This might be my favorite Atrios post ever:
Exciting Maps With Lots Of Colors
Play around with maps at the H&T Affordability Site. Not very surprisingly, people who live (for example) in the city of Philadelphia drive less and have lower vehicle carbon emissions per household. Though not surprising, there is a weird tendency to equate environmentalism with being near nature when in fact the enviornmentalist thing to do is LEAVE NATURE ALOOOOONE and live a modestly-sized place in an urban hellhole with decent mass transit.
Though I live car free in my urban hellhole because I don’t need a car and like my urban hellhole, not because of environmental concerns.
Sadly my own carbon footprint is presumably enormous, even though I live in an urban hellhole, because I drive an aspirational vehicle and fly around the world a lot. If I were prone to feeling guilty about things, I’d definitely feel guilty for that. But I make up for it by giving talks in Second Life, so I’m pretty sure everything is balanced.
May 28th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Your Second Life avatar has about the same carbon footprint as the average Brazilian.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hh_4eJ8N4PXuE6TToc3Zq_7sf05Q
Better ditch the car if you plan on doing more Second Life talks.
May 28th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
It calculates carbon emissions per household, but fails to subtract carbon sequestration per household by lawns, forests & such. An acre of forest would cancel carbon emissions due to breathing of a dozen adults or 2000-4000 miles driven by a typical gasoline car (possibly as much as 8000 miles for a Prius). Grass lawns are even more efficient (short term), but they release an uncertain amount of CO2 back into the atmosphere when grass clippings decompose.
There are two approaches to environmentalism. One is to live in a cramped urban hellhole and to walk everywhere. The other is to live on a big lot, minimize driving, use an efficient car (an electric one, if you can), work from home, if possible.
There’s also pseudo-environmentalism, when you live in the city and drive to work anyway, because it’s not safe to walk outside, or because it takes you an hour by bus to get to work.
May 28th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
#2: References? I was under the impression that the consensus was that planting trees in the tropics combats global warming, but that trees at mid- to high-latitudes have a net warming effect (because they are dark, mostly) that offsets any carbon sequestration benefit they might have. (The moral: live in a city, walk, and paint your roof white, I suppose.)
(And I almost posted without giving a reference, after asking for one! See e.g. here.)
May 28th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Living on a big lot only sequesters additional carbon if you assume that the lot’s natural state was pavement rather than vegetation. That is, because Sean lives in a city rather than a burb, there is one less suburban plot that has had its trees or chaparral leveled in order to build a house and lawn.
You can tie yourself in knots trying to optimize a carbon footprint. Trying to trace the pros and cons of every choice back is counter-productive. It would be better to follow a few simple rules: don’t contribute to sprawl; fly less; drive less; use less energy; don’t buy too much stuff; don’t throw lots of stuff away.
For professional astronomy, Phil Marshall led the writing of a white paper that estimates the energy budget of astronomers’ actvities and suggests courses of action; see http://adsabs.harvard.edu//abs/2009astro2010P..35M
and
http://low-energy-astro.physics.ucsb.edu/index.php/Main_Page
May 28th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Have under 2 children. Your carbon footprint might not go down. But over the long term carbon goes down.
May 28th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
#3: my concern was purely about carbon, not warming. Also, before the Industrial Revolution, mid- to high-latutudes were completely covered with forests anyway. You could walk from Paris to Moscow without ever leaving the forest. An environmentalist in me says that we should seek the reversal to this primeval state, rather than merely reduce the rate of global warming.
May 29th, 2009 at 6:35 am
What’s an aspirational vehicle? Is that physicist talk for ICE?
May 29th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
These studies always seem to conveniently omit the other ecological costs of living in a large city such as Philadelphia. What of the cost of governemnt and emergency services? Lighting the city? Sanitation and waste treatment?
May 29th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
I think that academics have a special responsibility with regard to reducing our carbon footprint, because we can so easily reduce our main carbon crimes with little or no cost to our work. Namely, stop going to conferences.
May 30th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Is an aspirational vehicle one with a carburetor?
I’ve heard that LA has a cottage industry of electrifying classic sports cars, if that helps.
June 8th, 2009 at 11:15 am
“These studies always seem to conveniently omit the other ecological costs of living in a large city such as Philadelphia. What of the cost of government and emergency services? Lighting the city? Sanitation and waste treatment?”
While there are certainly serious policing issues, etc., in a place like Philadelphia, almost 1.5 million people live in Philadelphia. If those people were spread out in rural areas, the emergency services per-person would be far more expensive. Similarly, infrastructure per person costs more in rural areas.
For example, the population within the city of Philadelphia is about equal to the combined population of Wyoming and Montana. How much does it cost to light, govern, and provide roads, sanitation, waste treatment, etc. to Wyoming and Montana?
Generally speaking, urban living is far more efficient PER PERSON than rural or suburban living. Remember: people have to live somewhere!