Data Is Beautiful

Agreed, chart needs "Don't be Amazon" added for scale.

I mean... I look at this chart, and I see that a single transatlantic flight has more impact than completely eliminating the use of your car?

I'm with you, but not for any semblance of the same reason :) I'm with you because im a hostler, a commercial driver that just moves cargo around a local yard. We send roughly 400 tons of bulk paper down the road and rails every 12 hour shift. Most of that is used to manufacture goods like cups, straws, and takeout boxes, within roughly 800 miles of here, but the majority of what goes on railcars is bound for Japan... it's literally going to be transported to the other side of the globe. Japan wants incredibly specific quality paper, and they get it from here. That's a huge amount of tonnage going across the Pacific, and going by this chart might be roughly equivalent to every single car driven in an entire less populous state. Just the shit I move around the yard here... And then basically everything bought in the US is made in China... all that stuff goes across the Pacific.

A long haul truck gets 6mpg, and runs 100k miles a year... every truck, every year... A whole ass lifetime worth of fuel for an average commuter in a "gas guzzling" SUV, in a year. One single truck. Every few days one of these trucks comes to your Walmart, your Home Depot, your Costco.

This chart is peanuts compared to JUST "economy of scale"... Not corporations or manufacturing, just the simple economics of shipping the spork you got at Taco Bell across the Pacific and driving it from the spork warehouse to 2,000 different taco bell joints...

Your personal carbon footprint is a fucking joke. Not in the sense that you shouldn't care, but in the sense that what we do individually, despite being incredibly laudable at its own scale, is such a tiny tiny impact at the scale of economy...

I feel you. Not the way you mean it, but I really do feel you :)

I wonder how many of the large meat and dairy companies will still be such huge polluters if everyone ate a vegetarian or even vegan diet? I wonder how much less pollution fast fashion producers create if everyone prioritised high quality clothing that lasts a long time over cheap clothing that doesn’t even last a year? I wonder how much pollution oil and gas producers would make if everyone decided to stop using gas boilers and petrol cars and taking long polluting flights?

To argue that we can’t affect the amount of pollution going in to the world makes someone else less likely to try. If we all do our part the companies are forced to change, not via laws and regulations, but by the fact that they will lose money if they don’t. The fact of the matter is, most people say they care about climate change and the environment, but when you ask them to give up their highly polluting luxuries, they suddenly don’t care as much. And obviously there are exceptions to this, you and I for example probably care about the environment and actually act in a way as to reduce our own footprints. But the average person does not care enough.

Make it illegal for corps. to use anything other than biodegradable plastics (starch-based, etc), for single-use products, unless there is a very good and specific case to be made (eg long-term storage, or storage at extreme temperature needs). Outlaw unsolicited snail mail (leafleting, etc). With reasonable exceptions for municipal stuff.

We need to address that first before anything else.

No, we can simply address it at the same time, especially since we are the consumers of the products those awful companies produce.

I don't even have a child. If I were to end someone else's spawn would that count as -1 child for my footprint or theirs? Just asking out of curiosity...of a friend...an acquaintance really.

Don’t forget to compost the body. We’re trying to be sustainable here.

Exactly. They might as well suggest people to kill themselves to make less of a climate impact.

No no, the benefactors of systemic issues told me it's all my fault. They're innocent

Exactly! I don't see "eat a billionaire" on this chart.

Dont forget, around 30% of ALL US emissions comes from US military - but no one is pushing to reduce that, and to the contrary, many politicians push for green stuff while also push for war and military... The level of ignorance and hypocrisy...

Seen this argument around, got any source for that?

Edit: Found that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_contributors_to_climate_change

Edit 2: Is it more accurate? https://peri.umass.edu/greenhouse-100-polluters-index-current

*i don't mean killing them

🥺

*I don’t mean killing them, just tax them to oblivion.

For anyone still not paying attention - they will never ever let us do the one (they are literally planning their lives underground or in space for when the planet is no longer liveable, why anyone would think they would ever do anything to benefit anyone but themselves truly is beyond me), leaving us no choice but to resort to the other.

Also, suicide has a positive impact on the pension system, whereas having less children has a negative impact.

Mesoamerican human sacrifices to volcanoes to appease natural forces I suppose were one of the earliest policies to combat climate change.

Even just add private jests on to this, it would make all the other columns disappear...

Furthermore, this creates a feeling that some actions are nearly meaningless.

They are.

There's very good reason that private jets for example aren't on there, never mind the industrial stuff - they would make the points we see here completely invisible by comparison.

Some may say I am childless so I can fly 3 times a year and have a lower impact than this family with two kids.

both would have insignificant impact in the grand scheme of things.

This is just more shifting responsibility to those who aren't by those who are, to ensure they can continue undisturbed.