Remember that these figures include indirect emissions such as the ones made by the government on your behalf to maintain, for example, carbon expensive infrastructure.
The roads are a big part of that in the US. American suburban car dependency needs to die.
This may sound intuitive but is actually wrong. [0]
All construction activities including roads, account for about 10.6% of emissions.
For comparison energy use inside buildings accounts for 17.5% of emissions. Transport emissions (Land, Air, water) account for 16.2%.
There are absolutely lifestyle choices at play here: Size of houses, size of car engines, car tonnage, commute distances, Travelling/Shopping habits.
We cannot change minds and infrastructure overnight, the second best thing we can do at a policy level is to (magically) find ways for our energy production to not depend on coal/natural gas.
Spread out living (which is equivalent to car dependent living) has a knock on effect on consumption of everything, and it is more than a linear relationship.
The more spread out people are, the further water, electricity, gas, sewage, trash, food, human bodies, and everything else has to travel. Energy is mass times acceleration times distance.
In other words, detached single family homes with garages and 2 cars driveways on a quarter acre lot preclude any environmentally conscious changes one could make, barring the miraculous discovery of some new technology that supplants fossil fuels. Or drastic reductions in population.
The simple, but not politically viable, solution is to increase fossil fuel taxes so much that it forces people to give up detached single family homes and individual cars and move into apartment or rowhouses so that public transit can be implemented.
The biggest energy expenditure and as a result CO2 emission source per person is food. You like having peaches in February in Michigan? You like having meat 7 days a week? Guess what: all the industrial agriculture and transportation of that meat from a thousand miles away nets you an energy expenditure of about 10kW 24/7. In theory the biggest lifestyle change you can make to save CO2 is to go vegan and buy local food at 2-5x the prices from local farmers or grow it yourself (which is a full time job).
The biggest energy expenditure and as a result CO2 emission source per person is food?
Do you have a source for this claim?
All I have read until now points to a majority of individual emissions associated with vehicle emissions and Energy usage for Heating/Cooling houses/offices. I am all for a vegetarian lifestyle for animal welfare sake but I feel this focus on Agricultural emissions is misleading or at least misreported.
I think people get confused because of double-counting.
If you move a load of produce in a truck, do the truck emmissions get counted as "transport" or "agriculture"? I guess depending on your angle, you could say either.
Comments
Remember that these figures include indirect emissions such as the ones made by the government on your behalf to maintain, for example, carbon expensive infrastructure.
The roads are a big part of that in the US. American suburban car dependency needs to die.
This may sound intuitive but is actually wrong. [0]
All construction activities including roads, account for about 10.6% of emissions.
For comparison energy use inside buildings accounts for 17.5% of emissions. Transport emissions (Land, Air, water) account for 16.2%.
There are absolutely lifestyle choices at play here: Size of houses, size of car engines, car tonnage, commute distances, Travelling/Shopping habits.
We cannot change minds and infrastructure overnight, the second best thing we can do at a policy level is to (magically) find ways for our energy production to not depend on coal/natural gas.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
Spread out living (which is equivalent to car dependent living) has a knock on effect on consumption of everything, and it is more than a linear relationship.
The more spread out people are, the further water, electricity, gas, sewage, trash, food, human bodies, and everything else has to travel. Energy is mass times acceleration times distance.
In other words, detached single family homes with garages and 2 cars driveways on a quarter acre lot preclude any environmentally conscious changes one could make, barring the miraculous discovery of some new technology that supplants fossil fuels. Or drastic reductions in population.
The simple, but not politically viable, solution is to increase fossil fuel taxes so much that it forces people to give up detached single family homes and individual cars and move into apartment or rowhouses so that public transit can be implemented.
The biggest energy expenditure and as a result CO2 emission source per person is food. You like having peaches in February in Michigan? You like having meat 7 days a week? Guess what: all the industrial agriculture and transportation of that meat from a thousand miles away nets you an energy expenditure of about 10kW 24/7. In theory the biggest lifestyle change you can make to save CO2 is to go vegan and buy local food at 2-5x the prices from local farmers or grow it yourself (which is a full time job).
Do you have a source for this claim?
All I have read until now points to a majority of individual emissions associated with vehicle emissions and Energy usage for Heating/Cooling houses/offices. I am all for a vegetarian lifestyle for animal welfare sake but I feel this focus on Agricultural emissions is misleading or at least misreported.
I think people get confused because of double-counting.
If you move a load of produce in a truck, do the truck emmissions get counted as "transport" or "agriculture"? I guess depending on your angle, you could say either.
Local us not always good, tomatoes griwn un soain require less carbon than thise grown in uk because of greenhouses