On Dec 21, 2009, at 1:40 PM, Joseph Catron wrote:
> Which, to a certain extent, he's right to do. Less than a third of
> US CO2
> emissions come from road transportation, with under 20% caused by
> consumer-style vehicles (passenger cars and light trucks).
> Unfortunately I
> don't have an individual/company use breakdown on hand (
> http://www.iacdctransportation.com/research/vmtdrivinganalysis.pdf).
> Hell,
> as Derrick Jensen recently noted, even if every last American
> undertook
> every single lifestyle modification advocated for us by Al Gore,
> that would
> reduce overall US carbon emissions by only 22% (
> http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801). Hair-
> shirted
> attempts to prevent catastrophic climate change by reducing individual
> consumption, while ignoring the far greater effects of industrial and
> military consumption, are at best innocent hobbyism, and at worst a
> potentially lethal distraction.
First, 22% ain't nothing. And second, where does all this industrial consumption go but final consumption? Heat and a/c, big shopping centers, dispersed suburban land use, ridiculous packaging, transoceanic shipping of basic goods, agribiz, etc. etc. You can talk about the constraints on people's choices, but a lot of the problem comes from the way Americans live, and it's evasive not to admit that.
DOug