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Meanwhile I live in a state where we are taxed to the teeth for energy use. Plastic straws are banned. We have to sort trash in 5 or 6 different ways. People refuse to acknowledge that their conservation efforts for a year are undone by some guy in Texas in five minutes, and would rather make their (and everyone else's) lives more inconvenient to score brownie points.
I don't think that's a good way to look at things. Some guy in Texas is polluting a lot more than you, ok, but would it be better if that guy keeps polluting and you pollute just as much? We can't get hung up on, 'well some person/company somewhere else is undoing my savings'. That kind of gets into tragedy of the commons thinking.
It is disheartening to see parts of the country going in the opposite direction than we should be going for sure. And well-meaning but not very useful policies can be a pain. But I try not to be disheartened at backward thinking in other locales, I try to look at the places making advances (for example, India is ahead of schedule in the shift to renewables) to be find some optimistic amidst the bleakness.
The only way out of the tragedy of the commons is strict regulation, not "ignore the bad actors and do the right thing yourself".
The 5-ton pickup thing is a serious issue and comes with nasty political feedback loops for gas prices. Climate denial and pro-pollution (rolling coal on cyclists) is like a virtue and point of pride for those morons.
And stores will happily sell me a cheap HDPE plastic bag, which happens because from time to time I forget to bring my own bag, and then I buy an extra package of LDPE garbage bags because I don’t have grocery bags I can use for small garbage cans any more.
It just seems like this is not even a step forward, and there are big sources of plastic we just don’t even care to deal with because it involves too much money.
With a small effort we cut our plastic use so low that sometimes on trash night I find the garbage can is still empty.
It's not that we don't buy single use plastic (good luck with potato chips), but we make an effort. Buying bulk and reusing plastic bags is key. If there's a glass option, buy that. And does the plastic garbage can need a plastic bag, really? Or can you use the same bag multiple times?
But it doesn't matter if I do it. Or even if 10% of the people do it. Won't save the world. Large scale bans are the only answer, and good luck with that.
Is that better? Or is it worse?
From estimates that I’ve seen, the glass bottle has 5x the carbon footprint of the corresponding plastic bottle. Glass can be recycled but it takes a lot of energy. Most products are not available in anything but single-use packaging.
I’m all for large-scale bans, but the large-scale bans should be designed to have a positive impact, one large enough to justify the cost in some sense. I am concerned that the ban on single-use plastic shopping bags has, perhaps, had a negative impact on the environment.
The conservation efforts of the majority of the world are undone when one nation accounts for 30% of the global CO2 emissions. No amount of paper straws or reusable coffee cups will undo the coal burning Shenhua Group does every year.
Before I moved down here I knew that in general hot == more living things (more energy -> more plants -> more food for the not plant stuff etc), but it's crazy how fast stuff grows. If someone leaves their house for the summer and doesn't have someone come by and trim the yard then nature will reclaim their house by the time they get back.
As you note, it's not an option to take it easy in the summer because otherwise the plants would cover everything and the roads would be impassable. Somebody has to mow it, and they need a place to cool off.
For another example, the author notes that the fruits are wrapped in plastic, but I don't think he realizes how much faster food spoils in Florida than the UK where he's from. Every bad apple that has to be thrown away is another apple which needs to be trucked in.
In my neighborhood, there aren’t many of us long time multi-decade Florida residents. Most of my neighbors have been Florida residents for less than 5 years and many since Covid. And in my experience in my neighborhood, the types of people that his policies attracted are the type of people who simply got tired of the kind of policies in their former states and municipalities that they perceived were hurting their kids education…regardless of their political leanings. Many of my new neighbors lean left politically, but moved here because our schools were open.
Certainly not saying every DeSantis policy is a winner or popular, but when other states were shut down, killing small businesses, and watching their kids fall behind in education, Florida was open. People noticed and it appealed to them.
For what it’s worth, I am in Florida and I use very little energy to make my house (2200sqft) comfortable between mid-October and May. I have a highly energy efficient home and between May and October my energy bill runs less than $150. My inside temp rarely goes above 75 degrees. My AC rarely runs at all between 8am and 4pm and then sporadically in the afternoon, but will run a bit a night to essentially “charge the house”.
Condensation and indoor humidity is a non issue, the AC does a good job keeping things nice and dry.
I have friends with similarly sized (older) homes whose electric bills run about 2-2.5x ours.
The apples were in a 24x7 air conditioned hotel. They would last at least as long as UK apples.
Indeed. It blew my mind when my wife and I took a vacation to Tampa in July.
Without the AC running full blast all the time, the tile floor of our hotel (being cooler than the rest of the room) developed standing water. Like, walking through the kitchen area was splish splash splish and then a crash when we would slip and fall.
We actually did try not running the AC while we were out and about, but it made it hazardous. To the hotel's credit, the AC was not running when we checked in.
https://www.novatr.com/blog/passive-design-strategies-for-wa... https://ijmme.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40712-014-0... https://thefifthestate.com.au/housing-2/ways-to-keep-cool-wi... https://uplevelgreen.com/passive-solar-cooling-in-hot-humid-...
I've only had time to skim them.
Even if these strategies don't do away with the need for aircon, they might substantially reduce it,
The best map I can find is actually from the Washington Post as it shows the measurements in context.
Article (paywalled): https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/07/25/florida-re...
Map (direct link): https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.c...
Florida Bay is a very shallow estuary basically inside Florida, not “the ocean”.
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2023/08/06/being-boiled-al...
I wonder how humans survived there before the invention of electricity and air con!
Honestly trying to paint all Americans based on any one state is incredibly myopic. Practically every one of his anecdotes doesn't hold true in my home town: either there are policies encouraging/outlawing those things (e.g. plastic bags) or it's a cultural no-no.
So yeah, I get your point, in DC and NY people do walk and use public transport, elsewhere, it seemed similar, except Texas was bigger (even for walking). But I have that in Prague too.
I don't think the point of these articles is to dis on anyone, but really, point out collective procrastination we have towards climate change.
Obligatory:
Also the boots are freakin' comfortable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_co...
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/energy-consumpt...
No one wants to sit in a damp, cool room, nor do they want the mold and mildew effects that would result from the overly quick removal of the sensible heat (temperature) without the accompanying removal of latent heat (humidity).
Buying new panels every 7-10 years is not a worthwhile investment.
If you put solar on roof, then insurance does not cover roof damage incase of hurricane.
Also with solar subsidies come the scams. Most people are skeptical of solar in Florida.
Florida is no longer a purple swing state. It is a solid red state with pockets of blue in major cities.
Florida has enough cheap land to power all of their day-time energy use from solar though.
I loved to see some small solar farms in Lakeland that locals built.
There is hope.
Do solar panels make a roof more suseptible to hurricane damage?
Unless they're mounted absolutely flush to the existing roof with no way for the ind to get underneath then a solar panel is large flat sailcloth that gets hurricane force winds underneath it and then exerts an upward pulling | tearing force on the anchor points.
Depending on those, you can see some serious roof destroying damage (followed by a rain soaked interior).
Or, extra effort (money, time, resources) needs to be expended from the outset making the setup cyclone proof (err, sorry, hurricane .. it's cyclones for us her in tropical Australia).
Hospitals are built surrounded by ramped up packed earth bunkers that roof objects (evaporative coolers, venting stacks, solar panels) barely poke above .. that way the wind tends to lift over the entire (one or two stoey) hospital and flying objects (ripped off tin roofs, fencing wire, tree branches) don't directly hit the main building.
The building code there appears to magnitudes above the 'typical' ripped apart buildings seen in USofA Hurricane Alley damage shots (which typically seem to be tinfoil trailer type buildings and light construction) .. to be fair the US does have buildings that look to be built to withstand hurricanes, the difference seems to be that not all buildings are required to have that as a minimum code.
I'm an American cyclist, and I'm trying to do my part commuting to work by bike.
But I got whacked in the elbow a few weeks ago by the mirror of a car who was offended by having to slow down briefly and go around me... I'd say that 75% of drivers are conscientious, crossing over when there's a gap in the opposite lane to give me more than the 5 feet of space required by local laws (3 feet required by state law). Another 20% don't have a clue what to do around a cyclist and either white-knuckle past me close by, with a shouted "sorry" with their wheel just on the centerline (and no one in the opposite lane) follow a car's length behind my wheel for a mile (at 15-20 mph on 35, 45, or 55mph roads, building a traffic jam of frustrated other motorists who are far more likely to drive aggressively).
Some 5% are actively hostile. I've been whacked in the butt and shoulder by mirrors of people trying to run me off the road, had half-empty beer cans thrown at me, been enveloped many times in the black smoke off of one of many diesel mall-crawlers with the tuner kit that allows them to "roll coal" when they step on the throttle. Some shout "get off the road" as if my road bike would work in the ditch.
I think it's what needs to be done, so I'm doing my part because I'm an able, healthy adult, but it's definitely an activist/enthusiast thing, not a reasonable solution for the vast majority of my state who use 5,000 lbs of steel to move 200 lbs of human to work and back. I will say that I'm happy to see more e-bikes on the handful of trails in the area (yes, even when driven by people who don't know proper etiquette and who are using throttle-only on trails that are supposed to be non-motorized), because it means you don't have to have a VO2 max of 50+ mL/kg/min or an FTP of 3 W/kg to get out of the car.
I've been reading "The Ministry for the Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's inspiring, but what strikes me the most is how unreasonable it is. Floridians and Americans and Europeans alike simply do not respond rationally to the reality of climate change.
PS:
> Moving to Mars is a pipedream for 99.9999% of the population.
I think you're missing a few nines there, multiplying by 8 billion suggests that 8,000 humans could reasonably live on Mars. I'd love to see a manned mission of 2-5 astronauts (supported by a nation-state or international effort) get some science done on Mars within my lifetime, but the idea of an elites-only glass dome city being erected on Mars for billionaires to run away to while Earth wastes away is not even close to reasonable.
Thank you for being part of the solution. I am 100% sincere, not facetious. This is a tragedy of the commons, and american leadership has no courage for top down intervention. The only thing left to do is that the good ones will wrestle the solution out of the ground with their own bare hands.
It seems to be that the wealthier the area you're in, the more people think you as a pedestrian should yield to them, even if you are in a crosswalk at a stop sign and they are trying to blow the stop sign.
Less wealthy areas, people watch out and seem more courteous of cyclists and people on foot.
Wait, I thought that was the plan to get rid of them? They can have their red wasteland and we can finally have peace on earth.
BTW "Don't look up" is worth a watch. Although it seems almost as much a documentary as a parody.
Not sure this was the best message in this day and age. Pretty funny movie otherwise.
That isn't the message I took from it.
Who are we supposed to trust? Hollywood?!
If all the billionaires left for Mars, we would not have peace on earth. We'd have a bunch of people fighting tooth and nail to be the ones to replace them.
Just yesterday, I was riding through the town of Morrison in the foothills outside Denver heading towards the mountains. I came up to a red light, stopped and then continued because it was clear. A few seconds later a Camaro with a ~65YO guy pulls up next to me and this guy is fucking livid. Red face, yelling, and the first thing I hear clearly is "I'm gonna smear you on this bumper f***t." I ignore and continue on and wee hit another red light, he's in the left turn lane. He continues to berate me, I ignore him, and he turns and I continue on. But I see that he turns left but immediately pulls an illegal u-turn into the grass and is using the oncoming traffic exit to re-enter the road. I forget to mention that a cop was also at the last light next to me. I just stopped, waved frantically at the cop and started pointing at the wacko. Thankfully, the cop stopped. Had they not been there not sure what I would've done.
One driver caused me to come off badly the other day and mash my face into the road pretty badly.
It's has been the case for centuries, if not thousand years.
You give taxe incentive (subside or taxe reduction) for favoured behaviors, and higher taxation level to decourage unfavoured behavior.
Meat taxation could be an interesting subject of study as it cover a large range of greenhouse gaz footprint according to the specie the meat come from and a majority of people considers it as an essential item.
Cow meat is, by far, the worst offender by pound of meat produced. It is also the meat which requires the largest amount of vegetal protein in order to produce animal protein (1/10), which is by itself an obvious downside considering the challenge climate change will bring to crop production.
On the lowest end of the scale, there is chicken, which is around a quarter of cow footprint by pound of meat produced.
Banning meat altogether is a no-go inside any democracy as the party in power would be out of a job at the next election. But suppressing taxes on or subsidising consumption of chicken meat while taxing progressivelly cow meat out of existence could have a larger support from general population.
The same mecanism of tax increase and tax incentive, according to ecological footprint, could be applied to every item category in the economy.
What is most shocking to me in regards to "using your car for everything" is those people robbing shops and supermarkets using their own cars, with license plates on. And they are very good cars to my Latin American standards. Some of them are classified as luxury cars where I live. Around here, robbers don't have cars, so they have to steal one first and then use it to commit other crimes.
> My 17 year old son is interested in rocketry and my wife is interested in wildlife
So he took them to Fort Myers?!?
I understand that a lot of Floridans live in gated golf communities, and get around them on golf-carts.
I know of just one old couple from The Villages; they own a car (naturally, they're wealthy Americans), but the only time they use it is to pick up a visitor from the airport.
Lots of plastic use and one of the burger chains won the stupid award by removing drinking straws and offering a paid reusable metal drinking straw (painted) with a metal cleaning brush, sold in a cardboard box.
No matter how small the item we order online it will arrive wrapped in lots of plastic and cardboard that goes immediately to the landfill.
UK's climate sins in oil production might swing the judgement though.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1299198/co2-emissions-pe...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
> Moving to Mars is a pipedream for 99.9999% of the population.
It’s actually a pipe dream for 100% of the population.
Slightly more seriously, I think he’s too pessimistic about the impact of renewable energy generation (contra his observations, Florida installed more solar capacity last year than any other state) and carbon sequestration. But I’m not highly confident in that assessment - maybe we are fucked. But I do think it’s more likely than not that human ingenuity and, believe it or not, capitalism (with a healthy dose of subsidies and industrial policy) will ultimately avert the truly dire scenarios.
It's useful to the energy firms to keep the promise of CCS alive, but even if you have perfect capture at the point of generation, the problem of actually keeping it sequestered at any useful scale is unsolved.
Act accordingly.
https://ourworldindata.org/drivers-of-deforestation
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/04/improvin...
Improving soil could keep world within 1.5C heating target, research suggests - better farming techniques across the world could lead to storage of 31 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide a year, data shows
https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article/65/3/302/784343
Effects of climate and overfishing on zooplankton dynamics and ecosystem structure: regime shifts, trophic cascade, and feedback loops in a simple ecosystem
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/seagrass-ocean...
I can also imagine the machinery of capitalism maybe working (I like the idea of declaring a ‘war on emissions’ popping a war revenue act for the highest earners and creating a new industry focused on reducing emissions).
But two things are fueling my pessimism: the first is that as a culture we’ve grown so used to a lifestyle (and economy) based on unsustainable use of our resources. I just can’t see a world where we take a step back from any of the modern conveniences we’ve gotten used to hanging.
I guess related to that: The free market is the most effective model, but that comes at cost of no protections for workers and resources, and that rewards exploitation.
I used to hope that I was wrong, now I mostly just hope that the worst results don’t happen in my own lifetime.
I used to feel jealous for children born after me because of all the things they'll get to see that I wont. These days I feel very much the opposite.
I don't understand this point. It seems to me that the longer we wait for a collapse to happen, the worse it will be (as fewer resources will be left for rebuilding civilization).
What's the benefit of it happening in our children's lifetimes instead of our own, except for the fact that we get to continue unsustainable consumption a bit longer, rather than trying to change things?
(I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, just pointing out the argument.)
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
Transport is a small contributor to emissions. For most food products, it accounts for less than 10%, and it’s much smaller for the largest GHG emitters. In beef from beef herds, it’s 0.5%.
In that article it correctly states that the cost of transportation is small across all food types including beef, but in the context of apples specifically it shows the cost of transportation is not only significant to the total cost of the apple, packaging costs aren’t even visible. So the idea that packaging it in shrink wrap to avoid spoilage and transport of more apples actually seems to make sense?
a) that's per kilogram, and probably not with each apple packaged individually and in plastic
b) plastic is inexpensive, but its true cost is not reflected in its price due to externalities (and emissions are not the only one)
So ... it's not easy to answer. My point was that whether food is sourced locally or shipped (not flown) from afar may not be the main factor to consider.
If you want to make a dent, start there.
Sustainability is absolutely necessary, but its label is instead distorted by money laundering efforts such as carbon credits (you’re paying people to plant logging-worthy species they will eventually log out and sell/burn).
Virtue signaling in the EU is getting so bad, it’s opening the doors far and wide for Populist Totalitarians to take over your governments. All they have to say is “Look, you’re barely surviving in this inflation and the EU wants to take away your meat and ration your energy because it’s bad for the planet?” Green political parties have done so much damage to Europe they helped Putin sustain a war, and profit hugely from it (by just shutting down EU Nuclear power plants).
If you want to objectively help, find who the worst polluters are and start to ask why and what replacements can be made. Fund plastic alternatives and designate carbon credits to go to efforts that can’t be undone. Think second and third order of consequences.
eating breakfast in a car?? simply preposterous!! however, I can see how enjoying a full English in the driver's seat would be a bit of a challenge.
As a NYer who spent some of the COVID period in Miami, the thing that jumps out is that Floridians have a lower baseline level of anxiety. So if you are going to Florida and expect everyone to be as freaked out about anything as you are, you are going to just make yourself crazier.
Florida politics seems antithetical to this sentiment. I can't think of a state in the country whose leaders evoke a more anxiety-ridden rhetoric.
File under tired tropes of shallow European impressions of the US.
I'm just sad he didn't bring up the metric system. I could have had bingo.