https://archive.ph/OPchq
"Let’s say you live in the typical American household. It doesn’t exist, not in
any sense except in a data set, but it’s easy enough to imagine. Maybe it’s
your aunt’s, or your neighbor’s, or a bit like your own. Since more than half
of us live outside big cities, it’s probably in a middle-class suburb, like Fox
Lake, north of Chicago. You picked it because it’s affordable and not a
terrible commute to your job. Your house is about 2,200 square feet — a
split-level ranch, perhaps. You’re in your mid-30s and just welcomed your first
child. Together with your partner you make about $70,000 a year, some of which
goes toward the 11,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity and 37,000 cubic feet of
natural gas you use to heat the house, play video games and dry your clothes.
You take six or seven plane flights a year, to visit your mom after her surgery
or attend a conference, and drive about 25,000 miles, most of which you barely
register anymore, as you listen to Joe Rogan or Bad Bunny. Maybe twice a month
you stop at Target and pick up six or seven things: double-sided tape, an extra
toothbrush, an inflatable mattress.
You believe that the power and goods you consume are changing the climate but
do not believe in your ability to stop it. So when you come into more money, no
matter your political leanings or education, you buy a bigger house, another
car, more stuff. You barely notice, but in the years since 1988, when James
Hansen testified that our burning of fossil fuels was destroying the conditions
for life, your home has grown by about 1,000 square feet and you’ve bought
another car, an S.U.V. that’s itself 25 percent larger, even though you have
fewer kids. All these choices compound so quietly that if you’re lucky enough
to earn over $100,000 a year, you wind up helping your relatively small social
group — about a fifth of Americans — contribute around a third of household
emissions. Even if you don’t, by the end of the year, your carbon bill is
world-historically anomalous but normal among your neighbors: 17 tons for
transportation, 14 tons for housing, eight tons for food, six tons for
services, five tons for goods.
That household total, 50 tons, represents a carbon footprint of about 25 tons
per person. It’s a figure that eclipses the global median by a factor of five
and is nowhere close to where it needs to be if you — we — want to stave off
the worst of warming’s effects: around two tons per person."
Via
Future Crunch Oct 28, 2022:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-clean-water-rewilding-spain-tipping-points-clean-energy/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
