https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-...
Not all of that is personal transportation, but a lot of it is. This is not a blip on the graph.
I also agree that large polluters need to change, and that we need state action. I was just pointing out that people who seem to believe climate change is a problem rarely make major lifestyle changes consistent with their stated beliefs.
Saying this is primarily a collective action problem is passing the buck. It's a convenient excuse for doing nothing. Collective action is much harder than personal action. Ultimately, we need both collective and personal action.
> Calling into question the sincerity of people concerned about climate change but also concerned about actually getting to work on time and not stinking and getting fired because their bosses don't care is just some nasty, uncharitable stuff.
You seem to believe that cycling to work is much more challenging than it actually is. You may be surprised, but no cyclist I know has the problems you've mentioned. Those problems can happen, but they are not that common in my experience.
Yes, the US is a car dependent society, but you can choose where to live and choose your job. Like most people choose where to live based on their driving commute, I choose where to live based on my cycling commute. It is not a long commute, and I arrive on time and usually am not sweaty.
Also, cycling was just an example. It doesn't need to be cycling. Work at home, switch from your gas guzzler, etc.
But it seems to me that the marginal cost in terms of CO2 emissions is not exactly clear for flying. Whether I fly or not, the planes will fly. My addition to a single plane in terms of the weight is not that significant. It becomes a more murky economic argument. I agree people should not fly, but this is more of a collective action type approach in my view. It takes roughly a plane load of people to make a difference.
In contrast, a driver has much more direct control over the CO2 emissions. The marginal addition of CO2 is much clearer.
Or to frame it another way, when you fly you're playing Russian roulette with adding an amount of CO2 to the atmosphere dwarfing anything else you might be causing.
Further the first 50% reduction is the lowest hanging fruit. We don't need to get to 100% to make a huge difference over time.
Even a single industrial polluter is nothing. All the cars on the road are worse than the worst single industrial plant.
Shutting down coal power would achieve all climate goals for several decades and we can in fact just kind of do that in most places. Government subsidies are what's keeping coal power plants online in many locations. The problem is that this would impose costs on business owners, or force banks and/or governments to pay out large sums to those business owners (not that large though: tens to hundreds of millions per plant). In other words : governments worldwide would have to scale back what they're doing for a short while to instantly destroy their climate goals.
In other words: government, elected CHOICES are what's keeping the biggest co2 producers online. Governments absolute unwillingness, in Australia's case, to pay out relatively small sums they agreed to pay decades ago, and of course not getting a budget increase out of it.
Laws that are proposed, almost without fail, go after individual, totally insignificant co2 producers, and impose large costs on individuals for marginal, or even net negative gain (e.g. well known example: for the longest time, and maybe even now, solar panels were net-negative, and certainly, in the short term that's still true. Certainly in the short term switching to solar power increases CO2 emissions, it doesn't reduce them. It may become a net positive after 10 years of constantly using the panels, under idealized conditions).
Suggested changes to individual lives, like forgoing cars entirely, impose yet larger costs but thankfully for now governments are mostly unwilling to do this.
At what point do we get to conclude that the intent of climate action parties is simply to exert power over individuals, to capture government, regardless of all costs to the climate ? That these parties not only don't care about climate change, but are actually willing to sacrifice the climate, just to gain power ?
Besides: I think it's extremely telling that nobody is willing to consider geoengineering (artificially lowering out planet's albedo). We know methods to do that, and of course all governments promptly decided that was off-limits (with, get this, "what if we're wrong" arguments. Look: either climate prediction works, or it doesn't. Denying geoengineering solutions is little better than outright denying climate change entirely).
Let's NOT USE THOSE ! They're scary ! Science is wrong and evil ! Green glowy children !
And of course, somehow you can criticize science like nuclear and it's safety record, but shout "science denial" at people opposing climate science. That's an entirely reasonable attitude of course.
But it's very clear: getting and grabbing power, that's what it's about. Not fixing a problem.
Calling into question the sincerity of people concerned about climate change but also concerned about actually getting to work on time and not stinking and getting fired because their bosses don't care is just some nasty, uncharitable stuff. And it's also counterproductive. It's the "but Al Gore flies in jets!" thing all over again, discrediting what state actors need to be doing because of the actions of private citizens. Don't do that. It's bad for you and bad for us.