> Where are you getting the idea that personal footprints have to be reduced to zero or less? That assumption only holds if there are no carbon sinks.

This is not really correct thinking, because you need to account for both sinks and sources of carbon. For instance, you could emit methane locally enough to, say, intensify a forest fire or dissolve methane clathrates. Then a forest somewhere else absorbs the original weight in carbon dioxide. This is net zero emissions for you, but certainly causes more warming. The best way to think of it is as a system with sources, sinks, and feedbacks.

But really, the biggest adjustment to your life to reduce carbon emissions is to get involved in politics. Everyone reducing to net zero at home would make a tiny dent in the problem. The big users are transportation and concrete and metals.

I agree with you on all of these points. I was simply advocating a system viewpoint (perhaps poorly) but you did a better job explaining.

(One exception: I believe when you combine commercial and residential facilities, their respective energy use surpasses transport)

By concrete, do you mean cement specifically? Or is there additional CO2 from the process of using aggregate?

I was just giving a concrete example (pun intended). There’s still some rock crushing for aggregate, but the energy is mostly in cement. Concrete uses most of the cement, so it’s a good target. Japan uses something like four times the concrete of California, despite similar population, land area, and geography.

I've heard similar about concrete as well, but have had a difficult time putting it in context.

"Cement (3%): carbon dioxide is produced as a byproduct of a chemical conversion process used in the production of clinker, a component of cement. In this reaction, limestone (CaCO3) is converted to lime (CaO), and produces CO2 as a byproduct. Cement production also produces emissions from energy inputs – these related emissions are included in ‘Energy Use in Industry’."

Unfortunately, it doesn't further breakdown what percentage of the cement energy inputs contribute to GHG emissions.

https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector

I was going to reply something similar, but I think the core of the comment you're replying to is that this is a collective action problem. Making any changes on my own will be harder on me than if everyone made a change. Both because technology can solve a lot of this, and because I look and feel worse positionally if it's just me making a change.

I don't think it's merely _hard_, I think it's fundamentally impossible for us to do it without technological advancement or at least greater application of existing technology.

I don't think that 7 billion people can live net zero without us building loads more solar panels, nuclear plants, changing a bunch of industrial processes, etc.

These are things that individuals literally cannot do. Even trivial things like - I can't buy a net zero fork to eat my dinner with. I mean, I'm sure one or two things I could, but at the scale of my entire life it would become a full time job.

I guess I could start a co2 capture company, that is actually feasibly possible. But I don't think that's what people are getting at with the personal responsibility stuff. It's all - "which brand of tape are you using to fix the leak in your roof?"

>I can't buy a net zero fork to eat my dinner with.

I mean, one argument is that removing yourself from the demand side and using a fork that already exists is essentially net zero. Is buying an EV really helping when it displaces a perfectly functional car? Or is it just sustainable theater? I'm sure there's a balance somewhere, but probably not near our current lifestyle in the west. Net zero is a lot harder when you have an economy predicated on the constant churn of consumerism.

I agree that consumerism is bollocks and is something we could easily get rid of whilst generally increasing our happiness.

Sure, so that works for a fork. And yeah, we can probably do it for all of the forks, so that's scalable.

How about rice? Laundry liquid? Humour me - surely you can think of things we use all of the time that are not possible to make net zero at present?

I mean, I can't even get off the gas in my boiler without putting in a heat pump that uses carbon to produce and maintain and repair. Even that one isn't fixed!

Yes, that's precisely the point. Save it for the items that really bring value to our lives. The reason we're so dependent on technology to help is because we dug a hole by doing the opposite.

And I'm not equivocating that it's easy. Your heat pump analogy is the perfect example where life-cycle effects should come into play. I think it would be very interesting to see a study of something like comparing a new EV with the impact of maintaining an older ICE car. I suspect a lot of EV purchases are about status veiled in sustainability.

I want energy to be spent on big impact things like healthcare and food and sanitation. But considering ~60-70% of the economy is based on consumerism there's a lot of room to improve

I agree, there's some tragedy of the commons here. But while I think technology will be one of the big factors, I also think it's used as a reason for people to avoid the cognitive dissonance of hard choices. Why should I have to do something unpleasant when I can just wait for technology to save us? We don't apply that same thinking to something like cigarette smoking ("why quit when I can just count on medical technology to save me?").

In abstract problems I think policy is needed to drive such collective action. The best outcomes seem to be when regulation and the market coexist toward the same goal.

I think you're muddling the directionality here.

What is your proposed "hard choice" that results in, say, my city being net zero or even drastically reducing its' emissions?

I can independently do it, probably by using a lot of land, finding a favourable spot to plop my passivhaus, and wiping the balance sheet clean at some point (e.g. I pretend that all of the material going into the solar panels, the wood etc 'doesn't count').

But what do the other ten million people do? Demolish all of the existing buildings and rebuild from scratch with far more insulation etc? Move in with each other and leave half of the buildings to rot?

This isn't intended as snark by the way, I just don't see the answer here. Is your point that we could slow down climate change a bit whilst we wait for the technology to catch up? Because it's definitely a hard requirement.

I don't think there is a single person that can do that and I'm not sure anyone would suggest there is. But saying a single action doesn't matter is not the same as saying a collection of single actions don't matter. Just like people shouldn't think working out once will magically make themselves fit, but string enough of those actions together and you can make an appreciable difference. The point is those other ten million people would need to make similar choices. Saying you can't control those other people comes across as just hand-washing yourself of responsibility.

My point is that I think a lot of people use the technological argument to reduce any personal responsibility. It's true that I don't think we can simply conserve ourselves to net zero, but I do think it's a part of the solution. I often see people use the technological excuse as a way to not change and just keep the status quo so they don't have to feel the pain of sacrifice. It's easier to keep the problem in the abstract where one doesn't have to make concrete personal choices. Sometimes those tough choices are supporting policies that may align against your own personal, short-term self-interest.

Yes, but what's the _point_?

Is your position that it at least slows climate change so that we have more time for the technology and political atmosphere to catch up?

If so, fine, that makes sense. But without some endgame it kind of just feels as if you're ideologically invested in the concept of personal responsibility.

I don't even think we disagree, I just find it bizarre to call reliance on other advancement an "excuse". It's a hard requirement, you can't not rely on it. The personal stuff is a bonus.

Do you litter? If not, why? Littering makes your life easier and has an immediate upside at the individual level. You can easily claim that your one cigarette butt makes statistically no difference.

I assume you don't because you realize if everyone makes that same choice it has a downside for everyone, because nobody wants to live in a trash heap. If the reason is simply because it's illegal, I'm not sure that's a very principled stance.

Climate decisions are harder because they're more abstract in effect and the uncertainty is greater. But they should be rooted in similar principle if we consider ourselves moral agents in society.

If you agree that collective conservation will have an impact (maybe that's where we disagree), then the only way it will have an impact is if people make the induvial choice unless policy forces that decision. I personally think that's a bit of an immoral choice if one recognizes it's the right thing to do but chooses not to, just like the litterer who knows better.

I'm not sure what your point is? Is it that it's best to wait until everyone collectively decides to make the choice to conserve? Because, ironically, that strikes me as the scenario where your choice has marginal impact at the individual level as well. That perspective is very much stuck in an individualistic mode of thinking that doesn't recognize collective efforts take many individual choices.

Circling back to the littering analogy, cultural values spring from many instances of individual choices. Having a culture of conservativism (or at least mitigated consumerism) is every bit as possible as having a culture of non-littering. But it does take the correct choices at the individual level to create the social pressure that brings along people who are less willing.

That last point is important. I'm reminded of a study where they tested three different modes of convincing people of energy conservation: 1) they focused on how much money it saved, 2) they focused on the positive impact of the environment, and 3) they focused on the fact that the majority of their neighbors were already enrolled in the program. The only method that made a significant impact on energy usage was #3. We're social creatures and social pressure is important to nudge collective action.

I agree, we need technology. But it shouldn't be an easy excuse for us to sit on our laurels with other choices, because, you know nuclear fusion has been 10 years away for the last 50 years.

I don't litter, no. But that's an example of a tiny and trivial change which has outsized impact. If no-one litters, it's not really that hard, and the world would be super clean.

This isn't at all comparable to the sorts of changes that are required to lower one's carbon footprint. You would have to take literally every single thing most of us do every second of every day and change it dramatically.

I grow tired of having these debates online because it's just so frustrating, sorry. It's not a good faith debate because you're just bouncing between trivialities and non-trivialities.

I use more than the global average just to heat my house. Like, that's _one thing_. And you can argue that I can change that, and I can.

But my entire country is built with these houses. It's total and utter bollocks to pretend that some sort of 'culture of conservation' could change this.

Technology might allow me to heat it without emitting CO2. Otherwise, we need to knock it all down and start again. I suspect we will, but not by choice.

I'm sorry you don't feel it's in good faith; it absolutely is. Ironically, I feel you were underscoring this strawman of zero emissions when I've stated early on that shouldn't be the goal but I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you were engaging in good faith.

Littering was used as an example not because it's a trivial gotcha but because it's trivial enough to understand immediately. I think analogies work best that way. Your claim about an "outsized impact" is exactly what I'm talking about with climate being more abstract and thus harder to connect individual choices to impact. Littering only seems like an outsized impact because you can literally see it change over the course of days or weeks on a small enough scale we can wrap our minds around. IMO we need policy to drive these issues because we did not evolve to think on the scale of worldwide effects. That doesn't negate individual responsibility though.

>But my entire country is built with these houses. It's total and utter bollocks to pretend that some sort of 'culture of conservation' could change this.

Ok. Maybe that's fine for you. But please understand there are other parts of the world that are having these exact conversations. Some are limiting single family homes because they are inefficient. They recognize their previous assumptions have all kinds of externalities that need to be addressed. Interestingly, facility energy conservation is one of the easiest areas to make an impact. Maybe that doesn't fit with your culture but that may be, at least in part, about what your cultural values are. And one way of defending those values is to say "I'll wait for technology so I don't have to change." That's what my whole point is about. So if you're banking on technology so much have you actually done anything about it? Do you invest in companies that are working on that tech, or maybe quit your job to focus on ushering it into being? Or is that someone else's responsibility too so you wouldn't have to change the status quo?

The world is full of people who are comfortable saying the big problems are someone else's problem. I'm saying those aren't the type of people I'd want my children to grow up to emulate. That means they would seek to take some ownership of the problem, even if it's on a small scale.

It's not "fine for me". I in fact do all of those other things that you're suggesting.

And neither am I "banking on technology". There's no hedge, I'm just as fucked as you are.

My original claim, which I stand by, is that individual action (in the sense of "just do fewer things") is trifling in the face of this. That's the only claim I'm making.

I've explained why, and you're coming back with bullshit about my culture. Mate, it's not my 'culture' to eat food and put the heating on in my house, everyone does it in every country in the world.

My argument is that we solve this politically and via collective action in things like basic research and development and not by joining support groups to tell each other about how many light switches we've turned off today.

We agree that policy is the best approach. But, the irony is that policy is needed because we can't rely on people to make the right choices at the individual level. While we agree that policy is helpful to wrangle bad actors, you seem to go one step further and insinuate it doesn't matter in the meantime if we all behave as bad actors. I get your pragmatic stance, I'm also saying there's a moral component to it.

>it's not my 'culture' to eat food and put the heating on in my house, everyone does it in every country in the world.

There's some irony in you claiming I'm acting in bad faith, yet you keep straw manning. I gave a specific example of housing zoning and you equate it to this?

Your defensiveness is telling enough that I'll just leave one more comment. Yes, every culture needs food and shelter. But how they go about those things is very culture dependent. Some may get their protein primarily from pork and beef while others from tofu. Some may live in a McMansion, while others have multi-generational homes. Those cultural choices have an impact.

Your comment about light switches is again bad faith attempt to trivialize salient points. An an example, residential energy use is higher on a CO2e basis than all of transport (road + aviation + shipping). It's actually higher than most sectors, save agricultural (barely) and industry. So let's just ignore all those, eh?

Edit: I think you're having a hard time understanding my point and are reverting to straw manning.

What I am NOT saying: "We need to have zero emissions."

What I AM saying: "Just because we can't reach zero emissions doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything we can to get reasonably close" Inability to get to zero is not an excuse to absolve oneself of personal choices.

If things are, in your words, properly "fucked" I'm assuming that means you're willing everything in your power to contribute to those big solutions. Are you willing to quit a high-status job to contribute? Or move to be part of an organization doing meaningful R&D? If not, there's some cognitive dissonance there.

Interesting thread. There is another kind of defeatism at play here. The sum of personal choices will only make so much impact. Let's say 20% (for sake of discussion). Unless the part that is causing 80% of the problem is solved, this won't be a solved problem and that 20% is not a very meaningful part of the solution.

I think that is a summation, no cognitive dissonance to it IMO. It's just saying the 20% does not matter, or would only matter when the 80% side is solved

There is a prisoner's dilemma here at play as well. At least the corporate actors need to change behavior.

Given all that, perhaps the debate is whether that hypothetical reduction is meaningful. To answer that, depends on your perspective on the scope of the problem and your response to that. Then throw in a prisoner dilemma part where you can potentially skirt by while everyone else changes, order declare it entirely hopeless because the actors that must change, are not. FWIW. Loved this thread

>At least the corporate actors need to change behavior.

Given all that, perhaps the debate is whether that hypothetical reduction is meaningful.

I think as you rightly point out, this is the distinction that I wasn't apparently getting across well. My point is that those corporate decisions are also made at an individual level to a certain extent. A CEO or board member can make a decision that scales, but it still starts with a few individual choices. The individual consumer can make a moral decision which corporations to support with their wallet. But I don't think that will happen if people figuratively sit on their hands maintaining the status quo because it's easier to wait for some silver bullet policy or technological advancement. I think it takes moral courage for those leaders and individuals to make those hard decisions.

This is not meant to say there's no role for regulation or policy, particularly as it pertains to asymmetries or misalignment in information. It's meant to negate the idea that individual choices are relegated to some marginal effect. That same marginal impact would extend to democratic voting to support said policy; your one vote quite literally has almost no impact, but that mentality is not how change is implemented. To reiterate, I think that becomes a convenient excuse to not do everything in our power to effect change. It can be a useful rationalization for lamenting about a problem while doing little about it.

Regarding the "meaningfulness" I do think it's meaningful. Looking at the breakdown of energy use, I don't think there is a magic bullet and it will likely take efforts across multiple domains and approaches. I also think reducing the use at the demand side is one of the quickest and straightforward methods that we don't need to wait on some technological leap forward. The OP seemed to take issue with conservation in buildings...building energy use is greater than that of all transportation. It's also low hanging fruit in many cases where 10-30% savings can be had for marginal cost through conservation. If we were talking about those savings in transportation vs. food or shelter, I think the conversation would have went differently. The fact that it didn't makes me think there are other cognitive biases going on.

Well, sure, fair enough, we need to get to the level at which our averaged personal consumption is (all_carbon_sinks / human_population).

As far as I know that's such a tiny figure that it may as well effectively be zero compared to what everyone I know is doing at the moment, not only in the UK but in less wealthy countries around the world.