I grew up being taught El Nino isn’t a big deal and it’s just the seasons going through their normal cycle. But with Super El Nino, I finally bothered to read about climate change, and now it’s a rabbit hole I can’t get out of. I calculated my own personal carbon footprint, and I feel disgusted with myself :(
I looked up all the ways to decrease my own footprint- but now I learned that’s not enough, we also need to capture and lockup all the extra carbon that’s in the air now too.
I read about all the ways to do that, and I learned about biochar and it’s relatively the quickest way we have right now that locks carbon up for at least a century if done right.
So I thought about ways to make biochar that’s actually impactful, and of course it has to be a collective action not just the individual.
Now I’m thinking, why don’t cities adopt a biochar bin for their residents just like Stockholm? Is this something I can advocate for my own community?
point being that one, or even 100000 people going full eco conscious would barely make a dent; while placing some barriers over corporations would hopefully reduce emissions substantially without sacrificing consumer convenience.
Without sacrificing consumer convenience? Well, that seems pretty ambitious. The typical Western lifestyle is just carbon-intensive.
But yes, everyone trying to solve it on their own isn’t really fair. Policy would be needed. Unfortunately, that seems to be hard to set up, as well. (There just isn’t much uplifting to say here, unfortunately)
i am of course, talking in general, but many products can be made more sustainably without sacrificing quality, the method of looking for the most cost-effective way; while good for corporations, it is pretty wasteful.
preferably both policy, and consumer consciousness. starting with anything that’s single use for no reason, society forgot that recycling is third in the hierarchy, below reducing and reusing. wouldn’t it be nice if i could just buy ice cream and put it into a tub that i brought from home instead of having 10 identical, perfectly good plastic tubs that are to be thrown into trash? generally there’s too much plastic wrapping for products.
You really should include more expensive as a consumer inconvenience. Given the same budget, that means something gets cut out. (If you don’t like money, that all works in terms or raw resources or labour, too)
Unnecessary single-use packaging is a point that could be improved for the same (overall) price, and policies about that are gradually coming in where I live. The thing is that reusable packaging tends to be a lot more emission producing, and many people don’t actually reuse it properly. It solves waste footprint, more than carbon footprint.
There are other things that would solve the problem for a similar or smaller price, and that hopefully will happen, but they amount to a significant change of lifestyle. Mass transit instead of cars, denser cities, plant-centric diets, long-lasting, repairable, but fewer and less impulse-buyable household goods and clothes. You end up with people living a lifestyle that, while still fine, is a bit more like they would have in the past, or in middle-income countries.
True, true