We have a Climate Change topic - let's make it busy

[NotMeNoNo]

The last week or so has made lots of us think again about the Climate Emergency. How about we use the Climate change topic to collect all the threads on food, travel, heating, campaigning etc.

Climate Change is a many faceted issue and there are lots of discussions to be had. Rather than every time someone asks if they should recycle their breadbags or buy imported asparagus, people jump on and say "not worth me doing anything whilst China is still building coal fired power stations". Or how does it square up with poverty, or womens rights?

Let's at least have the debate and make sure women's voices are heard.

Not 30,000, 50,000 so maybe three years

40% of UK emissions come directly from individual households.

I've posted on this before but I think the biggest single thing people can do is educate themselves and learn how to interrogate and corroborate news and opinion. Knowledge is power. Some of the media coverage of climate change prevention, mitigation and adaption is incredibly misleading and that's both sides of the debate.

With knowledge individuals can make educated decisions in their personal choices - e.g. do we replace our clapped out diesel car or install and air source heat pump?

That knowledge and education can also be bought to bear in becoming a sustainability champion, either at work, a sports club or perhaps you parish council.

It's also important to recognise that climate change is just one element of environmental sustainability which is itself one the pillars of sustainability, the others being social sustainability and economic sustainability.

There are some great free courses around and I can link to these if people wish.

I sort of hoped this thread/board could be useful for sharing that kind of information TBH.

And please do post links.

The biggest change I am trying to make is reducing consumption. I have always been pretty good with avoiding food waste but I love clothes and cosmetics and am now trying hard to question every purchase and make sure it is 'essential'.

One issue I have is that my family all live abroad and I need to fly across an ocean to see them once a year. It's interesting to me that cruises have a worse carbon footprint than planes! I didn't know that until I recently looked into it.

It is challenging to go to North America and see so many people driving around in huge SUVs, even for the shortest journeys, I really struggle to see how they will every come close to net zero...

I am naturally an optimist, and I think the energy crisis will end up with lots of positives for the environment. And yes I am well aware that it will be very difficult for a lot of people, but at least the cloud will hopefully have the silver lining of reducing our use of gas and electricity (or so said a German economist on R4).

A really good primer on environmental sustainability is on the Eastleigh College site, it's GCSE equivalent and you will also get a certificate! I would say to give yourself double the time they suggest.

Haha I was hoping for more of a Ted talk! Certainly worth looking into.

Introduction to Green House Gas Protocol and Emissions Scopes

The GHG Protocol (GHGP) is a comprehensive series of global frameworks to measure and manage greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from private and public sector operations, value chains and mitigation actions. One of the key elements to understand when discussing climate change and greenhouse gas emissions are the emissions Scopes. These, hopefully, allow us to compare like with like and to some extent trust what we are being told. Vary rarely are these mentioned in the press or media which often take reports out of context. The GHGP can be applied by businesses, cities and regions, sectors, or any other organisation. There is no provision to apply these at household or individual level, but the overall philosophy is still valid.

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol

Scope 1 Emissions are direct emissions from owned or controlled sources. To a great extent this would be the burning fossil fuels for heat and power – e.g. boilers and vehicles. It also includes CO2 emissions from the calcination of lime or the methane emissions from livestock and manure for example. In theory it is simple but can get complicated by ownership of the emitter. At an individual or household level in the UK, boilers, gas cooking and vehicle emissions are likely to account for 90% of emissions.

Basically, if all scope 1 emissions for every organisation (and household) were summed together this should equal all global emissions. In order to claim compliance with the GHGP an organisation MUST report Scope 1 emissions publicly e.g. through the Climate Disclosure Project.

The Climate Disclosure Project

Scope 2 Emissions are indirect emissions from the generation of purchased energy. These will largely be from electricity generation but could be associated with district heating systems in flats and apartment blocks. Again, this seems simple but in order to show a reduction in emissions an organisation can purchase renewable energy certificates (RECs) know as Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin (REGO) in the UK, this can be abused via double accounting and has led to accusations of greenwash. For individual households in the UK the simplest solution is to sign up to a renewable energy tariff (there are gas tariffs as well based on bio-digestion).

Greenwashing

Scope 3 Emissions – if scope 1 and 2 can get complicated scope 3 starts off complicated! Scope 3 emissions are the emissions associated with the lifecycle of a product or service. The process to analyse the lifecycle is know as a lifecycle analysis (LCA). While there is no requirement to do so for most sectors organisations can publish their LCA results in an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) although there are many titles and acronyms for this. The simplest EPDs we are familiar with are the energy rating for home appliances or when buying or selling a house.

LCAs face some big challenges however. Firstly, the system or inventory boundary can be arbitrary. Ideally this would include all emissions from mining of raw materials, through fossil fuel extraction, transport, manufacturing, maintenance, in-use, and end of life. This can be very difficult as it may be impossible to judge what the in-use phase looks like, and it may be just easier to leave it out. What goes into scope 3 can be somewhat subjective.

Next is the veracity of the data for each stage in the lifecycle. LCAs rely on complex databases of emissions associated with each stage of the supply chain but these are often aggregated and not representative for a specific material or product. A product produced in France which relies heavily on nuclear energy will have a very different profile to one produced in South Korea which relies heavily on coal.

What’s important in an LCA and EPD is that the decisions made in what goes in and what gets left out, where the data comes from is stated openly and clearly justified, and they are independently audited.

iPhone 13 EPD
Pixel 6a EPD

Congratulations if you got to the bottom of that and it makes sense, that certainly wasn’t the case when I first started out on this journey!

@NotMeNoNo @Someaddedsugar you both mentioned other people arguing against taking personal action until big business, government, India, China, etc do so, or there's no point because we're all doomed, there may also be some climate change deniers still about. These have been called the discourses of climate delay.

Discourses of Delay

@NotMeNoNo one of the reasons for understanding the scopes and the discourses of delay was demonstrated very well by a report that was covered extensively in the media but particularly the Guardian. Link here.

The report does a number of things; it attributes scope 3 emissions as scope 1, effectively claiming that the emissions from my car or your boiler are the responsibility of British Gas and BP etc. It effectively absolves individuals, and any other organisation of responsibility for climate change and reinforces the argument that there's no point taking action until the big corporations do so. Something I find rather disturbing.

Thanks, it's helpful to see it has a name.

I kind of feel it's important to do the personal things because otherwise it seems to me it undermines the case for bigger things. The "they all flew to the climate summit so why listen" argument.

I feel Covid was a perfect example of global, national, commercial and personal objectives and actions being aligned to have a rapid impact. With recognition that people need to know their livelihood will be supported to make costly changes. It all went a bit downhill after that, but behaviourally it was interesting.

Glad to find this board.. I just finished On Fire by Naomi Klein, it's a good read about the green new deal.. from this in terms of individual actions, not eating meat and generally consuming less, repairing instead of throwing out and buying new are all the individual actions that help the most. I have been vegetarian, and now increasingly plant based for years, I think for most people it seems stopping eating meat seems like too much, but I am seeing more people reducing their meat consumption, choosing the vegan or vegetarian options, having meat free days, then more meat free days... i would like to see vegetarian options becoming more of a default. Frequently I see the vegetarian options at cafes etc selling out, which isn't always great for me... but shows they should re-balance the choices as lots of people will go for the veggie choice if it is appealing.

The other interesting thing was solar panels.. why energy companies don't like them and why they haven't really taken off and on everything is that when people start generating their own electricity they stop being consumers of electricity - it's obvious but I never have seen it stated like this. I have wanted some for years and feel it's something I now need to get on with.

I agree that suggesting to my family that we go meat free is a hard sell. We eat meat free several times a week, but I'm trying to increase that.

And we're having an extension layer this year and we're exploring solar panels. They seem so expensive though, we need to do some calculations about the long term financial benefit. This won't be our forever home, but we'll probably be here for at least 10 years so hopefully I can convince DH that solar will be a good investment both financially and for the environment.

Hi @Gazelda if you're having an extension you can fairly easily double the insulation without adding too much to the cost. You might also want to investigate air source heat pumps.

Just catching up with this topic (but not read the fucking thread yet so random replies as I go through)

Agree that people don't want to change if it makes life harder. We need to look for the easy wins that people can do. Things that save money or make life simpler.

With air con, heard récently that below 45mph windows open. Above Aircon.

I honestly think international awareness is key. I'm on a work trip to the states at the moment and the waste here is astronomical. Plastic bags everywhere, still using foam boxes for takeaways, few recycling bins anywhere. In about 1 min of me standing in m conference room my entire years efforts of reducing waste and consumption had been reversed. So depressing. I've complained to the conference venue and made people at the conference aware of how to complain too. I'm hoping little things like that might help.

This is brilliant. Well done.