Speech idea: Is it time to abandon carbon footprints?
Whether you’re working or middle class, there’s only so much you can do to reduce your footprint. Such a large percentage of it is decided by councils(?):
- water pumping
- police, waste collection, highways agency, hospitals, street lights etc.
- office construction {what percentage is this compared to food/transport/heating?}
Sure, your electricity supplier can claim to only buy renewables but when push comes to shove and there’s no other sources, you bet they’ll be buying gas-powered electricity disconnecting your supply.
Q: does individual action matter? Voting with your wallet=myth? yes and no.
- Oatly seem to think so, but only once informed: https://www.oatly.com/en-gb/oatly-who/sustainability-plan/climate-footprint-product-label
Q: Should we be shaming people into not flying? This is a very polarising topic, and probably deserves a post to iself. Arguments for:
- like vegetarianism/veganism, it’s an ‘easy’ decision that can against:
- 70% flights taken by 15% of UK population (3+ return flights); why
punish rest of them?
- what this translates to: limiting UK population to 2 return flights/yr will reduce flight emissions by 70% - much more agreeable to cutting it out entirely. Could the remaining 30% be achieved via SAF/hydrogen/electrics? food for thought.
- ghost flights
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/31/ghost-flights-from-uk-running-at-500-a-month-data-reveals
- yes, it’s a horrible concept, but 500/month is 0.2% of flights; and 0.6% of flights running at <10% occupancy. Not a defence of them, but something for industry to work out, not for us to worry about.
From a long-termist perspective: we’ve only had jet planes for around 70 years, and it seems that humanity was fairly content without {them}; so even without a zero-carbon alternative, one could imagine a future without them.
(Note that we were using airships for longer/1919, which some futurists & sci-fi writers see as the future of aviation… i’m skeptical but whatever)
Q: should we be shaming people into being veggie/vegan?
Conclusions/CTA:
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