If you replaced your car with electric one, your consumption is at least 10x bigger than mine (assuming you bought $40k Tesla). In 2020 I've spent €4112.09 on everything. Every dollar spent is eventually converted to carbon dioxide, if you spend 10x more, you produced 10x more carbon dioxide. Lower your consumption, that's the only way to save this planet.
I really wish there was a cost-effective way to rent some of these low-usage, but high-carbon items like cars. I really don't want to own a car. I barely use it because WFH + public transport + company shuttle handles most of my day-to-day. However, it is difficult to do some outdoor sports in the US without one (e.g. rock climbing, mountain biking, skiing). I have a Subaru in my garage on a trickle charger to keep the battery fresh only for these kinds of things.
I wish I could avoid having to insure, register, and worry about this stupid investment, not to mention the guilt from having this barely-used thing expanding my carbon footprint.
However, the math on renting a car every weekend that has all-wheel drive still just doesn't work out, not to mention the hassle of retrieving and returning it.
I don't like the "you will own nothing and be happy" way things are going, but I could definitely do that with a car if the economics wouldn't be so rapacious.
Probably I could spend less and still have a relatively big impact on the climate. I would just buy a lot of methane and release it into the atmosphere. Assuming [1] is correct, I could get 4t of CH4 for less than 4000€. According to the IPCC AR5, 1t of CH4 is equivalent to 28t of CO2. So I could "easily" have a climate impact of 112t CO2e. This is more than 22 times the global average of CO2e emissions per capita.
My point is that one Euro can have a huge or a small impact on the climate. Nevertheless there are some studies that wealthy people produce more CO2e because of their higher consumption. Everyone should reduce their consumption to what's really necessary. For a real change though, we would need better laws, and people that lobby for them. You could help, too! [2]
Nope. I spent significantly less than that (It was used, with 112k miles on it), but also it’s being shared by a household of 5. My per-household-member spending is approximately twice of yours (my household income is less than my state’s median …and likely the cost of living in my state is higher), so now we have to know the details of energy sources to know whether your emissions were less than mine.
In 1880s london, a laborer may spend 23 pence a week on coal, with coal prices at 10 pence per hundredweight, that’s about 230 pounds of coal per week (the English used fantastically inefficient open fires: https://digpodcast.org/2017/12/03/heating-homes-victorian-br...). That’s higher per capita emissions than in the UK today in spite of incomes a factor of 10 less. So if you live in a small, drafty house with a coal fired gravity furnace, you may burn enough coal to have higher emissions than my entire household in spite of low income.
So efficiency also matters, and matters a lot. While it might be an okay rule of thumb, there is no 1 to 1 correlation of spending and emissions. In fact, there’s no particular reason why there need be any emissions at all.
I’m reminded of ozone depletion. At one point, refrigeration relied on ozone depleting refrigerants. Because people tend to have refrigerators or air conditioning proportional to spending, you could’ve made the case that there’s a 1 to 1 relationship between spending and ozone depletion. HOWEVER! We passed bans on ozone depleting chemicals, and since then, emissions of such chemicals have dropped so much that the ozone layer has started to heal in spite of National and global wealth increasing dramatically. We simply developed alternatives.
And now, since there have been further drops, it’s lower than 1860-1880 even including imports (which are about 20% of emissions, give or take).
The solution to climate change is not castration, whether literal or metaphorical (Degrowth). In fact, we’ll be poorly prepared for fixing the damage of climate change if we lack the wealth and industrial capacity to do anything meaningful. And there’s no way to convince the developing world they should stay poor in order to solve climate change. The only solution is to use alternatives to fossil fuels.
And while I admire those who are willing to engage in a vow of poverty to fight climate change (assuming they’re not putting their few resources into inefficient coal heating, etc), it is actively harmful to addressing climate change to insist, falsely, that every dollar spent has an identical effect and therefore the only way to mitigate climate change is poverty. (In fact, a laborer in 19th century london would be poorer than you by today’s standards but higher emissions, so even poverty is not sufficient!)
