. Just because evs are slightly better then gas doesnt mean its good to keep making cars a centralizing point we build our society around.
lower parking availability, increase public transport availability and frequency.
Low density places:
They need their cars, they can keep them.
Remove zoning restrictions, and parking requirements
so there is more mixture of commercial and residential places shortening transport distance, allowing for even avoiding public transport and just walking/biking replacing this.
More biking infraestructure.
Fair taxes to car owners,
that means, othe people not having to support the huge car projects that cost more than they can get from the taxes they do on cars.
Also regulations on environmental design of cars, basically gaining back the progress we had done on car efficiency that was taken back by everyone wanting an SUV instead of a turismo.
My guess would be for EV everything. Plant trees in the city roads to lower the average temperature, the countries themselves should create tax incentives for people to move out from overcrowded cities as well.
But sure, easy to just end personal vehicles all together right? People like you are the reason our politicians are so shit.
Realistically, EVs are useful as a stopgap solution. They could be used to cover the transition as we expand public transit like EV busses, trains, subways, etc.
Really not a choice, carbon emissiosn have to stop. EVs dont do that. Urban trees are not going to revese climate change. Wow, you’re saying people need to keep lowering denisity.
Sure it is, but I think that’s still better than if every individual needs to drive their own car through half the country to buy coffee. Shipping needs to happen in any way. Sure we could order less stuff from the internet, so individual house door shipping would be less, but that’s a drop in the ocean, compared to the other named factors
No need to single out meat production. There is so much farming going on that annihilates places like the Amazon. I have seen claims of those crazy huge shipping vessels that pollute more than all cars combined over the course of a year.
What they are farming in all that land is feed for livestock.
So yes, even though they’re growing plants there, those plants are being grown to feed the animals instead of feeding humans directly. Which thanks to trophic levels is a massive waste.
The amount of feed needed to rear one animal to kill for food is not even CLOSE to equivalent to how much we would get if we didn’t add the extra step in of feeding animals and just grew plants for ourselves instead.
The meat industry is a massive contributor to global warming, and we could drastically reduce our effects on climate change if we just stopped eating animals.
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Ouch, too soon op, too soon…
Oh contraire - we’re 20 years late
BoneAppleTea
Yeah, fair cop
Au* contraire
Huh - the more you know, thanks
Make it 30
One of the three is not like the other, in the way that it can never be eliminated. Let’s play guess…
Shipping can certainly be made much less impactful, if that’s what you are thinking. A lot of shipping is overland trucking, and a lot of overland trucking can be replaced with trains, and a lot of trains can be replaced with electrified trains. That would make quite a bit of difference
I think, as individuals; we all need to pick up our game and do our part in polluting and destroying the planet more. We can’t let the corporations do all the heavy lifting after all.
Yes. Our 12% will really make a difference vs corporations’ 80%. And we can get to that 12% if so 8 billion of us work together. I’m doing my 0.0000001% part!
You know corporations build shit people buy, right? It’s not like they pollute for the fun of it. They pollute because we give them money to do it…
Kinda orthogonal but I will say it’s weird that we can still vote with our wallets.
But we are. According to the USDA, food waste makes up 22% of the food industries 26% CO2 emissions. And don’t forget the diseases food waste produces.
That food waste is largely due to arbitrary date labels and grocery stores throwing out literal tons of perfectly good food instead of donating it.
And believe it or not, part of this is because people don’t like to pick up the weird looking tomato, or the banana with a few peckles.
According to the USDA, again, the majority of food waste is at the household level.
Circling back to the arbitrary date labels
How can we sell more without an expiration date?!!! We need to please the profits and shorten expiration dates!
I personally plan on returning my rechargeable AA batteries and going single use from now on. it’s the little things that help
Honestly corporations are only producing what consume. We are using corporations as scapegoats. If we don’t realize this soon and don’t change it ways…
If you haven’t seen it, The Good Place is a great show and they discuss this basically. Should we be responsible for tracking the output of every company before we buy any product?
(The answer is: of course not. We don’t have enough time in the world for that. The correct solution is regulation and taxing for negative externalities during the production process. If the cost of negative externalities is built into the cost of the product, then it will be less benificial to purchase a product with a dirty supply chain.)
How do you tax Saudi Arabia corporations? How do you tax Russian corporations? They just make up the difference we don’t produce. Is it wise to send all that money to those countries because we won’t stop consuming? How is taxing our corporations helping them be competitive on the world market? We give everyone else a free pass but bill our corporations.
Not sure how to edit a post but will add this. I agree with you. We absolutely should be adding the cost of externalities. The only way to do this effectively is to add that cost at the consumption level. We should pay twice the cost for conventional fuel at the pumps. Heating your home should be far more expensive. Something that would also encourage people to take on roommates and fix housing issues. Taxing only or corporations simply means Russia or Saudia Arabia will increase their output while they laugh at us.
There are more efficient, greener ways to go about producing pretty much everything we use that doesn’t destroy the earth. Problem is is that it’s not as profitable for share holders.
For most categories, yes, but when it comes to something like meat production mentioned in the title here, that’s not really the case. Meat production is massively inefficient in its best case. We are going to have to reduce production which means having changes in consumption in one way or another
https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/8/1614/htm
If it was so efficient, why are not everyone doing it and building it? If it was so efficient, why are energy prices increasing? If it is more efficient, then it would be also more profitable but you say the opposite.
It requires a front-loaded investment in infrastructure, which means lower returns for a few quarters.
Most companies wanted people to use horses for as long as possible because that meant they had to adapt, change, and invest. Why do something that’s difficult when you can just do the same thing? This works out when you don’t really have competition because the cost to enter the market is so high due to decades of mergers and acquisitions, consolidating all means of production and materials to a select-few companies.
Well, we kind of have to get basic necessities, so often buying stuff from corporations is necessary. Yes, we shouldn’t buy useless shit, but why are we making useless shit in the first place?
I do agree that we as inviduals should take some responsibility, such as not littering and trying to minimise our waste, but we have to hold corporations accountable for their actions.
Also there are a lot of more ethical and responsible ways for corporations to produce their goods, but they choose to not to. Why? Because it would take more money, and they don’t give a shit about anything else than their money.
Gotta love them for giving us nice warm weather
OK, now point me to the place I can give money for the food that doesn’t pollute/throw it all away.
The company I work for makes power infrastructure for data centres and the like, 3 phase 400v conductors, the smallest we make is 1000 amp rated and we go up to 6000 amp rated, that is a hell of a lot of power and we run 24 hours a day 7 days a week pumping out miles of these to power the data centres that run the internet so we can be shitty to each other
Welcome to the coldest summer for the rest of your life :)
Why would you do that?
Thats a nice way to put it. Thank you.
😩
Don’t forget steel. quick stats
Global temps can’t melt steel beams…
If only we had deflation people would not overconsume so much
How else are they supposed to assuage the feeling that they’re not some immortal magical beings living some divine simulation/game as the chosen
onesplayers?We can’t deflate form 8 billion people and counting
Malthus was wrong about this too. It’s not the population that’s a problem, it’s miles of strip malls, filled with cheap trash, and meat and dairy every meal of the day.
And why are those being built? Because the consumer population doesn’t care and continues consuming the cheapest dirtiest shit imaginable.
Okay? That doesn’t change the fact that it’s the lifestyle of people in rich countries, not the number of people that is the problem.
Germany tried it once … I mean twice
Don’t forget about the Chinese. They tried too and they were much more efficient.
bu… buut economic growth > everything else …?
Shipping? Shipping is about 2 % of global CO2 emissions.
Large ships emit a lot of sulphur oxides (SOx). E.g. cruise ships emit more than all cars of Europe. SOx is not a greenhouse gas, but it’s a nasty pollutant nonetheless.
They emit a lot, but they transport … a very lot. Trucks are higher emitters per comodity.
Still both should be powered by something else like hydrogen (more interesting for ships I guess) or batteries…
And cruise ships should be IMHO taxed so high (the tax should probably directly go to countermeasures), such that only very rich people are able to (not that I grant them the fun, but they should finance this climate disaster in every possible way…)
I looked into carbon offsets of shipping containers from China to the US as part of my job. I was shocked at how little was emitted per container - Probably cost around $40 of offsets for one 45 footer.
Like you said, the bigger issue is the trucks needed for last mile / between distribution centers.
Based on what a reasonable carbon price should be, I don’t think you would need to tax them to oblivion. They would just need to pay their fair share.
This website suggests that it is about 0.4 tonne of CO2 per passenger per day. Canada’s current carbon tax is $65 per tonne. So a 7 day cruise would be $182 per passenger in carbon pricing. This is just ballpark and yes you can argue that carbon prices should be higher.
We are quickly arriving at an unpayable bill.
We are quickly arriving at an unpayable bill.
For whom though? I think if your product is going to be very expensive because of that you,ll try to find ways (less carbon emissive) to make it cheaper, and for others, who have low emissions already, they get an advantage. Also rich people generally emit much more carbon than poor people.
I’m a little bit tired of the argument, that everything gets expensive, like the money just goes to nirvana, it’s a tax and a tax should steer industries (mostly) to do the right thing (in this case emit less CO2). The money can go directly to people e.g. in the form of a universal basic income.
For the ability to produce enough food. It’s not the tax that’s the issue it’s that the climate will make industrial food production unviable. We will rapidly exit the conditions that underpin the viability of the modern economy. The only work of value will be making food and related tools in a volatile climatic environment. The bill will not be payable in money, is my point. That is, a tax will be woefully inadequate.
Certainly, it will be really “interesting” how to produce food for ~10 billion people in this uncertain future. But if we finally learn to accept that e.g. cattle isn’t the way forward, I think it may be possible with plant-based food. Although something like vertical farming etc. is definitely not viable today, it may be in the future. And at least currently it’s totally possible to sustainably produce enough (plant-based) food. I think we’ll learn to adapt, that much I trust in agricultural-technological advancement etc. But it will be “meaty” for most people and conflicts will arise (as they already are, see e.g. the conflict in Sudan that is indirectly related to climate change already, similarly as Syria previously (there were quite a few droughts the years before))
The odds that the adaption is rapid and doesn’t cause extreme changes in the daily conditions of everyone are vanishing.
shipping is also trucks dude… and all the other nasty ways we move products around the world…
Trucks, like cars are on a transition to become EVs, with Tesla leading the industry there as well. Of course people will then complain regarding lithium and other bullshit, hence why I think we should stop listening to extremists.
Lol, trash reasoning. “Extremists” that want to start building communities that dont require you to drive everywhere. Just because evs are slightly better then gas doesnt mean its good to keep making cars a centralizing point we build our society around.
So… what’s your solution? Everyone using public transportation?
It ain’t that hard,
High density places:
lower parking availability, increase public transport availability and frequency.
Low density places:
They need their cars, they can keep them.
Remove zoning restrictions, and parking requirements
so there is more mixture of commercial and residential places shortening transport distance, allowing for even avoiding public transport and just walking/biking replacing this.
More biking infraestructure.
Fair taxes to car owners,
that means, othe people not having to support the huge car projects that cost more than they can get from the taxes they do on cars.
Also regulations on environmental design of cars, basically gaining back the progress we had done on car efficiency that was taken back by everyone wanting an SUV instead of a turismo.
:)
Figure you also believe Santa.
yea yea but you won’t answer to me mate, loss of time to talk with u :)
more people the better yeah
Everyone walking or biking.
So… you have no solutions?
My guess would be for EV everything. Plant trees in the city roads to lower the average temperature, the countries themselves should create tax incentives for people to move out from overcrowded cities as well.
But sure, easy to just end personal vehicles all together right? People like you are the reason our politicians are so shit.
Realistically, EVs are useful as a stopgap solution. They could be used to cover the transition as we expand public transit like EV busses, trains, subways, etc.
Really not a choice, carbon emissiosn have to stop. EVs dont do that. Urban trees are not going to revese climate change. Wow, you’re saying people need to keep lowering denisity.
Sure it is, but I think that’s still better than if every individual needs to drive their own car through half the country to buy coffee. Shipping needs to happen in any way. Sure we could order less stuff from the internet, so individual house door shipping would be less, but that’s a drop in the ocean, compared to the other named factors
With modern open-loop scrubbers large ships don’t emit SOx anymore…
…instead they just dump it into the sea. Science!
So far.
So true it burns.
literally…
…enjoy this summer; it’s the coolest one you’ll experience for the rest of your life…
No need to single out meat production. There is so much farming going on that annihilates places like the Amazon. I have seen claims of those crazy huge shipping vessels that pollute more than all cars combined over the course of a year.
oh yeah there is need, farming meat wastes much more than farming actual plants . meat is the main polluter.
wow what are they farming in the (clearcut and burned) Amazon? why shouldn’t we single out animal agriculture?
What they are farming in all that land is feed for livestock.
So yes, even though they’re growing plants there, those plants are being grown to feed the animals instead of feeding humans directly. Which thanks to trophic levels is a massive waste.
The amount of feed needed to rear one animal to kill for food is not even CLOSE to equivalent to how much we would get if we didn’t add the extra step in of feeding animals and just grew plants for ourselves instead.
The meat industry is a massive contributor to global warming, and we could drastically reduce our effects on climate change if we just stopped eating animals.
I heard the production of palm oil contributed to the ongoing death of rainforests a lot too?
The oil, meat and shipping industries: “It’s called a streak, baby”
We can break this record, do like me, burn tires !
Vermont just had flooding that was on par with Hurricane Irene.
They’re calling it a 1000 year rarity. It happened 12 years ago. Only this time there was no hurricane.
There are ocean temperatures in the fucking 90s.
This hurricane season is gonna be batshit crazy, y’all.
The concept of seasons will also get super fucked. Already feeling it in North-East India - weather trends are not very predictable any more.