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None of us are perfect carbon-calculators. We all exist in a world where unsustainable levels of fossil fuels and other resources are embedded into everything from our phones and our commutes to what we last ate.
This means it can be tough to figure out whether a certain action really is the most effective way to reduce your carbon footprint, or that of a company or country. Over the past year, various experts have written for The Conversation about some of the trade offs involved.
Take coffee cups. There is no simple solution to the mountain of waste they generate, as even reusable versions must be used up to 100 times to offset their higher emissions. And in any case, the vast majority of the carbon footprint of a takeaway latte is not from packaging but from things like the fertiliser for coffee plants, transport for the coffee beans, energy used to heat the coffee, and so on.
Even switching to a plant-based diet isn’t an entirely obvious win. Yes, if you’re in the global north then eating less meat is broadly good for the environment, but the situation is very different in less fertile parts of the world. Meanwhile, big agricultural firms are coming to dominate the fast-growing vegetarian food industry.
The activist Greta Thunberg made headlines in 2019 by sailing to and from the US for a summit on climate change. The decision not to fly shielded her from accusations of hypocrisy and undoubtedly made her arguments more effective. But most people don’t have two weeks to travel across an ocean – for the time being, sailing isn’t a practical option. That’s not something you could say about electric cars, which are gaining fast on petrol vehicles in terms of cost or range. But again, there are trade offs, as EVs are built using lots of rare materials and are only as green as the electricity that powers them. Maybe the best reason to go electric is to
help influence the future.
Some of these trade offs are made by governments or big companies. For instance in Ireland there are plans for some power stations to replace the peat bogs they burn with wood shipped all the way from Australia. At first, this sounds odd. How can transporting fuel halfway round the world be sustainable? But peat is one of the dirtiest forms of fossil fuels and cargo ships have a very low carbon footprint per tonne per mile. Dylan Ryan ran the numbers for us, and says it actually makes sense – for now.
As we go forward into the new year, we’ll continue to take on these tricky issues – ones that will become ever more important in our quest to create a greener society.
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