Eating is an indispensable habit and a bigger part of our lives than just providing nutrients and energy; it defines us. According to Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a 19th century gastronome, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.” This quote, better know as “you are what you eat”, strikes such a powerful chord with us that is has been repeated through the ages and most people (including me before I wrote this) have no idea who first said it. But as people become more numerous on this planet, it’s becoming apparent that not only are we what we eat, but the world is what we eat as well.
With all the climate change talk about reducing greenhouse gas emissions this election, people are looking to their cars to help curb their personal emissions but it may be that the kitchen is a better place to start. A recent study in Environmental Science and Technology by Christopher Weber and Scott Matthews indicates that the average US household produces almost twice as many greenhouse gas emissions through food consumption than through driving. These emissions include the energy that goes into the production of the food, transporting the food from the farm to the retailer and other energy uses such as refrigeration and lighting.
I decided to find out for myself what kind of impacts my diet could have on climate change. After a little bit of research I found eatlowcarbon.com, a site that calculates your greenhouse gas emissions for different meals in grams of carbon dioxide. The calculator was put together by the Bon Appétit Management Company, an online catering company that strives to provide both “culinary expertise and commitment to socially responsible practices”. They provide a thorough list of the sources they used to develop their tool for those wishing to do more research. I discovered quite quickly that small changes in my diet could make big changes in my emissions and that I could start making a change first thing in the morning at the breakfast table.
On weekdays, I like to keep breakfast simple with either toast and jam or a bowl of cereal. Surprisingly, that simple decision between two rather mundane choices meant the difference between 1224 g CO2 for the bowl of cereal and 103 g for the toast and jam. This means that over the course of a year, eating toast instead of cereal would reduce my personal emissions by over 400 kg of CO2, the same amount of emissions created by driving an average car 1500km. The reason that emissions are so high for a bowl of cereal has nothing to do with the cereal itself, but the milk. Dairy products and other animal products take a lot more energy to produce than food crops. This is because about 90% of the food an animal eats is used for movement and metabolism and only 10% goes into the meat and dairy products that are sold as an end product.
Lunch and supper provided their own surprises. With a cheeseburger and fries coming in at almost 2000 g CO2, I decided to look for which foods might have a smaller impact. My best bets were chicken or fish if I wanted meat (400-700 g CO2) but if I cut the meat out I could get down as low as 300 g CO2 with a vegetable stir fry.
While few people would say it is realistic to eliminate meat and dairy products entirely from our diet, some important organizations, such as the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, suggest reducing the amount of meat consumed starting with one meat-free day per week. Dr. Pachauri, head of the International Panel on Climate Change, told The Guardian, “in terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity.”
Cutting down greenhouse gas emissions other ways is also possible but it is not as intuitive as you would think. For example, buying organic produce, because they use less nitrogen can reduce you emissions but when you buy organic meats the opposite is true. Animals raised organically take longer to reach the desired weight meaning they eat more food over their lifetimes than industrially raised animals. Also, while buying local is important to support local food producers, the emissions reductions aren’t as important as buying food that is less energy-intense to grow because transportation is only a relatively small part of food’s greenhouse gas emissions (11%) when compared to the emissions involved in food production (83%).
I encourage everyone to try this calculator. Because calculators like this one are greatly simplified, they do not give perfectly accurate results, but they do provide a reasonable estimate and at the very least can help consumer pinpoint which parts of their diets are the most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions.
As seen in the October 8, 2008 issue of the Brome County News
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Friday, October 24, 2008
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
A tale of two climate change policies
In their rush to climb over each other, the five major political parties rarely find themselves agreeing on anything, but addressing reductions in greenhouse gas emissions has found the five parties lining up on two sides. And the parties that line up are not the ones you think they may be.
The media, awash with the words ‘carbon tax’ have neglected to discuss its only real alternative for emissions reductions: the cap-and-trade system. So while the Liberals are the ones getting all the heat for their greenhouse gas reduction policy – mostly because they are touting it as a keystone issue – there is little, if any, comparison of the two major approaches to greenhouse gas reductions.
The biggest difference between the two is how direct they are in reducing emissions. The cap-and-trade system – championed by three strange bedfellows: the Conservatives, the NDP and the Bloq – limits emissions directly by placing a limit on them. Industries exceeding these limits have to either pay fines or purchase carbon credits from industries that are below the limits. This direct approach is generally favoured by environmental groups because it sets exact targets on emissions. Some economists, on the other hand, dislike this approach because it is difficult to calculate the exact economic impact of reaching specific targets which, they say, may create volatile energy prices
The carbon tax – the strategy of choice of the Liberals and Green Party – aims to reduce emissions in an indirect fashion by making the cost of emitting carbon more expensive. For example, in British Columbia, where a tax of $10 per tonne of carbon emitted was levied on July 1 of this year, drivers will have to pay an extra 2.4 cents per litre of gasoline. This means that a person driving a hybrid car will have to pay an extra $10 in tax for every 8500 kilometers they drive, the distance required to emit a tonne of carbon. People with less fuel efficient SUV’s would have to pay over $30 extra to cover the same distance. The tax covers any fuel that emits carbon such as heating oil, natural gas and propane. The Liberals’ plan, however, exempts gasoline from their carbon tax judging it to be already sufficiently taxed.
Because the price is fixed for every tonne of carbon emitted by both consumers and industry, a carbon tax’s impact on the economy and energy prices is easier to predict than for the cap-and-trade system. It is, however, more difficult to predict emissions reductions because they are dependent on how consumers react to higher carbon taxes.
An important criticism of the carbon tax is that it will have a larger impact on lower income Canadians for whom energy costs represent a bigger part of their budget. Supporters of the carbon tax address this issue by making the tax revenue-neutral which is just a fancy way of saying that the government isn’t making any money off it. It redistributes all revenue from the tax back to consumers in the form of income tax cuts and interest free loans for people retrofitting their home to be more energy efficient. Both the Liberal and Green address this issue in their party platforms by giving bigger tax breaks and tax credits to low income families affected by this tax. The cap-and-trade system doesn’t have a direct cost to consumers but industries having to implement expensive measures to reduce emissions will no doubt pass some of the costs down to the consumers. None of the cap-and-trade supporting parties have really addressed this issue in their platforms.
A carbon tax, of the nature being discussed in Canada, is not uncharted waters either nationally or internationally. In fact, we Quebeckers already pay a 0.8 cent carbon tax on every litre of gasoline ($3.30 per tonne). Internationally, there is an even longer history of carbon taxation particularly in Scandinavian countries which put carbon taxes in place in the early 1990’s, years before the Kyoto Protocol came into existence. Denmark and Sweden are proof that the tax system can produce emissions reductions without economic hardship. Even after nearly two decades of high taxes on carbon ($150 per tonne of carbon in Sweden’s case), Denmark and Sweden still manage to enjoy higher GDP’s per capita than Canadians according to the World Bank.
Cap-and-trade systems can also be found on the international scene. British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario and Quebec have joined 11 Americ2an states in an agreement that will see all participants cap emissions on certain industries and trade carbon credits amongst themselves. Currently, the biggest cap-and-trade system in the world is the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme which includes 18 countries and went into effect in 2005. The European carbon credit trading suffered severe drawbacks because the targets were voluntary for the first phase. The second phase started in 2008.
Both the cap-and-trade and carbon tax systems have positive and negative aspects and both provide incentives for greenhouse gas emissions reductions in distinctly different ways. While the media continue to portray Dion’s carbon tax in negative light, it is clear that cap-and-trade system is not necessarily an improvement over it. When Canadians hit the polls, they should keep in mind that any way you wish to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there will be an impact on everyone. The carbon tax may sound like a bad idea because we have a natural dislike for taxes, but it has a proven track record and its economic impacts are easier to predict. The cap-and-trade system, on the other hand, can also be an effective way of reducing emissions though it may have higher economic risks for more ambitious targets. In the end, it’s Canadians who will decide.
As seen in the October 1, 2008 issue of the Brome County News
The media, awash with the words ‘carbon tax’ have neglected to discuss its only real alternative for emissions reductions: the cap-and-trade system. So while the Liberals are the ones getting all the heat for their greenhouse gas reduction policy – mostly because they are touting it as a keystone issue – there is little, if any, comparison of the two major approaches to greenhouse gas reductions.
The biggest difference between the two is how direct they are in reducing emissions. The cap-and-trade system – championed by three strange bedfellows: the Conservatives, the NDP and the Bloq – limits emissions directly by placing a limit on them. Industries exceeding these limits have to either pay fines or purchase carbon credits from industries that are below the limits. This direct approach is generally favoured by environmental groups because it sets exact targets on emissions. Some economists, on the other hand, dislike this approach because it is difficult to calculate the exact economic impact of reaching specific targets which, they say, may create volatile energy prices
The carbon tax – the strategy of choice of the Liberals and Green Party – aims to reduce emissions in an indirect fashion by making the cost of emitting carbon more expensive. For example, in British Columbia, where a tax of $10 per tonne of carbon emitted was levied on July 1 of this year, drivers will have to pay an extra 2.4 cents per litre of gasoline. This means that a person driving a hybrid car will have to pay an extra $10 in tax for every 8500 kilometers they drive, the distance required to emit a tonne of carbon. People with less fuel efficient SUV’s would have to pay over $30 extra to cover the same distance. The tax covers any fuel that emits carbon such as heating oil, natural gas and propane. The Liberals’ plan, however, exempts gasoline from their carbon tax judging it to be already sufficiently taxed.
Because the price is fixed for every tonne of carbon emitted by both consumers and industry, a carbon tax’s impact on the economy and energy prices is easier to predict than for the cap-and-trade system. It is, however, more difficult to predict emissions reductions because they are dependent on how consumers react to higher carbon taxes.
An important criticism of the carbon tax is that it will have a larger impact on lower income Canadians for whom energy costs represent a bigger part of their budget. Supporters of the carbon tax address this issue by making the tax revenue-neutral which is just a fancy way of saying that the government isn’t making any money off it. It redistributes all revenue from the tax back to consumers in the form of income tax cuts and interest free loans for people retrofitting their home to be more energy efficient. Both the Liberal and Green address this issue in their party platforms by giving bigger tax breaks and tax credits to low income families affected by this tax. The cap-and-trade system doesn’t have a direct cost to consumers but industries having to implement expensive measures to reduce emissions will no doubt pass some of the costs down to the consumers. None of the cap-and-trade supporting parties have really addressed this issue in their platforms.
A carbon tax, of the nature being discussed in Canada, is not uncharted waters either nationally or internationally. In fact, we Quebeckers already pay a 0.8 cent carbon tax on every litre of gasoline ($3.30 per tonne). Internationally, there is an even longer history of carbon taxation particularly in Scandinavian countries which put carbon taxes in place in the early 1990’s, years before the Kyoto Protocol came into existence. Denmark and Sweden are proof that the tax system can produce emissions reductions without economic hardship. Even after nearly two decades of high taxes on carbon ($150 per tonne of carbon in Sweden’s case), Denmark and Sweden still manage to enjoy higher GDP’s per capita than Canadians according to the World Bank.
Cap-and-trade systems can also be found on the international scene. British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario and Quebec have joined 11 Americ2an states in an agreement that will see all participants cap emissions on certain industries and trade carbon credits amongst themselves. Currently, the biggest cap-and-trade system in the world is the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme which includes 18 countries and went into effect in 2005. The European carbon credit trading suffered severe drawbacks because the targets were voluntary for the first phase. The second phase started in 2008.
Both the cap-and-trade and carbon tax systems have positive and negative aspects and both provide incentives for greenhouse gas emissions reductions in distinctly different ways. While the media continue to portray Dion’s carbon tax in negative light, it is clear that cap-and-trade system is not necessarily an improvement over it. When Canadians hit the polls, they should keep in mind that any way you wish to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there will be an impact on everyone. The carbon tax may sound like a bad idea because we have a natural dislike for taxes, but it has a proven track record and its economic impacts are easier to predict. The cap-and-trade system, on the other hand, can also be an effective way of reducing emissions though it may have higher economic risks for more ambitious targets. In the end, it’s Canadians who will decide.
As seen in the October 1, 2008 issue of the Brome County News
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Climate change is just a game
Climate change is a huge environmental problem. After over a decade of being continuously reminded of it, a statement like that becomes a platitude. But what we don’t often hear is that climate change and the solution to it is a social dilemma that requires people and countries that think individualistically – which got them into this mess in the first place – to trust and cooperate with each other. This can be a tall order. With the help of a branch of science called game theory, we can get a better grasp of these behind the scenes climate change issues.
Game theory was originally developed during the Cold War as a way of developing strategies in situations where the outcome is based on both you and your opponent’s decisions. Because it’s not always possible to know what an opponent is going to do, the first game theorists developed scenarios they called games and asked themselves what the most rational way to proceed would be if they were in their opponent’s shoes.
A modern day example of this is the battle for consumers between Coke and Pepsi. If they both companies set the same high price, they split the number of consumers and collect sizeable profits. If Coke one day decided it could make more money by setting its price lower than Pepsi’s, thus attracting Pepsi drinkers, Pepsi would quickly lower its prices also and both companies would find themselves making less money than before. Game theorists study, in this instance, what pricing strategies each company should take to help maximize profits. Though a large number of these games exists, two are especially important when discussing climate change.
The origin of the climate change problem can be explained by a game called the tragedy of the commons. Proposed by Garrett Hardin in 1968, it explores the harmful dynamic that can develop when individuals benefit from a public good while spreading the costs to all other users. The quintessential example, used by Hardin himself, is that of a public pasture.
Imagine you are a shepherd grazing your flock on the public pastures surrounding your village along with a number of other shepherds. One day you have an epiphany: If you bought one more sheep, you would get the full benefit of owning that additional sheep and the cost of raising it, the grass it would eat, would be split between you and all other shepherds in the village because grass eaten by your new sheep cannot be eaten by another. Having realized this, you decide to get another sheep. Then another. And another. After a while, the other shepherds catch on to your logic and start adding their own sheep until there are too many sheep for the pasture and it becomes unproductive equally devastating all shepherds. Getting more sheep made so much sense, what happened?
The problem, like climate change, is not the decision or the motives of the individual, it is the collection of decisions made by all individuals. From the point of view of each shepherd, getting more sheep always makes more sense because the benefit outweighs the cost. The problem is that all shepherds are bound to think this way and the pasture cannot support and unlimited number of sheep
Driving your car, in this instance, is similar to buying more sheep. Every time someone drives from point A to point B they get obtain the full benefit of that trip while the cost, greenhouse gas emissions, is released into the atmosphere and shared by everyone in the form of climate change. That’s why it’s easy to think, “I’m just one person,” because your benefit seems so much larger than your cost. We need to remind ourselves that if millions of people are also thinking the same thing, as with the shepherds, the costs quickly get out of hand.
Why, then, is it so hard to fight climate change? Can we not all realize our collective predicament and work together? Cooperation is not as easy as it may seem. It can lead to the second climate change game, the snowdrift game.
Imagine – this shouldn’t be too hard for Canadians – that you are driving in a snowstorm until you arrive at a snowdrift across the road. You inspect the snowdrift and find no way around it while also noticing that there is someone else stuck on the other side of the snowdrift driving in the opposite direction. Each of you can choose to shovel or not creating three possible scenarios. In the first, both people shovel sharing the cost. In the second, one person shovels, accruing the entire cost while the other person benefits from the other’s work. The last scenario, where no one shovels, leaves both people trapped on their side of the snowdrift.
To see how this applies to climate change, imagine a much simplified world with two countries: A and B. In the first scenario, both countries reduce emissions and avoid or minimize climate change. In the second, one country reduces emissions, lessening the impact of climate, and both countries benefit. The last scenario where both countries are unwilling to reduce emissions finds both facing intense climate change.
Most countries would like to be in the first scenario but are simultaneously afraid to find they are the duped party in the second. This leaves countries in the third scenario because they can’t find a way to trust that the other will share the costs of reducing emissions.
This is where a third party has to step in to instill that trust. In the real world case, this came in the form of the Kyoto Protocol. It guaranteed a certain amount of trust between countries because it only came into effect when enough countries to represent 55% of global emissions ratified it. This was meant to eliminate, as much as possible, countries ‘sitting in their cars’ and waiting for other countries to ‘dig out the snowdrift’. Of course, the United States infamously did so, refusing to ratify the Protocol because other developing countries, most notably China, India and Brazil, were also ‘sitting in their cars’. Regardless of its overall efficacy, the Kyoto Protocol managed to instill a little bit of trust between countries…for a little while anyway.
While climate change continues to be a highly politicized and polarizing issue, it is important to realize that ideological differences aren’t the only problem. There are also real social dilemmas underlying both the cause and the resolution of climate change. Cooperation is going to be the only way out of this snowdrift.
Seen in the September 17, 2008 issue of the Brome County News
Game theory was originally developed during the Cold War as a way of developing strategies in situations where the outcome is based on both you and your opponent’s decisions. Because it’s not always possible to know what an opponent is going to do, the first game theorists developed scenarios they called games and asked themselves what the most rational way to proceed would be if they were in their opponent’s shoes.
A modern day example of this is the battle for consumers between Coke and Pepsi. If they both companies set the same high price, they split the number of consumers and collect sizeable profits. If Coke one day decided it could make more money by setting its price lower than Pepsi’s, thus attracting Pepsi drinkers, Pepsi would quickly lower its prices also and both companies would find themselves making less money than before. Game theorists study, in this instance, what pricing strategies each company should take to help maximize profits. Though a large number of these games exists, two are especially important when discussing climate change.
The origin of the climate change problem can be explained by a game called the tragedy of the commons. Proposed by Garrett Hardin in 1968, it explores the harmful dynamic that can develop when individuals benefit from a public good while spreading the costs to all other users. The quintessential example, used by Hardin himself, is that of a public pasture.
Imagine you are a shepherd grazing your flock on the public pastures surrounding your village along with a number of other shepherds. One day you have an epiphany: If you bought one more sheep, you would get the full benefit of owning that additional sheep and the cost of raising it, the grass it would eat, would be split between you and all other shepherds in the village because grass eaten by your new sheep cannot be eaten by another. Having realized this, you decide to get another sheep. Then another. And another. After a while, the other shepherds catch on to your logic and start adding their own sheep until there are too many sheep for the pasture and it becomes unproductive equally devastating all shepherds. Getting more sheep made so much sense, what happened?
The problem, like climate change, is not the decision or the motives of the individual, it is the collection of decisions made by all individuals. From the point of view of each shepherd, getting more sheep always makes more sense because the benefit outweighs the cost. The problem is that all shepherds are bound to think this way and the pasture cannot support and unlimited number of sheep
Driving your car, in this instance, is similar to buying more sheep. Every time someone drives from point A to point B they get obtain the full benefit of that trip while the cost, greenhouse gas emissions, is released into the atmosphere and shared by everyone in the form of climate change. That’s why it’s easy to think, “I’m just one person,” because your benefit seems so much larger than your cost. We need to remind ourselves that if millions of people are also thinking the same thing, as with the shepherds, the costs quickly get out of hand.
Why, then, is it so hard to fight climate change? Can we not all realize our collective predicament and work together? Cooperation is not as easy as it may seem. It can lead to the second climate change game, the snowdrift game.
Imagine – this shouldn’t be too hard for Canadians – that you are driving in a snowstorm until you arrive at a snowdrift across the road. You inspect the snowdrift and find no way around it while also noticing that there is someone else stuck on the other side of the snowdrift driving in the opposite direction. Each of you can choose to shovel or not creating three possible scenarios. In the first, both people shovel sharing the cost. In the second, one person shovels, accruing the entire cost while the other person benefits from the other’s work. The last scenario, where no one shovels, leaves both people trapped on their side of the snowdrift.
To see how this applies to climate change, imagine a much simplified world with two countries: A and B. In the first scenario, both countries reduce emissions and avoid or minimize climate change. In the second, one country reduces emissions, lessening the impact of climate, and both countries benefit. The last scenario where both countries are unwilling to reduce emissions finds both facing intense climate change.
Most countries would like to be in the first scenario but are simultaneously afraid to find they are the duped party in the second. This leaves countries in the third scenario because they can’t find a way to trust that the other will share the costs of reducing emissions.
This is where a third party has to step in to instill that trust. In the real world case, this came in the form of the Kyoto Protocol. It guaranteed a certain amount of trust between countries because it only came into effect when enough countries to represent 55% of global emissions ratified it. This was meant to eliminate, as much as possible, countries ‘sitting in their cars’ and waiting for other countries to ‘dig out the snowdrift’. Of course, the United States infamously did so, refusing to ratify the Protocol because other developing countries, most notably China, India and Brazil, were also ‘sitting in their cars’. Regardless of its overall efficacy, the Kyoto Protocol managed to instill a little bit of trust between countries…for a little while anyway.
While climate change continues to be a highly politicized and polarizing issue, it is important to realize that ideological differences aren’t the only problem. There are also real social dilemmas underlying both the cause and the resolution of climate change. Cooperation is going to be the only way out of this snowdrift.
Seen in the September 17, 2008 issue of the Brome County News
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