Carbon emissions

A few days ago, a friend posted the following comment on this blog: “Recently I heard on NPR that of the entire total sum of human carbon emissions, driving personal cars makes up 10%.  This really shocked me since so much effort is made to have people drive less.  This essentially means to me that if everyone started walking and sold their cars today, we would still be at 90% of our carbon emissions.  I’m not sure what makes up that 90%, it wasn’t addressed—factories? air planes?  Whatever it is though, while we should all try to drive less of course, I think we should be much more aggressive about stopping that source!  I was thinking of you actually, and wondering if you know what the main causes of carbon output besides driving are . . .”

I’m currently reading Jeffrey Sachs’ Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, and was happy to run across the exact answer to my friend’s question whilst reading tonight.  In Chapter 4, Table 4.1, Sachs gives the breakdown of the total carbon dioxide emissions in 2007, extrapolated from 2005 data from the International Energy Agency.  The burning of fossil fuels, according to Sachs, accounts for 81% of all carbon dioxide emissions, of which the creation of electricity causes 32%, industry causes 22%, transportation (including personal) causes 18%, residential (i.e. fires, furnaces, etc.) causes 6%, and commercial emissions causes 3%.  The 19% of carbon dioxide emissions not caused by fossil fuel consumption is accounted for in deforestation.

So what this means is that transportation is the fourth largest (of six) emitter of carbon dioxide, with 10% (according to NPR) coming from personal transport.  It’s true that ten percent isn’t that much.  My inclination is to believe that the push towards personal car use reduction stems from a “give them something they can deal with” approach to educating the public about personal responsibility for environmental action.  You know, people in power thinking that they can’t overwhelm us, or perhaps not wanting to threaten the industries that fund all of their campaigns by bringing constituents’ attention to the problems in industry.  Or maybe it comes from the other side - what are Americans if not consumers, after all, so push for them to consume less or, at least, differently.  “Go green.” So, in light of the fact that electricity is such a larger emitter, perhaps there should be an equally-large, if not larger, push to encourage Americans to go for green energy plans.

Or should there be?

Another book I read recently, Judith Levine’s Not Buying It had a quote which struck me: “If I am a consumer first and last, all I can do to better the world is consumer more responsibly - ‘buy green,’ invest in socially responsible businesses, and buy less.  The other choice I have is to reject consumer as my sole role and reclaim my other public identity: citizen.”

We can choose the Prius.  We can choose Ecotricity, or whatever green tariff our local energy supplier has.  We can drive less, and turn off more lights in our houses.  And we should.  Every little helps.  BUT… we shouldn’t stop there.

Instead, we should become citizens again.  It’s been obvious of late (see the abysmal voter turnouts in the last several elections) that, for whatever reason, citizens aren’t acting like full citizens.  Perhaps we are understandably disenchanted with governance that seems determined to pander to a few, divide the rest, and to assume the lowest common denominator of its citizens.  Perhaps we don’t vote because, really, what can one individual vote do? 

But that’s not how America has always been!  We are taught to revere the Founding Fathers as men who fought and won a revolution because they felt their voices weren’t being heard by their government.  Women banded together and won the vote; African-Americans banded together and ended segregation.  We are a nation founded on idealism and stubbornness and individual, collective action.  We can still be so! 

So instead of just buying a Prius, buy a Prius (or a bicycle), talk to all of your friends and coworkers and people who help you and Facebook contacts and everyone else about how great your Prius (or bicycle!) is, and then send a letter to your senators and representatives urging them to force greater fuel efficiency measures onto the auto industry (and urge them to push a bicycle-lane structure into your local area), and sign all those petitions that get shoved your way about autos, and attend local government meetings and speak up about how your city should pass a congestion and emissions charge like London, or whatever scratches your auto/bicycle/public transport itch.

And instead of just buying the wind-power option, buy the wind-power option, do all the yammering to everyone, and then start pushing HARD for greater investment in R&D for alternative energy.  I know I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: humans are incredibly ingenious.  The technology already exists to squeeze much greater efficiency out of our current energy structure - push to have it applied.  But equally, the intelligence and imagination is undoubtedly out there to find new ways of powering things, ways that don’t burn fossil fuels and don’t depend on the fossil fuel chain (as biofuels currently do) and that won’t cause mass extinctions or altered wind patterns or even ugly landscapes.  That intelligence and imagination needs to be drawn to work on this problem if it’s not already there, and one good way to draw people in is to pay them.  So make sure more money - LOTS more money - gets put into the research sector.  And then help make sure that the results are applied quickly.

A citizen is not just a voter, nor just a consumer, but a member of society.  Movements happen when like-minded people find each other and start talking and doing about the thing they believe in, regardless of the scorn/derision/hatred of those who disagree with them.  Let’s keep this movement moving! 

It’s important to remember, however, that not everyone prioritizes everything the same, even if they are of like minds.  Some people might find the plight of the polar bears or the national parks more engaging than climate change or famine.  We can’t insist that everyone focus on any one goal.  They are all under the same umbrella.  Decide which is the most important to you and put the vast majority of your energy towards that.  Save a little to support others’ causes (petitions, anyone?), and remember to occasionally raise your eyes from your specific cause to the grander scale.  Don’t lose the forest for the trees, or something like that.  But most importantly, keep moving!