Climate Change Infographic
Check out this infographic highlighting the importance of successfully tackling climate change.
Carbon Tax
David Kestenbaum of NPR recently published an interesting article regarding an easy way to tackle climate change: implement a tax on carbon emissions.
He discusses a solution proposed by Henry Jacoby from the Sloan School of Business at MIT. If an energy source emits more carbon dioxide than another arbitrary source, it’s taxed at a higher rate. Let’s deconstruct this approach:
Levying a new tax would require congressional action. Name how many Senators or Congressmen that have a majority of constituents clamoring a tax on their gasoline...we’re willing to bet you can’t name one. A cap-and-trade approach, where the costs are mostly hidden from public view, is more likely to gain political support instead of an outright tax.
However, if this carbon tax were to replace other taxes, as some of suggested, this approach might be received in a much more positive light. This is especially interesting if the displaced taxes are those economically and socially distorting taxes, such as payroll or income taxes.
The straightforward nature of a tax makes this approach more feasible to have immediate and direct impact on our carbon output, rather than the overly complicated cap-and-trade systems that will have a protracted period of negotiation and rollout. We have about 13 years left of our current carbon emission quantities until irreparable damage is done to the environment, so time is of the essence.
A tax would equitably affect individuals from different socio-economic classes. The rich, with a carbon-intensive lifestyle that includes flying and private transportation, will in effect pay a much higher tax rate than the middle-class and poor, who use public transportation and fly less frequently.
This would apply additional pressure on the energy sector to develop less carbon-intensive methods to generate electricity, which is sadly still overly reliant on the first technological discovery of mankind: organic material burns.
A criticism of this approach is that it will drive carbon-intensive product manufacturing offshore, but this argument is partially nullified if other taxes are offset after introducing a carbon tax. For those who claim this simply shifts the environmental ramifications to other countries, the answer is to introduce import levies and tariffs that correlate to the product’s footprint. This enables us to apply international pressure to increase the priority of environmental impact.
A myopic criticism is that introducing this tax will make little environmental impact. What proponents of this view fail to recognize is that the environmental impact is entirely correlated with the extent of the tax. The higher the tax rate, the more our society will rely on low-impact technologies and energy.
We think it’s clear the pros outweigh the cons to a carbon tax. With 13 years left before Earth incurs irreparable environmental damage, we have to start somewhere - and this is the simplest place to start.
Our Footprint
We’ve established that your carbon dioxide footprint is the what contributes most significantly to climate change. How do we quantify it? Carbon footprints are partitioned into three buckets:
Scope 1; e.g. your direct carbon footprint that results from burning gasoline or natural gas.
Scope 2; e.g. your indirect footprint from the carbon dioxide emitted through the production of electricity you use.
Scope 3; e.g. your indirect footprint from all the carbon dioxide produced through the supply chain of products you buy.
Scope 1 and 2 emissions are most easily quantified, so that’s where we started with our project. We’re not quite carbon neutral yet, but we have significantly cut our emissions by doing the following:
Driving: eliminate driving as much as possible. I now walk / bike to work everyday, and aside from the improved health and mental focus, it takes a serious chunk out of your carbon footprint. I’ve only driven 4,000 miles in the past year, which amounts to 14,000 pounds of CO2 conserved.
Other small changes in your lifestyle can lead to large carbon footprint savings, such as: taking shorter showers, keeping the thermostat just a couple degrees up or down (depending on the season), eating one more vegetarian meal per week, small changes to your driving habits, the types of products you buy at the supermarket, among others.
As a result, our team now has an average carbon footprint of 9.2 tons per year, which is just a hair above 50% the U.S. average. See what you can do using our favorite carbon footprint calculator at Nature.org.
He's Heating Up!
With sea levels rising and weather catastrophes increasing in severity, why has it been so difficult for people to take action on climate change?
A couple recurring themes wove their way through many of our conversations:
People think their own action can’t make a difference.
Most people don’t know what to do.
The scientific community and most reasonable people have accepted that global warming has anthropogenic causes, i.e., that car you’re driving (hopefully not right now) is contributing to global warming. More specifically, the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are contributing to climate change.
Okay - so excess carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is causing global warming. How severe is our problem?
According to a new study published by Nature (summarized well by EarthSky here) Earth absorbs about 0.72 tons of carbon dioxide per person per year. This occurs through various means: carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean, trees chemically convert carbon dioxide as they literally grow out of the thin air (please take the time to watch this clip of Richard Feyman explain how trees grow, it’s two minutes very well spent), among others natural processes.
According to the World Bank, if you happen to be an average carbon emitter in the US, you produce about 17.3 tons of carbon dioxide per year. In other words, you emit about 24x what the Earth absorbs.
Imagine if you managed a business that spends 24x its cashflow. Not exactly what you’d describe as a sustainable model, right? And once our ecosystem goes bankrupt, who’s there to bail us out?
Carbon-Based Life
If one were to seek out life on other planets, most of us would place our bets on carbon-based evidence. It’s one of the most chemically fertile element on the periodic table, thanks to its four valence electrons.
It reacts strongly with other elements, but not so strong that these bonds are unbreakable. It lets life test things out and move on quickly; it’s the Eric Ries of elements.
So carbon is one life’s best allies, right? Yes and no.
A result of these life-enabling properties combined with human-induced processes (i.e., burning or combusting fossil fuels) is that carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is produced along with a few other GHGs to a lesser extent, such as carbon monoxide and methane.
Who are the worst offenders?
The Guardian has a great article and data that discusses the carbon footprint of various countries and a few important trends to watch. I've summarized a few of their points below:
They claim that our world’s footprint has increased 48% since 1992, and our 2010 emissions totaled 31.8B tons from energy production. China currently holds the world record for largest emitter of carbon dioxide from energy at 8.1B tons. Sadly, they also claim that the US saw it’s first increase in emissions since the 2008 recession.
However, it’s not fair to compare countries based on their absolute emissions, since we must account for other variables, such as population. Here are a few interesting facts with a bit more context.
Gibraltar has an astronomical 135 tons per capita
United States is at 17.3 tons per capita (according to the World Bank)
China tops out at 6.3 tons per capita
Equatorial Guinea has experienced a 3990% increase since 1980.