The most effective way of reducing your carbon footprint is to use contraception. Julie Day
Your carbon footprint doesn’t really matter, and neither does mine. Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of climate change. Solving this problem is easy. We just need governments with the cojones to do it. YesPrecisely
The UK’s carbon emissions are mainly from surface transport and heating, so get an electric car (or stop driving and stop getting deliveries) and get a heat pump. People get very hung up on flying, perhaps as a way of shifting blame to other people who are frequent flyers, but it’s a minor part of our problems. Randomusername222
The individual carbon footprint of an average European is about 10 tonnes of CO2e a year, more than twice the global average. Lifestyle factors affect the precise makeup, but broadly this splits into five equal components of about two tonnes of CO2e a year each. There are therefore five highly effective steps of broadly equal weight ranked in order of relative ease as follows:
1) Switch to a genuine renewable energy supplier for all electricity and heat requirements. Ideally heat is provided by electricity (via a heat pump) as this also avoids other emissions such as fugitive. Avoids two tonnes of CO2e a year.
2) Become vegan. Avoids two tonnes of CO2e a year (assuming avoidance of three portions of meat including one portion of beef a week).
3) Stop flying. Avoids two tonnes of CO2e a year (assuming eight flight hours per annum avoided).
4) Stop driving an internal-combustion-engined car. Avoids two tonnes of CO2e a year (assuming medium-sized car and 8,000 miles per annum).
5) Reduce consumption and waste focusing on clothing, electrical goods, plastic avoidance and food waste avoidance. Potential to avoid two tonnes of CO2e a year, but most difficult to achieve. Consider genuine offsets.
Which of them to believe? Both/all, really, allthough I don't accept the vegan bit.
A
Re: Reducing our carbon footprint...
Posted: Thu May 12, 2022 12:36 pm
by Joeboy
I'll be honest, I have tried to do all I can in my day to day life but I do fly....
Sadly I'm not changing that unless a transmission.portal becomes available. The rest I am in line with mostly. Although not vegan I have been upping my veg consumption for years.
Re: Reducing our carbon footprint...
Posted: Thu May 12, 2022 3:44 pm
by SafetyThird
I made the choice not to have kids.
Travel has been one of my luxuries though only 3 foreign holidays in the past 12 years though I'd like there to be more in the next 10 or so. Been abroad for work several times but someone's going to do that whether it's me or not.
Done everything possible while renovating the cottage to be as efficient as possible: solar PV, ground source heat pump, wood burning stoves etc.
My truck is 17 years old and good for another 10 at least. The other car is 15 years old and we'll probably change that for an electric at some point.
My real vice is my microlight but even that probably does more to the gallon that many ICE vehicles and I don't fly it often, at least not as often as I'd like
I think most of us on here are like minded and doing the best we can. I doubt we're 'typical' consumers.
Re: Reducing our carbon footprint...
Posted: Thu May 12, 2022 3:53 pm
by AE-NMidlands
Agreed we are probably ahead of most of the population, but is
Your carbon footprint doesn’t really matter, and neither does mine. Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of climate change. Solving this problem is easy. We just need governments with the cojones to do it.
a valid answer?
Can it be true that All the people in the world doing everything they can, can only ever achieve 29% of what is needed?
Re: Reducing our carbon footprint...
Posted: Thu May 12, 2022 4:54 pm
by Moxi
Depends what those 100 companies make I guess, that’s the missing info that would allow us to draw a valid conclusion. If they make yellow plastic widgets that do nothing more than entertain them yes shut them dow but if they are for instance power companies then you cannot simply close them down as the knock on for many people could be catastrophic far sooner than global warming would otherwise be.
So the flippant examples aside is one of those companies responsible for massive deforestation to farm cattle for fast food ? If yes then you could argue that that company isn’t required to produce meat but should use a third of the land to produce cereal and root crops for food whilst releasing theme rest of the land back to mixed Forrest. I cannot remember the figure that is used for the extra land required to rear beef cattle compared to equivalent calorific value of root and cereal but it’s notably less efficient to raise cattle.
They really need to list the companies in the firing line.
Oh and everyone’s responsible for treading lightly where they can, it’s no excuse to say my efforts don’t matter - they do. I don’t fly I now don’t drive very much but I have seven kids so I need to do my best for them and everyone else that is to follow us, they may never know what I did for them but on my death bed I will lay content in my own knowledge
Moxi
Re: Reducing our carbon footprint...
Posted: Thu May 12, 2022 5:03 pm
by Stinsy
AE-NMidlands wrote: ↑Thu May 12, 2022 3:53 pm
Agreed we are probably ahead of most of the population, but is
Your carbon footprint doesn’t really matter, and neither does mine. Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of climate change. Solving this problem is easy. We just need governments with the cojones to do it.
a valid answer?
Can it be true that All the people in the world doing everything they can, can only ever achieve 29% of what is needed?
I read that the 10 biggest cruise ships produce more CO2 than every car in Europe combined.
Don't forget that the "carbon footprint" thing was a creation of the FF industry. They wanted to shift responsibility from big business onto consumers.
Additionally I REALLY don;t buy the "vegan" nonsense. I hike through fields where sheep and cows graze. The landscape is beautiful with all sirts of abundant flora and fauna. It is easy the imagine the land having been grazed by ruminants for millennia. Monoculture arable crops are dead of all life except for the one "crop". 500 years ago 60million bison roamed North America, can we really blame ruminants for climate change?
Re: Reducing our carbon footprint...
Posted: Thu May 12, 2022 5:27 pm
by Stan
Bison may be the answer to wildfires and desertification in Spain, according to this video.
Forgive the hectares mis-spell. One of our collie pups went to a farmer who has called him Hector, as a pun.
Re: Reducing our carbon footprint...
Posted: Thu May 12, 2022 6:04 pm
by nowty
Stinsy wrote: ↑Thu May 12, 2022 5:03 pm
I read that the 10 biggest cruise ships produce more CO2 than every car in Europe combined.
Sounds implausible unless its on Xmas day.
I did a back of fag packet calculation.
10 largest cruise ships - 800,000 gallons per day, obtained from google.
All Europes 240m cars per day based on an average 5000 miles per year (uk is circa 7000) and 30 miles to gallon, comes to over 100,000,000 gallons a day. I know some are EV's but you get the idea.
Re: Reducing our carbon footprint...
Posted: Thu May 12, 2022 7:45 pm
by marshman
I suspect it was this "fact" that was being referred to....
