Filed under: changeeverything, climatechange, co2, consumerism, globalwarming
There are more carbon calculators out there than you can shake a stick at. Some are from agencies like The Nature Conservancy while others are trying to get you to pay for your environmental sins and still others will take your money on both ends. I do like the idea of carbon footprint calculators since it puts the focus on people rather than governments or industry, which is good since if we want to reduce our emissions people need to take some personal action rather than playing victim to industry or government. And let’s remember here that if we actually want to do something about runaway climate change chaos then we should be looking at greenhouse gas emissions reductions on the order of 90% by 2030. Not 50% by 2050.
There is a lot of news every day about new government initiatives like banning incandescent light bulbs in favour of compact flourescents or increasing vehicle fuel efficiency. But are these the real culprits when it comes to climate changing CO2 emissions? How much impact would changing every light bulb in the world or increase vehicle fuel efficiency by 10 or 20% have? Either way it’s great greenwash for governments to get more votes without actually doing anything that harms their sugar daddies.
According to the carbon footprint calculator from the Nature Conservancy, your household contributes a significant amount to your total emissions. This comes from heating and cooling, lighting and appliance use. However, it reports that by converting to compact fluorescents you would only save from 0.1 to 0.3 tonnes per year (it depends on how big your house is of course and if you are afraid of the dark or not). If we are considering a personal average somewhere in the range of 10 tonnes per person, then changing your light bulbs has pretty much zero effect.
On the other hand, things like improving your house insulation and reducing your thermostat temperature / increasing your AC temperature or reducing your hot water heater temperature can reduce up to 1.2 tonnes per year. Something very simple though still only about a 10% reduction in emissions. Energy efficient appliances can reduce emissions by about half a tonne. The thing to remember about your home emissions is that these can be reduced by using clean electricity sources such as wind or even gas / coal generated electricity were the CO2 emissions are sequestered at the source. This is not widely deployed at the moment but will hopefully reduce a lot of emissions in the future. You could also generate your own electricity locally – though at a much higher financial penalty. Nonetheless you can expect something on the order of a 10% reduction in emissions from improving your household and maintaining your same consumption patterns. Keep in mind that in all likelihood if you start using high efficiency lights you will probably just leave them on for longer.
The second section on the Nature Conservancy calculator is for transportation. This is the real devil. Driving a car like a hybrid 10,000 miles a year – a pretty average number for the commuter out there – will emit around 4.4 tonnes of CO2 per year. 4.4 tonnes driving a hybrid! Still some greenwashers out there will insist that people should check their car tire air pressure to reduce their emissions by a whopping 0.2 tonnes a year. Might as well drive a sweet little Japanese car that is like a tin can but costs far less to manufacture and gets about the same mileage. Unlike sequestering CO2 from large electricity plants that burn fossil fuels for electricity, there is no solution for car transport based on fossil fuels – forget about ethanol, natural gas and methanol fuel cells. Electric cars are a good option but only if you are charging them with renewable electricity.
The air travel section of the Nature Conservancy is sadly pretty weak so lets look at the Yahoo! calculator. According to Yahoo! a short flight will emit about 0.6 tonnes, a cross country flight about 2 tonnes and an overseas flight (> 8 hours) about 7.8! Although flying actually doesn’t really emit more CO2 per person than the average car, the problem is that you can travel such long distances in a really short amount of time and the fact that the emissions are emitted high in the atmosphere where their impact – including the impact of water vapour – is far worse than if they were emitted at sea level.
Finally, the section on the Nature Conservancy on eating was very interesting. Diets high in meat intake emit a lot of CO2, something like 3.5 tonnes a year on average. Organic meat is a lot better at only 1.7 tonnes. The other thing to consider here is if the food is grown locally – this can reduce your impact by about one tonne. Even better is organic, local vegetarian food that comes it at a very low 0.5 tonnes per year.
The verdict from looking at this one calculator is that there four rules to being “green”:
1. Do not fly
2. Do not fly
3. Do not drive
4. Eat organic, local and vegetarian
You can go through all the carbon calculators you want and enter as much detail as you want but I can tell you right now that if you are not following the four rules of being green then you are anything but.
According to Economist, Vancouver is the most livable city in the world. Just ahead of Melbourne Australia.
As a resident of this fine city I would have to agree. Of course those that consider being able to afford a house, being able to purchase good food at a reasonable price, getting around the city using public transit, going a day in the winter without rain, not getting shot in the street by the police for being on medication, meeting friendly people at a nice neighbourhood bar / pub, or any other number of things that people like to needlessly complain about the definition of a livable city then don’t bother coming to Vancouver.
In fact don’t bother coming to Vancouver even if you don’t like those things cause this place is getting way to gentrified.
I haven’t blogged here for a while but I have been keeping it climate change neutral I can assure you! I have also been infuriated for the past few months – what else is new right? Luckily I have finally figured out at least one thing that I am going to do to help engage my community in the discussion and the action. None of this waiting around for our governments to tell us what to do – we need to act and act now!
Anyhow, the question on my mind has been why change anything? I have been reading arguments lately centered around shifting our climate changing ways for the sake of “the children”, for the next generations of our species. I agree with this in some respect but hey I am trying to live my life here too! And, more importantly, there are lots of other people trying to live their lives that are a hell of a lot worse than I can even imagine – this is happening even today when the impacts from climate change are far smaller than is expected of the future.
I don’t think that we should be doing something about climate change for our children. I am pretty sure that my kids and most kids of people that read this blog are going to be just fine – in the way that the humans in Starship Troopers are “just fine” when faced with the space bug threat. Yes people are certainly concerned with short term monetary gain and the discomfort of wearing slightly damp underwear but they are comfortable in the prospects for their children who will grow up in highly militarized western nations.
Those that are truly at risk are those that are already the most marginalized; those that should be most up in arms yet have the smallest voice. It is those in Bangladesh, India, China and all across Africa that will be hardest hit by the menace of climate change and yet have the least power to do anything about it. We in the west will be sitting pretty – as long as we “aquire” enough oil to keep us running that is 
More than anything, climate change is about social justice. We should be worried about social justice today and climate change for tomorrow.
Filed under: climatechange, co2, conservatives, emissionsintensity, globalwarming, politics
For those that have not heard, the approach that Canada’s “New Government” is depending on to curb greenhouse gas emissions is to try to improve Canada’s emissions intensity. There has been a lot of discussion about this point and many are up in arms – and rightly so! Decreasing the intensity of our emissions means that for a given gross domestic product (GDP) per capita our emissions should decrease. Conversely, and more importantly, it means that for a given level of CO2 emissions our GDP should increase… that means is that overall emissions could increase as long as our GDP increase equivalently! This is another great example of the the conservatives adopting lame duck Grit policies.
If we look at the data from 1990 to 2000, according to the Canadian government we have already been improving our emissions intensity as shown in the graph below from Environment Canada.
(sorry the image above is not appearing now – Canada’s New Government seems to have removed it)
Here in Canada the emissions intensity approach is particularly insane since Alberta contributes about 30% of the countries CO2 emissions on the back of the oil industry. Since the price of oil is not expected to go down any time soon those Albertans are would be stupid not to keep racking up profits and decreasing their emissions intensity at the same time resulting in – you guessed it – higher overall CO2 emissions.
We need to put an end to the insanity Canada. Email the environment minister John Baird and tell him to get his head out of his ass!
For another view check here. For some general information check out this CTV story.
It has been a while since my last post on here despite all the high jinx that the Tories have been up to. Today I felt compelled to write something about the deal between the Liberals and the Greens to not run in each others ridings. Kudos to Dion although I am not sure that May really has a chance 
Filed under: canada, climatechange, globalwarming, greenhousegas, politics
Filed under: canada, climatechange, conservatives, energyefficiency, globalwarming, greenhousegas, politics, tories
I have been a littl busy the past while here but there have been some great stories about our blue friends over on the hill lately.
First up is a lovely piece from the Ottawa Citizen about how the Tories are not going to tax industry for their carbon emissions. There’s a shocker! Here I thought that all these closed door meetings with the oil patch would have resulted in something positive for the environment – guess I was wrong naive old me. Anyhow, the article goes on to say that the Tories are still rejecting Kyoto and Baird (the “new” Enviro Minister) could not even tell the a committee how much the Tories have spent on climate change! The best that Baird could muster was a quip about “phantom programs” referring to the Liberal approach to fighting climate change – which I will again point out that the Tories have implemented those exact same programs. Baird also mentioned the Canada only carbon trading market that companies will be able to take part in and in the same breath contradicted former Enviro Minister Ambrose saying that the international carbon trading market under Kyoto was a waste of money – I sure am glad that Baird has figured out how to implement carbon trading in Canada so cost effectively… maybe he could share that with the UN?
Oh and did you hear the one about how Baird completely twisted the words (lying might be a good word for it too) of eco-warrior Al Gore?
Those Tories sure are wholesome aren’t they? Any ready to take on their own Two Tonne Challenge?
Filed under: changeeverything, climatechange, energyefficiency, globalwarming
My wife and our flat mates live in a four bedroom 100 year old house (i.e. no insulation and single paned glass) . To keep warm on those cold Vancouver winter nights we usually take a small electric heater to bed leaving the rest of house sub-arctic.
In the end we paid about $60 a month on utilities over December and January. Of course, some of our friends refused to come over to visit since it was so cold, but it was a good reason to have house warming parties! The one day that we did have the gas heat on cost us a fair amount of money over the base-line gas costs from having the pilot light lit – which was surprising expensive. We also dry most of our clothes in the living room to keep down the electricity costs.
Hopefully we reduced our emissions pretty significantly
How much do you pay? How much better can we do?
Reducing transportation emissions is a good idea. Although, if people would just stop driving so much that might be cheaper.
At least that is what our Prime Minister would have you believe. In response to the latest IPCC report on climate change, Mr. Harper said “I don’t think realistically we can tell Canadians, ‘Stop driving your car, stop going to work, stop heating your house in the winter.’” But why not?
There are people out there that don’t drive cars to work Mr. Harper – shock, horror! There are these things called buses and, my favoured mode of transport, bicycles. Even people out east can ride their bikes to work now with this climate change induced heat wave of a winter. People are also able to reduce their home heating and retrofit their houses to be more efficient – as per the EcoENERGY program that Mr. Harper’s governmet announced to replace the EnerGuide program that they scrapped. Hell, at this point, I would even be ok with car pooling; every morning as I ride my bike to work I see a line of single occupancy SUVs stretching from downtown Vancouver to the North Shore burning up foreign.
“Realistically” Mr. Harper, do Canadians want to be complicit in the global genocide that is climate change?
