Sunday, June 21, 2020

Walk the walk I


A 2016 German study of the energy use found something that probably shouldn’t have taken us by surprise. In this study wealthy families (making more than $52,000 year, 2016 CAD) generate a much larger proportion of carbon emission than was previously suspected. This confirms results from similar but smaller studies of Canadian families.

I like to think I’m an independent person who thinks before I buy, that I’m an individual making careful choices in line with my values. For example, I know advertisers have created a whole industry around manipulating my wants, needs, and purchases, but surely I’m smarter than that?

It turns out that I am in fact completely predictable. The person who does my taxes can predict with great certainty how much carbon my family is emitting by glancing at my T4. The reason the relationship between income and carbon is so predictable is the square footage of living space. People with large incomes require(?) more square footage per person. It’s not just that large houses are expensive to heat and cool, it’s also that people with large houses also buy and purchase new energy-intensive appliances, build new houses, or make additions. These are often attributed to the industrial carbon footprint, but they scale with square footage and therefore income. I’ve often been amused that my grandparents raised nine happy kids in several 2-3 bedroom houses, but I and my peers feel that we “put up with” crowding while in university or moving to a new city and now have graduated to a “proper” house with separate bedrooms for each child (and even a guest room!). I didn’t realize how strongly “keeping up with the Joneses” affected my carbon footprint.

The second blow from this study is that my verbal commitment to the environment, the way I vote, or donating to the David Suzuki Foundation doesn’t actually lead to a smaller carbon footprint. In fact families with liberal ideologies and green values who support conservation actually produce slightly higher emissions than conservative families! It’s not that we aren’t trying, it’s just that we are putting a lot of effort into recycling, clothing and food choices (these do make a small difference), when the majority of our carbon footprint comes directly from square feet. The size of the difference between liberal and conservative families is so small as to be unimportant (it may be just a slight preference for more exotic locations for vacations, requiring overseas air travel). What is critical is that the wealthy are driving climate change, and that wealthy environmentalists are aiming at the wrong targets.

The study found that, at incomes above $52,000 per year, your carbon footprint was dominated by


  1. square footage of living space
  2. what you use for your daily transport
  3. vegetarianism vs. carnivore
  4. vacation flights.


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