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
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@wav3ydave @benchwhistler @18107 @ajsadauskas
“Many people won’t have any other option without huge systemic changes.”
Yes. And at the same time many people *have* the option and are picking the wrong one.
It’s quite simple really, look at it this way:
Who is responsible for more emissions: the rich or the poor?
Who has more freedom to choose different options in life: the rich or the poor?
@wav3ydave @18107 @ajsadauskas Very true, however public demands to “Leave it in the ground” and ending the “implicit subsidy” by not collecting the cost of environmental damage from fossil fuel end users, (and consequently not repairing the environmental damage) also removes the option for the systemic change needed.
If the oil production ceased tomorrow there would be panic, chaos, and fighting in the streets.
@wav3ydave @18107 @ajsadauskas If the consumer subsidy for environmental damage was taxed at the pump, the price of petrol, diesel, aviation fuel etc would immediately become expensive, + unaffordable. Demand would plummet. Oil companies would be unable to sell what they produce & leave it in the ground, run out of money to invest in further exploration. Government would also see tax receipts disappear. Shops run out of stock, prices soar. Industry grind to a halt.
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@hamishb @wav3ydave @18107 @ajsadauskas When the UK government banned the purchase of Russian oil there was a slight decrease in availability of fuel at petrol stations. Queues formed, panic buying and constant topping up tanks occurred. The Saudi and Russian governments agreed to further reduce available supplies and prices soared. Even a small climate protest at refinery gates or a tanker driver strike brings the just in time system to crisis point.