If you’re new to Incredibly Ordinary, I tend to use this forum to challenge certain aspects of modern Western consumer culture with ideas that may seem a bit out of step from what you see advertised elsewhere. Occasionally, putting these ideas into practice causes some friction at home. That is today’s story.
Hopefully I don’t need to remind any of my readers that we have a teeny little problem with the way most of the “developed” world lives. But in case you missed the memo, global temperatures have smashed yet another record while other species continue dropping like flies. It’s not fun to talk about, so most people don’t. Either they deny the problem exists, assume others will fix it for them, or become overwhelmed and give up.
Ignorance notwithstanding, today we’re going to ask an important question. Namely, what would living in 2024 look like if we had to acknowledge the elephant in the room (climate change and biodiversity loss) and actually do something about it? (without going back to “living in caves”, as some right wing pundits would have us believe)
Let’s start with a little self-reflection, shall we? Since you’re reading this post on a mobile phone, tablet or computer, you’re part of the developed world that’s using up 1.7 Earths every year. Here in the USA where I live, it’s more like 5.1 Earths. Since we actually only have one planet to currently call home, that’s a pretty hefty overdraft to be taking. Every year. You’d go broke trying to run your household finances this way, but apparently we see no issue doing this with our life support systems.
Assuming those numbers freak you out a bit, what would consuming 1 Earth’s worth of resources in a year mean to each person? This may be hard to nail down to a single number, but since much of our consumption is a driver of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions is a pretty good proxy to answer that question.
Thankfully some smart people saved you & me a ton of work and ran the figures, estimating the “carbon budget” per person that would align with keeping the planet from dangerously overheating and triggering all sorts of other mischief. You can read it for yourself here. They found, “changes in consumption patterns and dominant lifestyles are a critical and integral part of the solutions package to address climate change.” Thanks to Lloyd Alter from Carbon Upfront! for turning me on to this idea.
With developing a personal budget in mind, last year I took the fossil fuel industry’s bait to blame these issues on my family (instead of their products), and discovered some pretty interesting data about our consumption. You can read about it here.
The bottom line is that much of our “carbon footprint” is baked into the building we live in and the food we eat. Some folks would call these “essential”. The rest of the impact are from things that are more “controllable”, i.e., travel, recreation and buying stuff. This is where it got interesting when I tried to move the needle here at home. More on that in a minute.
The Essentials
Living here on Earth as a human being with basic needs like food and shelter creates an impact. So how can we align our essential requirements with a 1.5C lifestyle? I’ve graded our family in a way that might shed some light on your situation.
Our home is well over a century old and thus contains the embodied carbon of the trees that became studs, joists, sheathing and molding. Of course, there’s carbon in the vinyl siding, glass windows, and asphalt shingles too. Producing, shipping and installing all of these elements required energy and used up resources, renewable or not. We’ve done our best to maintain this old house, mostly out of a sense of thrift. However, we’re opposed to tearing stuff down and building new since it requires more resources than taking care of what you’ve got. SCORE: 8/10
With a roof over our heads, we need energy to keep the occupants comfortable. In our case here in Chicago, heating is our biggest source of domestic emissions, given that we burn fossil gas to keep warm. Cooling and lighting are currently run by grid-sourced electricity, which here in Illinois still has significant coal and gas behind the watts. Sure, we can (and do!) keep a close eye on our usage, but it would take an expensive and disruptive switch of equipment and electricity source (or move!) to make a major difference here. SCORE: 3/10
Lastly, there’s food to sustain our bodies. Meals are a highlight of our family time, and we make a special effort to prepare high quality, tasty food at home whenever we can. For the past several years we’ve cut cows (minus dairy) and pigs from our menu, relying on plants, fish and fowl for most of our nutrition. We’re loathe to waste food, mostly due to economics, and our organic scraps always find their way to a compost pile, even when we’re away. Lastly, we try to avoid over-packaged food. SCORE: 7/10
The Controllables
Life is short and precious. We all want to enjoy our brief time on this amazing planet. This is where we get to make decisions that can have a significant impact on our emissions, and where our family sometimes struggles to find alignment. I’ve graded our impact similarly as above.
Travel is one of those aspects of modern life which falls into the essentials category for many people. Workers may not feel they have a choice for shortening a lengthy commute, or perhaps their job is to transport others. In our family, we drive our fossil-powered vehicles very little compared to the US average, but fly for vacation several times each year. So for us, this is a controllable category, and one where we find it most difficult to give up up something we enjoy doing. SCORE: 5/10
While some of our recreation falls into the travel bucket, our local R&R tends to be centered on enjoying the arts and outdoors here in the city. Whether it’s making photographs, taking a walk, riding a bike or sailing on Lake Michigan, we do mostly low impact activities compared to many here in the US. This is all highly cultural, very personal, and completely unnecessary in practical terms. However, redefining what we do for “fun” and appreciating local activities in our city has had a significant emissions (and cost) benefit. SCORE: 6/10
Another visible category of consumption is actually buying stuff. Having gone through some fairly traumatic death cleanings in recent years, our family has a sharp appreciation for the worst effects of consumerism gone awry. And that was before Amazon! Today, things delivered nearly instantly to our door has become such a staple of modern life that it’s hard to avoid it. But we try to only purchase what we need, buy used when we can, and fix what’s broken. SCORE: 7/10
Finally, there’s the impact of our money. Do you know who your dollars are hanging out with when you’re not using them? I found out through AsYouSow.org and it wasn’t pretty. My conservative 401K was funding fossil fuels, prisons and weapon manufacturers. The bank behind my credit card was lending money to these bad actors. I stopped it all and moved everything I could. SCORE: 9/10
The Results
The 1.5C report finds, “Targets for lifestyle carbon footprints comparable with the 1.5 °C aspirational target of the Paris Agreement is 2.5 and 0.7 tCO2e per capita for 2030 and 2050.” Our family, even while making an active effort to be conscious of our emissions, is currently around 8 tCO2e. In short, we’re a long way off the mark.
Here’s what it theoretically would take our family to approach the 2030 2.5 tCO2e target:
Eliminate fossil gas from the house (heating, cooking, laundry)
Shift to a completely vegetarian diet
Eliminate air travel entirely
Cut back spending by 75% on dining out, hotels, recreation
Eliminate the ICE car or replace with an EV powered by renewable electricity
Convert from grid electricity to 100% renewable (on site or off)
Cut other consumption by 50%
I can assure you some of these actions will generate more attention within our family than others, but nowhere on the list is moving into a cave! But enough about the Boyles. Here’s what the report say about a 1.5 °C lifestyle for the rest of the developed world:
“Focusing efforts to change lifestyles in relation to these areas would yield the most benefits:
meat and dairy consumption
fossil-fuel based energy
car use
air travel
The three domains these footprints occur in – nutrition, housing, and mobility – tend to have the largest impact (approximately 75%) on total lifestyle carbon footprints. Based on the domain-specific gap analysis with the targets, the required footprint reductions in the case of developed countries are at least 47% in nutrition, 68% in housing, and 72% in mobility by 2030 and over 75% in nutrition, 93% in housing, and 96% in mobility by 2050.”
Yes, those are very big reductions in areas that span both the essentials and controllables. Here’s what they recommend doing about it:
Absolute reduction means reducing physical amounts of goods or services consumed, such as food, kilometres driven, energy use, or living space, as well as avoiding unsustainable options.
Efficiency improvement means decreasing emissions by replacing technologies with lower-carbon ones while not changing the amount consumed or used, such as in energy- efficient agriculture, vehicles, or housing.
Modal shift means changing from one consumption mode to a less carbon intensive one, such as in adopting plant-based diets, using public transport, or renewable energy for electricity or heating.
If you’ve made it this far into the post, I salute you! Some of this content can be dense and anxiety-provoking since we’re not talking about nibbling around the edges. To make a meaningful difference in the unsustainable trajectory we’re currently on WILL take major changes. Anyone who says we can simply use “green growth” to heal the planet hasn’t run the numbers.
On the flip side, fear mongering about tossing our society back to the dark ages is focused too heavily on maintaining the power structure and consumption profile of the status quo. A world where we live more simply, eat better and focus on relationships over status? That sounds pretty sweet to me.