Right now, could you prepare a slice of toast with zero embodied carbon emissions?
Since at least the 2000s, big polluters have tried to frame carbon emissions as an issue to be solved through the purchasing choices of individual consumers.
Solving climate change, we’ve been told, is not a matter of public policy or infrastructure. Instead, it’s about convincing individual consumers to reduce their “carbon footprint” (a term coined by BP: https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oil-coined-carbon-footprints-to-blame-us-for-their-greed-keep-them-on-the-hook).
Yet, right now, millions of people couldn’t prepare a slice of toast without causing carbon emissions, even if they wanted to.
In many low-density single-use-zoned suburbs, the only realistic option for getting to the store to get a loaf of bread is to drive. The power coming out of the mains includes energy from coal or gas.
But.
Even if they invested in solar panels, and an inverter, and a battery system, and only used an electric toaster, and baked the loaf themselves in an electric oven, and walked/cycled/drove an EV to the store to get flour and yeast, there are still embodied carbon emissions in that loaf of bread.
Just think about the diesel powered trucks used to transport the grains and packaging to the flour factory, the energy used to power the milling equipment, and the diesel fuel used to transport that flour to the store.
Basically, unless you go completely off grid and grow your own organic wheat, your zero emissions toast just ain’t happening.
And that’s for the most basic of food products!
Unless we get the infrastructure in place to move to a 100% renewables and storage grid, and use it to power fully electric freight rail and zero emissions passenger transport, pretty much all of our decarbonisation efforts are non-starters.
This is fundamentally an infrastructure and public policy problem, not a problem of individual consumer choice.
#ClimateChange #urbanism #infrastructure #energy #grid #politics #power @green
@ajsadauskas @green So, let’s talk about what it would take to get the farming, processing, and transport of foods and other goods, along with the energy used in a home to come from renewables.
In that way, the Carbon Footprint isn’t such a bad way to think about it, the same tool intended to make individuals feel responsible can open our eyes to the kinds of change needed far beyond our individual reach.
Do we need to modernize and electrify domestic goods transit? I think it’s probably a good idea (and honestly, I think self-driving long-haul electric freight is a great idea, along with a high speed electric freight and passenger rail network).
Do we need existing fossil fuel power generator sites to host energy storage facilities? (That’s where most of the transmission wires traverse, much better than asking people to install batteries in their basements)?
Do we need a ‘space race’ style government & private push to design and build electrified farm equipment and smart irrigation systems, which we can ultimately tie to the Farm Bill to switch our food producers over to electrified farming?