The reading materials for Assignment 4.1 should have made it clear that the world
needs to undertake very ambitious emission cuts and achieve zero emissions in a few decades just to limit the average warming to 1.5ºC;
even a 1.5ºC temperature increase brings along irreversible losses for ecosystems and suffering for vulnerable populations.
Furthermore, even if the world only meets a carbon budget that limits the average global surface temperature increase to 2ºC, each individual still has to emit no more than 1.6 tons of carbon per year. To grasp how small is 1.6 tons compared to the current emissions of an average Western person: this study estimates that an individual who regularly eats meat and takes one roundtrip transatlantic flight a year emits 2.4 tCO2 (metric tons of CO2-equivalent emissions) annually, without accounting for any other emissions.
Media has not done a good job giving attention to climate change causes and solutions proportionally to the size of the impact these things have. What we most often hear is, on one hand, the need to reduce the use of plastic straws or to take shorter showers, and, on the other hand, praise to certain developed countries that are “doing the most to fight climate change” – not taking into account the disproportionately large emissions (and environmental footprint in general) that these countries have compared to the global average, or compared to the budget we are “allowed” to have in order sustain life on the planet. As a personal example, I live in the United States where media and the internet tend to create a perception that the geatest problems we have are related to people using plastic straws, for example, and therefore the biggest solutions out there are better individual choices and responsibility.
To have an approximate understanding of your personal contribution to global carbon emissions, this assignment asks you to calculate your carbon footprint, and analyze some potential actions in context of the results you see. You then need to head to the website of Project Drawdown, a climate change mitigation project initiated by Paul Hawken that has aimed to put together a (scientifically proven) list of the “100 most substantive solutions to global warming”. Their list was compiled by a team of over 200 scholars, scientists, policymakers, etc., who measured and modeled each solution’s carbon impact and costs up to year 2050.
Please turn in a pdf document with the following:
Question 1
Calculate your carbon footprint using this online calculator. Once done, add to your document screenshots of:
1) Results’ tab (the rows below “Your Carbon Footprint”, and
2) Secondary footprint tab (rows below “Total Secondary
Footprint = …”
Question 2
In your opinion, what are the areas of your life where the biggest reductions in carbon output could be made? Are these actions/changes entirely dependent on your personal decisions and choices, or have more to do with governmental policy, regulations and action? Please use specific numbers. For example, here you can see how some individual acts like turning down heat by 1ºC affect overall carbon missions – is it realistic to rely on personal efforts like this in bringing global average carbon footpring below 2.1 tons of CO2eq?
Question 3
Find the rankings of climate change solutions with the most potential as identified by Project Drawdown. Choose 3 of the solutions and summarize in your own words a) how this solution works, b) what and how big are the benefits (in terms of emissions’ reductions and otherwise), c) what would it cost for the society to implement this solution?(Note that under this week’s materials there’s also a pdf file that summarizes the 10 most important solutions listed by Drawdown – feel free to use it.)
Question 4
Based on your answers above, should we expect the most impact in fight against climate change from individual actions or policy solutions from governments/international organizations?
PS. Greta Thunberg’s video above stands for the theme of this assignment – individual versus institutional actions. The most important acts she mentions (protect, restore and fund) clearly put emphasis on one of the two…
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