Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here this is it could happen
Speaker 1: here the show about how things are falling apart and
Speaker 1: how maybe they could be made a bit better. Uh.
Speaker 1: Right now, today we're doing an episode that is based
Speaker 1: on a I don't know essay Garrison wrote and I
Speaker 1: edited that we think you'll find interesting. So here it goes.
Speaker 1: Green capitalism promises to deliver us all the same luxuries
Speaker 1: and commodities that we enjoy today, but without doing net
Speaker 1: harm to the biosphere. It's the message liberal elites try
Speaker 1: to hold on when they make their case for being
Speaker 1: better stewards of the environment than Republicans. This is not untrue,
Speaker 1: but it's also not true enough to stop your house
Speaker 1: from flooding or your town from being incinerated in a
Speaker 1: hell storm. When it comes to the methods green capitalism
Speaker 1: posits by which we might reverse course without changing the
Speaker 1: direction of the ship. One term you'll hear often is
Speaker 1: energy efficiency. I want to read a statement I found
Speaker 1: on white House dot gov, a fact sheet on the
Speaker 1: new US government commitment to reduce carbon emissions by fifty
Speaker 1: to fifty I should note that's of the two thousand
Speaker 1: five levels which were like high or something like that. Anyway,
Speaker 1: here's the quote. The United States can create good paying
Speaker 1: jobs and cut emissions and energy costs for families by
Speaker 1: supporting efficiency upgrades and electrification and buildings. Through support for
Speaker 1: job creating retrofit programs and sustainable affordable housing, wider use
Speaker 1: of heat pumps and induction stoves, adoption of modern energy
Speaker 1: codes for new buildings. The United States will also invest
Speaker 1: in new technologies to reduce emissions associated with construction, including
Speaker 1: for high performance electrified buildings. Now, energy efficiency is in
Speaker 1: fact a fine goal, and trying to reduce emissions is
Speaker 1: broadly good. But the sad and kind of weird fact
Speaker 1: is that increasing efficiency can sometimes mean increasing pollution through
Speaker 1: what's known as the efficiency paradox, which is, of course
Speaker 1: the title of the episod out because what you want
Speaker 1: you want us to think of a second title, of
Speaker 1: a separate title from that. Come on. So, first off,
Speaker 1: what does energy efficiency mean? In general terms? Energy efficiency
Speaker 1: refers to the amount of output that can be produced
Speaker 1: with a given input of energy. Output being stuff that
Speaker 1: energy is used to do, like like your house, or
Speaker 1: wash your clothing, or power your wall mounted twenty volt
Speaker 1: vibrator that requires as much electricity as an arc welder
Speaker 1: in order to use. Energy savings are the reduction of
Speaker 1: energy use without the loss of output produced. Improved energy
Speaker 1: efficiency is expected to bring a number of benefits. First
Speaker 1: of all, reducing energy usage should result in lower energy bills. Ideally,
Speaker 1: reduced energy demand also means that energy imports can be decreased.
Speaker 1: The International Energy Agency has estimated that strict efficiency policies
Speaker 1: could allow the world to achieve more than forty of
Speaker 1: the greenhouse gas emissions cuts needed to reach its climate
Speaker 1: goals even without new technology, So there is considerable goal
Speaker 1: room within the existing structures of global society to reduce
Speaker 1: emissions a lot without fancy space technology. But despite substantial
Speaker 1: energy efficiency gains in the past few decades and decreases
Speaker 1: an output from places like the United States, we as
Speaker 1: a species are using more energy than we have pretty
Speaker 1: much forever, and emissions wildly surpass are or the Earth's
Speaker 1: ability to handle them. Quoting from the Global Carbon Project quote,
Speaker 1: global energy growth is outpacing decarbonization, despite positive progress in
Speaker 1: twenty countries whose economies have grown over the last decade
Speaker 1: and their emissions have declined. Growth and energy used from
Speaker 1: fossil fuel sources is still outpacing the rise of low
Speaker 1: carbon sources and activities. A robust global economy in sufficient
Speaker 1: emission reductions and developed countries, and a need for increased
Speaker 1: energy use in developing countries where per capita emissions remain
Speaker 1: far below those of wealthier nations, will continue to put
Speaker 1: upward pressure on CEO two emissions. They use the term
Speaker 1: developing um and developed. We don't prefer those. But obviously
Speaker 1: population growth contributes to all that, the growth and the
Speaker 1: use of energy and the emissions of carbon um you know,
Speaker 1: more people, more cars in the road, whatever, But it's
Speaker 1: not really the primary factor that's adding onto the increase
Speaker 1: in energy use for the human race. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: that later though. For now, it's important to note that
Speaker 1: the full potential energy savings, like in these kind of
Speaker 1: hypotheticals about how much could be saved by improving efficiency,
Speaker 1: are usually estimated by assuming that demand for energy services
Speaker 1: will remain unchanged after energy efficiency gains. So when they
Speaker 1: say that we can get the greenhouse emissions, gases gas
Speaker 1: reductions we need by increasing efficiency, they're doing that assuming
Speaker 1: that nothing will change about our overall energy use when
Speaker 1: we make things more efficient. But time and time again,
Speaker 1: we see that once products are made more energy efficient,
Speaker 1: people often end up consuming, producing, or even using more
Speaker 1: of the thing, which makes the potential savings less meaningful
Speaker 1: in a net result. Doesn't mean that it's not a
Speaker 1: net good, but it's not as much as is often
Speaker 1: calculated in these climate proposals. You can see this demonstrated
Speaker 1: on the job. If you're in say food services, if
Speaker 1: you happen to figure out how to do a task faster,
Speaker 1: your boss probably isn't gonna let you use that extra
Speaker 1: time to just chill out and do stuff on your phone. Um.
Speaker 1: What is the phrase if you can lean, you can clean? Um?
Speaker 1: So if you do something faster now, you're just expected
Speaker 1: to do it faster all the time and output more
Speaker 1: total work for your boss. This is the paradox of efficiency,
Speaker 1: and it applies to energy as well. On a societal level.
Speaker 1: Increased energy efficiency is a double edged sword, having the
Speaker 1: potential to help cut emissions by a significant factor um
Speaker 1: and having the potential to increase our total energy used
Speaker 1: depending on what is made more efficient and how people
Speaker 1: react to it. The idea that energy efficiency improvements can
Speaker 1: actually lead to more overall energy use goes all the
Speaker 1: way back to the start of the Industrial Revolution. In
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five, economist William Stanley Jeevens published a book
Speaker 1: called The Coal Question, in which he argued that innovation
Speaker 1: and efficiency, particularly in the case of the coal powered
Speaker 1: deam engine, would actually increase the overall consumption of coal,
Speaker 1: rather than reducing it as it had been intended to do.
Speaker 1: His prediction that efficiency improvements on steam engines would lead
Speaker 1: to massive economic expansion accelerating coal consumption was very much correct.
Speaker 1: This idea, then dubbed the Jeevens paradox, is still very
Speaker 1: much worth considering when we discuss efficiency gains and policies
Speaker 1: that are meant to reduce energy consumption and thereby fight
Speaker 1: climate change. In modern terms, we describe the process by
Speaker 1: which potential energy savings can be cut by greater use
Speaker 1: of the energy efficient product as the rebound effect. There
Speaker 1: are two different kinds of rebound effects observed, the most
Speaker 1: obvious of which is dubbed the direct rebound effect. Direct
Speaker 1: rebounds are observed when improvements and energy efficiency for a
Speaker 1: particular energy service reduces the effective price of that service
Speaker 1: and thus provides incentives to increase its demand. This leads
Speaker 1: to the overall increased efficiency not equaling to a reduction
Speaker 1: energy used as it as you might think. Direct rebounds
Speaker 1: are observed when improvements and energy efficiency for a particular
Speaker 1: energy service reduces the effective price of that enough that
Speaker 1: it provides incentives to increase its demand. You may upgrade
Speaker 1: to a more energy efficient appliance, but because of the
Speaker 1: lower energy costs, you'll use the appliance more often and
Speaker 1: thus use more total energy. Or in some cases, energy
Speaker 1: efficiency gains are cut by the fact that more efficient
Speaker 1: products allow people to use more of that product. For example,
Speaker 1: someone may get a more efficient fridge that's also much larger,
Speaker 1: and so even though it cools more efficiently, it's also
Speaker 1: consuming overall more energy. Transportation has a lot of direct rebounds.
Speaker 1: Despite massive fuel efficiency gains in recent years, transportation is
Speaker 1: still responsible for twenty of global greenhouse gas emissions. Transportations
Speaker 1: contribution to global warming is quickly increasing, with travel producing
Speaker 1: greater and greater percentages of the planet's carbon footprint. Private
Speaker 1: automobile tailpipes will drive this phenomenon for the foreseeable future,
Speaker 1: as the number of active vehicles on the road is
Speaker 1: projected to grow from seven million in the year two
Speaker 1: thousand to two billion by so even though cars are
Speaker 1: a lot more efficient, vastly more cars are being used.
Speaker 1: And of course that's not entirely. It doesn't mean that, like,
Speaker 1: more efficient cars cause people to buy more cars, but
Speaker 1: it does make it more affordable for more people to
Speaker 1: own cars and to drive them further, which drives up,
Speaker 1: you know, fuel use, and drives up emissions. And you
Speaker 1: see how the whole problem works, and it's not just cars.
Speaker 1: When planes became more fuel efficient, ticket prices decrease and
Speaker 1: more people started to travel by plane. As cost per
Speaker 1: mile dropped, more miles were flown. The fact that airplanes
Speaker 1: got more fuel efficient didn't reduce general pollution by the
Speaker 1: air travel industry, quite to the contrary. In fact, the
Speaker 1: decreased emissions led to an increase in air travel, which
Speaker 1: shot a hell of a lot more poison out into
Speaker 1: the sky and also gave us eat pray love. So
Speaker 1: the other kinds of rebounds are indirect rebound effects. This
Speaker 1: refers to when energy efficiency leads to monetary savings for
Speaker 1: a producer or consumer who then can spend those extra
Speaker 1: says things, on other carbon emitting goods and services that
Speaker 1: otherwise they couldn't afford. For example, you buy a more
Speaker 1: fuel efficient car, you save money on fuel, and you
Speaker 1: wind up with extra funds in your bank account that
Speaker 1: you can use on a vacation, and maybe you take
Speaker 1: a flight on that vacation. So in the end, you
Speaker 1: emit more c O two despite the fact that you're
Speaker 1: emitting less c O two through your car. You've got
Speaker 1: five bucks extra in the bank and you fly to
Speaker 1: Mexico on it. Right, That's an indirect rebound effect. So
Speaker 1: even if a product is replaced by a more efficient
Speaker 1: one with similar respects, lower energy bills can mean that
Speaker 1: more consumers will have more money to spend on goods
Speaker 1: and services. This is generally seen as desirable from a
Speaker 1: social and economic standpoint, and probably from an individual standpoint.
Speaker 1: Having more money is always useful UM, but it involves
Speaker 1: additional energy consumption means that you're consuming more, you're emitting
Speaker 1: more UM, and so the savings and whatnot haven't actually
Speaker 1: led to a savings in terms of, you know, from
Speaker 1: an environmental perspective. An analysis of EU data shows that
Speaker 1: out of twenty nine EU countries, eleven experienced rebound effects
Speaker 1: of over fifty which means more than half of the
Speaker 1: gains in energy efficiency were consumed by increases in energy use.
Speaker 1: Six of those countries, including Denmark and Finland, reached over
Speaker 1: rebound effects. This is called a backfire, and it means
Speaker 1: that in those six countries, extra energy spending overtook all
Speaker 1: of the efficiency gains achieved. Air Conditioning and heating are
Speaker 1: large contributors to both direct and indirect rebounds. A rebound
Speaker 1: effect as large as sixty percent has been shown in
Speaker 1: increased improvements and efficiency in the residential heating sector, which
Speaker 1: is something that the White House specifically quote about in
Speaker 1: their paper. In China, long term rebound effects ranging from
Speaker 1: forty six percent to fifty six percent for residential electricity
Speaker 1: consumption in Beijing have been estimated. All of this data
Speaker 1: casts doubt on the wisdom of relying on energy efficiency
Speaker 1: policies to reduce energy demand. I'm gonna quote here from
Speaker 1: a report by the Copenhagen School of Energy Infrastructure. In
Speaker 1: recent decades, large increases in demand for energy services have
Speaker 1: globally driven energy consumption. As a counterbalance, energy efficiency has
Speaker 1: become a key energy policy mechanism to tackle higher energy
Speaker 1: consumption and emissions, and countries and regions have adopted different
Speaker 1: targets and policies to achieve energy and environmental objectives. The
Speaker 1: main goals of these policies are to minimize the dependence
Speaker 1: on fossil fuels and mitigate local air pollution and g
Speaker 1: h G emissions. This has been particularly relevant for the
Speaker 1: energy intensive sectors. The development and deployment of more efficient
Speaker 1: technologies are, along with more technology management, the main channel
Speaker 1: to achieve these environmental and energy objectives. However, energy efficiency
Speaker 1: improvements can lead to changes in the demand for energy services,
Speaker 1: changes that offset some of the expected energy savings. Consequently,
Speaker 1: forecasts of energy consumption reductions may be overstated. As evidenced
Speaker 1: by the empirical literature, rebound effects can be a non
Speaker 1: negligible issue. Therefore, ignoring them can imply an overestimation of
Speaker 1: the benefits coming from energy efficiency improvements. This can in
Speaker 1: turn lead to decisions such as the overallocation of public
Speaker 1: funds to ineffective environmental and energy policies. Policy Makers need
Speaker 1: to take rebound effects in to account for air quality,
Speaker 1: energy security, and climate change policy reasons. A rebound effect
Speaker 1: different from zero implies that the expected proportional reductions and
Speaker 1: emissions from fuel efficiency improvements might not be achieved. Therefore,
Speaker 1: the policy goals to reach specific levels of emissions through
Speaker 1: fuel efficiency enhancements may need to be adjusted accordingly. And again,
Speaker 1: we have nothing against the idea of making more efficient devices.
Speaker 1: The point is that energy efficiency can't be pursued in
Speaker 1: a vacuum. It has to coincide with changes to a
Speaker 1: less extract of cancerous mindset regarding the Earth's resources and
Speaker 1: carrying capacity. Just telling someone you can drive more for
Speaker 1: less money now, or you can afford to keep your
Speaker 1: TV on all the time doesn't really help anything. My
Speaker 1: fear is that governments and corporations, the neoliberal leviathan as
Speaker 1: we've come to call it on this show, will focus
Speaker 1: almost overwhelmingly on energy efficiency to maintain economic growth and
Speaker 1: obscure the overall lack of action on stopping carbon emissions.
Speaker 1: Think Joe Biden doing donuts in an electric jeep through
Speaker 1: such a lens as the Biden administration. Energy efficiency is
Speaker 1: a foil to climate change is a charade being used
Speaker 1: to keep relentless economic growth. Feud is a net good.
Speaker 1: It plays into the myth that will be able to mitigate,
Speaker 1: adapt and survive the effects of climate change with little
Speaker 1: to no change to our current lifestyles. What we need
Speaker 1: to do is decouple human well being from energy consumption
Speaker 1: and consumption in general to effectively combat climate change. This
Speaker 1: needs to happen at such a scale that advocating for
Speaker 1: individual changes in lifestyle will never be enough, but that
Speaker 1: is still a significant part of the puzzle. The trick
Speaker 1: comes in getting people to accept the fact that their
Speaker 1: life will need to change without them telling them and
Speaker 1: buying this product instead of that product. Is how you
Speaker 1: do it. That said, populations of people can and do
Speaker 1: change their behaviors in pretty profound ways. In nineteen fifty,
Speaker 1: abortion was not at all an issue for the religious right.
Speaker 1: Resistance to abortion might make some products and distrust you,
Speaker 1: because that was seen as a Catholic concern. Now abortion
Speaker 1: is the defining political issue of the ascendant right there
Speaker 1: promised to destroy. It is the rock upon which their
Speaker 1: titanic power is based. In a less calamitous sense, since
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, we've gone from a time in which
Speaker 1: smartphones were expensive trash for rich people to buy to today,
Speaker 1: when they're expensive trash that every human being who can
Speaker 1: afford to has to carry at all times because they're
Speaker 1: so utterly integrated to our daily life. So yes, people
Speaker 1: can change. A bigger challenge, though, will be to change
Speaker 1: the mindset of industry, which is not entirely or even
Speaker 1: often driven by consumer demand. As we've seen with the
Speaker 1: release of papers proving Chevron and other oil and gas
Speaker 1: companies knew about and deliberately hid research on climate change
Speaker 1: for decades, Big capital will put its thumb on the
Speaker 1: scale every step of the way. In other words, if
Speaker 1: you come at the behemoth that is the integrated industrial economy,
Speaker 1: you'd best come correct. How do we do that? Well,
Speaker 1: if anybody really knew, they would have, you know, done
Speaker 1: it by now. The human infast structure of extractive capitalism
Speaker 1: is deep and vast and tightly woven into the structure
Speaker 1: of every government with any real power. So with the
Speaker 1: full understanding and admission that we aren't claiming to have
Speaker 1: solutions to that problem, let's talk about something that will
Speaker 1: at least be part of any real solution to the problem.
Speaker 1: D growth. This is a term will explain in more
Speaker 1: detail later, but we mean it's simply as a holistic
Speaker 1: approach to encouraging reduction and energy consumption and global environmental justice.
Speaker 1: A paper on the Jeevens paradox and the link between innovation,
Speaker 1: efficiency and sustainability for the Frontiers and Energy Research concluded
Speaker 1: quote the Jevens paradox and tales that sustainability problems cannot
Speaker 1: be solved by technological innovations alone. They must be solved
Speaker 1: through institutional and behavioral changes. While there are still differences
Speaker 1: of opinion about the scale every bound effects and ongoing
Speaker 1: arguments about the macro and micro and longer and shorter
Speaker 1: term consequences of efficiency, our interest in this topic today
Speaker 1: is driven by the goal of improving how we use
Speaker 1: energy rather than totally were hauling or abandoning efficiency. One
Speaker 1: example would be the current fight in Europe over smartphone chargers.
Speaker 1: Most of the rest of the smartphone industry worldwide has
Speaker 1: jumped onto USBC. Is the right kind of port for charging,
Speaker 1: et cetera with your device. Before this point, those of
Speaker 1: you have been using smartphones for a decade or we'll remember,
Speaker 1: there were tons of different charges and thus a tons
Speaker 1: of different waste. Every phone had to come with a
Speaker 1: new charger. A lot of them wound up in the
Speaker 1: trash that has been reduced by everyone jumping onto USBC.
Speaker 1: But Apple continues to use their own special charger. And
Speaker 1: now the EU was promising to make a law to
Speaker 1: mandate USBC for charging new phones in an attempt to
Speaker 1: reduce waste. This isn't again a bad thing, but if
Speaker 1: someone's really concerned with waste among the smartphone industry, planned
Speaker 1: obsolescence is the thing to go after. Now, Targeting planned obsolescence,
Speaker 1: stopping it includes a number of things. And for one thing,
Speaker 1: you have to fight for the right to repair devices,
Speaker 1: which is something that a number of corporations, not just
Speaker 1: in the smartphone industry, have lobbied to in some cases
Speaker 1: make illegal. More than that, it's stopping somehow these companies
Speaker 1: from making the conscious decision to brick old technology to
Speaker 1: increase profits, and that aspect of it is the bigger
Speaker 1: enemy than even the right to repair. As electronic device
Speaker 1: has become common and more sectors of daily life via
Speaker 1: the Internet of Things, the overall share of global energy
Speaker 1: use that goes to making new versions of old products
Speaker 1: that could still be working but are designed to break
Speaker 1: is is really quite depressing. For one example of how
Speaker 1: large it must be, I haven't found any solid information
Speaker 1: on the total size of this industry. Things that you
Speaker 1: have to repeatedly re buy because they're meant to break.
Speaker 1: But the mobile phone industry and two thousand nineteen alone
Speaker 1: was four point six percent of global GDP, So that's
Speaker 1: close to five percent of global GDP just from making
Speaker 1: phones that are designed to break so you have to
Speaker 1: buy a new phone. This is an example of an
Speaker 1: area in which people's perspectives have to be changed, and
Speaker 1: I think actually that digital fatigue, the fact that we're
Speaker 1: also fucking exhausted with these devices these days, may provide
Speaker 1: somewhat of an inroad for convincing people that they need
Speaker 1: to buy new gadgets less often. But because these gadgets
Speaker 1: are so crucial to daily life, the industry actually also
Speaker 1: has to be forced to change. And again, rite repair
Speaker 1: is one part of this, but that doesn't stop Apple
Speaker 1: from just deciding to throttle their old devices whenever they
Speaker 1: need to add a new layer to the money pile.
Speaker 1: Our overall point with all this is that solutions to
Speaker 1: climate change have to be cultural and not just based
Speaker 1: in some version of will invent a better version and
Speaker 1: that will solve the problem. Hybrid gas burning cars and
Speaker 1: standardized charging chords are nibbling around the edges of the problem.
Speaker 1: Relying on technological advances pacifies us in the present, and
Speaker 1: it reinforces the need for certain types of human material codependence.
Speaker 1: And that kind of codependence leads to increased dependency and
Speaker 1: more extraction. By no means am I trying to say
Speaker 1: that innovation is bad. I love gadgets as much as
Speaker 1: the next person. Innovation also has the capacity to heavily
Speaker 1: decreased resource extraction. It just has to be tailored with
Speaker 1: something more than just will make this device more efficient
Speaker 1: so we can use it more or sell more of them.
Speaker 1: The capitalist mode of mass resource extraction and grind for
Speaker 1: efficiency are intertwined, and if we are to limit the
Speaker 1: most catastrophic effects of climate change, we as a culture
Speaker 1: need to rethink how we view efficiency and energy use.
Speaker 1: For the past few hundred years, economic growth has been
Speaker 1: the road that has led to our current ecological dilemma.
Speaker 1: The fantasy of switching over to nuclear and renewable energy
Speaker 1: with a perfectly efficient electric grid to just sidestep climate
Speaker 1: collapse is it's a fantasy. We missed our chance to
Speaker 1: do that. Even if we stop all carbon emissions right now,
Speaker 1: all of them, the carbon already in the atmosphere would
Speaker 1: push US past two degrees celsius of warming in about
Speaker 1: fifty years. So what besides carbon capture can we do
Speaker 1: about this? We as in both you, the regular listener,
Speaker 1: and the goals with power and real influence. Well. The
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen International Panel and Climate Change Special WORKPORT
Speaker 1: indicated that in the absence of speculative negative emissions technologies,
Speaker 1: the only feasible way to remain within safe carbon budgets
Speaker 1: was for high income nations to actively slow down the
Speaker 1: pace of material production and consumption. D growth is the
Speaker 1: planned reduction of energy use, corporate profits over production, and
Speaker 1: excess consumption designed to bring the economy back into balance
Speaker 1: with the living world in a way that reduces inequality
Speaker 1: while focusing on human and ecological well being. This isn't
Speaker 1: just some sort of utopian Marxist thinking, and in fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of Marxists have critiques of D growth, and
Speaker 1: D growth could be applied to a number of different
Speaker 1: economic and governmental systems. There are even some weirdo capitalist
Speaker 1: advocates of D growth. Discussion about solving climate change can
Speaker 1: get into uncomfortable eugenics e territory if you aren't careful,
Speaker 1: So I should emphasize here that d growth is primarily
Speaker 1: about already wealthy countries limiting their economic growth. When aggregated
Speaker 1: in terms of income, the richest half of the world,
Speaker 1: high and upper middle income countries amid eighty six percent
Speaker 1: of global CO two emissions. The bottom half, lower and
Speaker 1: middle income countries amid only fourteen percent. With very few exceptions.
Speaker 1: The richer the nation is, the more it emits. It's
Speaker 1: all part of the resource extraction infinite growth lie we
Speaker 1: tell ourselves to keep going. Wealth is so much more
Speaker 1: of a factor in emissions than population. North America is
Speaker 1: home to only five percent of the world population, but
Speaker 1: amids nearly eighteen percent of c O two. Asia is
Speaker 1: home to sixty percent of the world's population, but amidst
Speaker 1: just forty nine percent of c O two. Africa has
Speaker 1: sixteen percent of the population but emits just four percent
Speaker 1: of its c O two. This is reflected in per
Speaker 1: capita emissions. The average North American emits seventeen times more
Speaker 1: than the average African. This inequality in global emissions lies
Speaker 1: at the heart of why international agreement on climate change
Speaker 1: has and continues to be so contentious. The richest countries
Speaker 1: in the world are home to half the world population
Speaker 1: and amid eighty six percent of c O two. We
Speaker 1: want global incomes and living standards, especially for those of
Speaker 1: the poorest half of the world, to rise. The only
Speaker 1: way to do that while limiting climate change is to
Speaker 1: shrink the emissions of high income countries. Even several billion
Speaker 1: additional people in low incombinations would leave global emissions almost unchanged.
Speaker 1: Three or four billion poor individuals would only account for
Speaker 1: a few percent of global c O two. At the
Speaker 1: other end of the distribution, however, adding only one billion
Speaker 1: high income individuals to the wealthiest parts of the world
Speaker 1: would increase global emissions by almost a third. A programmer
Speaker 1: in the United States has a higher c O two
Speaker 1: footprint than fifty farmers in Uganda. A decent chunk of
Speaker 1: this is just due to meet consumption. Meet consumption per
Speaker 1: capita in the richest fifteen countries is seven hundred fifty
Speaker 1: percent higher than in the poorest twenty four countries. Lowering
Speaker 1: the population of say Uruguay won't do much for emissions.
Speaker 1: This is not the case when you talk about wealthy nations.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you live and say the United States,
Speaker 1: possibly the biggest thing you as an individual could do
Speaker 1: to reduce emissions is to have fewer or no children.
Speaker 1: It's estimated that dedicated recycling curves about point three metric
Speaker 1: tons of CO two emissions per year, while having one
Speaker 1: fewer child is equivalent to preventing over fifty eight tons
Speaker 1: of two emissions a year. Better sex, said, and free
Speaker 1: access to contraceptives could also go a shockingly long way
Speaker 1: to curbing individual emission in wealthy countries, these numbers are
Speaker 1: averaged across the whole nation, and just like the case
Speaker 1: in less wealthy countries, the impact on emissions by having
Speaker 1: one fewer kid will be far lesser if your middle
Speaker 1: class or poor than it would be if your upper
Speaker 1: middle class are rich. But of course, none of that
Speaker 1: is going to be enough if industrial production keeps chugging
Speaker 1: along and advising people not to have children, one of
Speaker 1: the singular driving motivations for human beings across history isn't
Speaker 1: exactly a vote getter of a proposition. D growth is critical,
Speaker 1: but the question of how to get there is thorny
Speaker 1: as hell. There are a few easy answers. Abolishing planned
Speaker 1: obsolescence could be pretty easily pitched to the average person.
Speaker 1: Cutting down on the number of people who have to
Speaker 1: commute could have a significant impact on toxic car culture,
Speaker 1: and again you can sell that to people. The obvious
Speaker 1: solutions are good places to start, but they should be
Speaker 1: seen as opening incisions, meant to clear the way to
Speaker 1: make deeper, more expansive cuts and eventually hu away at
Speaker 1: the camp swer we planted in the heart of our civilization.
Speaker 1: It could happen here as a production of pool Zone Media.
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Speaker 1: Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com
Speaker 1: slash sources. Thanks for listening.