Recently I posted a thread asking true believers what they do to mitigate their carbon footprint and got very limited response which I fully expected. The couple that did answer gave me the usual stuff about walking or biking to work, thermal pane windows etc. This is nibbling around the edges of your carbon use and may make you feel good like driving a Prius but in reality you have done next to nothing. If you go to carbon footprint calculators online they ask you questions about light bulbs,water heaters etc. And you get an attaboy if you have done all the right things and walk away feeling quite superior. The reality is far different though. You live in a house made of material that is logged mined and milled which are very intensive fossil fuel use industries. Your beloved bicycle was built in fossil fuel powered factories and once again built with mined material and then manufactured into steel at huge power consuming steel mills. The computer you sit at is made of oil and more mined materials and the process to make its battery is a huge polluter and you do plug it in to a power source every day. Look around you, you are surrounded by products from logging mining and drilling and the factories that turn those raw goods into finished goodies. Next is the food you eat. Farming is extremely fuel intensive not to mention the herbicides and pesticides used to grow them. You buy your goods from grocery stores full of coolers and freezers and AC in summer, massive heaters in winter and an acre of lights to see your way. You fly to relatives house on Christmas or Thanksgiving or for a vacation or when someone is sick. You drive or take a cab to the airport. Last but not least everything and I mean everything you touch was brought to you on a truck that gets 3 mpg not to mention all the trucks and trains that moved raw material to factories and distribution centers before you buy it. I could go on all day but if you have not got my point by now you never will. Have a nice carbon filled day
The solutions we need are not on a personal level but on a intergovernmental level. Some countries have been reducing their carbon emissions any way they can for decades. Cars should be coming up and it will have a big impact. http://www.transportenvironment.org/what-we-do/cars-and-co2
So nobody saw your thread and it got buried by other threads. That makes you correct? Of course nobody has a zero carbon footprint. Your very existence without any other activity whatsoever has a carbon footprint. Now for some of your points: 1) If you buy a pre-existing home then it greatly reduces your carbon footprint. There is a saying that the greenest home is one that has already been built. It requires no additional activity and it ultimately defers land-fill space. 2)I don't own a bicycle. 3) My city has an electronics recycle program in which someone picks up this stuff and harvests the metals and recycles the rest which reduces some of the back-end pollution 4) Yes I have lots of stuff I did not make myself 5) I grow a great deal of food I eat for about 6 months of the year. Meat and dairy are my only real food purchases year round. IT doesn't mean I do not have a carbon footprint, but it is lower than someone who doesn't grow any of their own food 6) Yes, because I would rather my milk not be sour cream when I get it home 7) Nope. Don't fly anywhere for Christmas. I do have people come visit me, but not on planes. not everything I touch was brought to me on truck. For instance, I do a lot of plant/seed propagation myself. Nobody delivered all the neighborhood cats that hang out at my house to me on trucks either but I touch them. 9) Thank you. You have a nice carbon-filled day as well.
I love this argument because it is the most ridiculous. Do you think ISIS is a threat to the US? Then when do you ship out to fight? And you better be up on the front lines....no in the rear with the gear stuff. LOL
OK only 99% of what you touch was brought to you on a truck, feel better? Your house that was already built took massive amounts of fuel to build and just because you didn't have it built you think you are off the hook? According to you warmers we have been warming the planet for 150 years so unless your house is older than that you are living in and enjoying the benefits of so called C02 pollution. You just can't rationalize your way out of that! What's really ironic is you are sitting at your computer whinning about global warming even though it was made from drilling and mining and likely powered by fossil fuel and was on a truck throughout that process multiple times. I am glad you realize that nobody is 100% fossil fuel free but you greatly exaggerate your reduced footprint with the usual nibbling around the edges that is minimal in the scheme of things
If you truly believed we are warming the planet and it will lead to catastrophic results you would do everything you could to live accordingly. Fact is though you love modern life and all of its luxery and convenience and participate fully in it while at the same time crying the sky is falling. That doesn't strike you as a bit bipolar?
If you truly believed that ISIS is a threat you would be on the front lines of the fight. When do you ship out? By the way I have a hundred more examples of things you should be doing if you believe in the cause.
If you live in a house you are reaping the benefits of the trees cut down and milled, the mining for the dry wall and wiring and plumping and roofing and nails etc. Warmers tell us we have been warming the planet for 150 years so as I said unless your house is older than that you are reaping the benefits of " destroying the planet". Live in a tent and let some denier live in the house and you prevent a new house being built, save the planet!
Not the same thing. If you buy an existing house (which the US has a surplus of) then you are not adding any additional carbon. If you build a new house, you are adding a massive amount of additional carbon.
I didn't say it would. I was speaking to the idea of lowering your carbon footprint. Not whether or not it would matter.
Not adding carbon just enjoying the benefits of previously added carbon guilt free. Kind of like robbing a dead man, WTF he was dead anyway
I am not a believer, but I try to reduce my footprint. (Carbon and otherwise) I am a Vegan I buy local, organic I recycle (Does reloading my own ammunition count?) It makes me feel less guilty when I'm pulling my 30 ft toy hauler with my 8 MPG diesel.
My carbon footprint is too high according to people who don't want me to use electricity for things like warmth.
No problem. Of course another thing that I think gets wink winked by the AGW crowd is that many of the numbers they use are not actually carbon but carbon equivalent measurements of other things to try to inflate the "carbon output" numbers. In the end my position is simple, the earth is warming and the warming earth releases carbon reserves and would be whether we were here or not, but let's at least try to keep some of the toxic (*)(*)(*)(*) out of our drinking water, please.
True enough. Your comment reminds me that you have to give the AGW crowd credit for the terms they introduced into the vernacular in order to influence the low information crowd who tend to simply repeat what they heard. They hear "carbon" and they think "dirt" or "coal" or maybe crap stuck to their shoes. I understand the natural tendency to go for brevity, but why not call it "plant food" or "pre-oxygen". Too petty? Considering how organized and focused their planning has been for a half century ... I don't think so.
Because they can blame big oil mostly. "Let's convert cow farts to carbon equivalents so we can blame Exxon because people won't listen if we talk about banning meat."
