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
@ajsadauskas @green Fossil fuel companies are terrified we’ll work together to change what’s socially acceptable—the rich will be shamed out of their yachts, EVs will be mainstream, local governments will outlaw housing gas hookups. They fight this propaganda & greenwashing (& “carbon footprint” rhetoric). The rich (people, countries) have a moral obligation to help the poor transition to a just, green economy… but we don’t “wait around” for that to happen. We force it to happen by organizing.
@ajsadauskas @green Mains power may be coal or gas, but the efficiency of mains power (and the efficiency of scrubbers) is far greater than a car’s. So, from an operating fuel perspective, an EV is greener, even if imperfect.
This is what they do: convince everyone everything is a matter of personal choice.
Tobacco: framed as personal choice
Transportation: personal choice
Climate response: choice
Public health / masking: choice-ified
Who does that serve? The wealthy and powerful, because a population that learns it can work together to solve problems and find solutions that make life better will eventually figure out that together we can solve the problem of *them*
@ajsadauskas @green I buy foods that have been produced as close as possible to my home. It’s insane to buy milk from Queensland (3000 km away) when we have dairies here in Sth Australia.
Buying local often means buying what’s in season locally and doing without for the rest of the year. This is also the cheapest way to buy fresh food.
While you’re right that governments have the most power to make change, individuals can signal our willingness to make change without waiting for government.
@anne_twain
It’s complex though. Transport is usually a tiny fraction of the CO2 emissions of growing food.
Most of the time a sustainable business further away will be better than buying local.
@ajsadauskas @green
@cdamian @ajsadauskas @green Did you miss the 3000 km part? Then there’s the strawberries that come from 3000 km in another direction.
Also, when I’m standing in the supermarket looking at the range of a dozen different milk brands, how do I know which one is sustainable? If they claim to be sustainable, how do I know it’s not just green washing?
I’m sorry but the nay-sayers commenting here have not convinced me. I think you just want me to be wrong.
@anne_twain @cdamian @ajsadauskas @green
This discounting of transport is absurd. The Swiss grid is hydro and nuclear. Transport is laughably short compared to the rest of the world. The biggest carbon input is natgas ro produce bound nitrogen, aka fertilizer. Storage, processing and refrigeration are grid bound.
Yet I read if you apply the MODELS they claim some Brazlian food can be more sustainable than local produced. (Discounting again the huge food waste problem!). Absurd.
