Climate Stress

This is going to be US-centric as that is where I am based and most knowledgeable. Data is largely pulled from the EPA. This is not a proper analysis, this is my own ramblings. Emphasis on rambling. Honestly you could call this a vent.

I’ve had a lot of stress about global warming since I was young. I don’t think I’m unreasonable about this. “The planet’s dyin’, Cloud!”

It’s made so much worse by how powerless I feel about it. The vast majority of the problem is not due to any individual choices, but due to systemic problems. In 2022, 60% of the US’s electricity came from burning fossil fuels. People using electricity aren’t necessarily choosing for their electricity to come from that, that’s just what is made available to us.

Billionaires waste enormous amounts of resources to sustain absurd lifestyles, powering enormous mansions, flying across the planet near daily often in private jets, fueling mega-yachts, just fully indulging in whatever they want. Emissions and wasted resources are extremely “top heavy” in that sense.

At the same time, it’s not as though the average person isn’t having an impact on the environment. In 2022, the US emitted 6,343.2 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent. In that same year, there were 342 million people in the US. That’s an average of 18.81 metric tons per person. The EPA has a calculator that gives an average for a household of the size I live in of 1.24 metric tons per person. Let’s say that this is a representative sample (though that’s certainly not true). That means individuals are responsible on average for about 6.6% of greenhouse gas emissions. It’s probably actually much higher than that given where I live.

Not gonna lie, that statistic does help a lot mentally? It helps to put in perspective just how little individuals are actually doing to harm the environment.

At the same time, it’s still not nothing! While a lot of greenhouse gas emissions are outside of our control, the choices we make do contribute! Let’s say individuals are responsible in aggregate for 10% of emissions in the US. We could somehow magically completely eliminate the remaining 90%. That would put the US emissions at 634.32 million metric tons per year.

If we want to be able to live sustainably, we need net 0 or even net negative emissions year on year. Looking at the EPA’s data tables (table 2-1 in the 2024 report on the Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990 - 2022), gross emissions were 6343.2 million metric tons. The sinks meanwhile totaled 854.2 million metric tons. Residential fossil fuel combustion contributed 334.1 million metric tons. If we eliminated all but the residential emissions, that would leave us with a pretty healthy net negative emissions.

But… transportation… is its own category. Separate from residential. Transportation is responsible for 1751.3 million metric tons per year. Transportation does include private jets and such, but also… it’s cars. Cars that people drive. It’s planes that people fly in. It’s trucks delivering the goods we purchase to our local stores.

The electric power sector is also its own category. 1531.7 million metric tons per year. That’s the electricity we use to power our homes separately from the fossil fuels we use in our homes.

A lot of this isn’t really the fault of individuals. We aren’t really given a lot of choices. Our cities are designed to be car-centric, so people have to drive cars to live their lives. Our power companies don’t offer green energy sources, we have to take what they give us and it’s not like we’ve built society in a way where it’s viable to survive without power.

It’s only been around 150 years since electricity was commercialized. It’s been less since cars have been a thing. We lived without these things before. But we did so at a much lower quality of life.

I don’t think we should go back to the quality of life we had 150 years ago. That would be horrific. I do think we need to make compromises. We need to be putting pressure where it needs to be put to give us the better choices we need. We need to find a way to force a shift to primarily green sources of energy. Sure, there are imperfections in green energy (solar is only available when the sun is out, wind is only available when it blows), but that doesn’t mean there aren’t solutions. Batteries to store excess for when the source is unavailable. Nuclear power has come a long way in safety, perhaps we investigate that as a base load source when needed. Fall back to “dirty” energy only when absolutely needed.

We need to be abandoning individual cars. Shifting to electric vehicles is great, but cars have many other problems beyond just fossil fuels. We need to push for our cities to be redesigned. Let us walk, let us bike, let us take public transit. Design cities so that 99% of people don’t even need to have a driver’s license. I am not familiar enough with rural America to know what’s needed there, but that’s also not where the majority of carbon emissions from transportation are occurring.

We need to be changing small habits. Things that may not mean much on their own, but when added across everyone make a huge difference. Find ways to reduce your electricity usage. Look for “phantom loads” (devices that draw power while they’re turned off just by being plugged in) and deal with them appropriately. Energy efficient appliances. Turn the AC and heat off while you’re away and don’t need it. Use natural cooling such as opening windows at night.

We need to be redesigning homes. They used to be built based on their environment to maximize their passive potential for comfort. Breezeways in hot climates so wind could naturally cool interiors. Thick, insulated walls in cold climates to keep in heat. Nowadays everything is very cookie cutter across the nation. This needs to change. Passive climate control would dramatically cut down on the electricity costs of active climate control such as heating and air conditioning.

And while it may be tangential to greenhouse gasses, don’t even get me started on light pollution. We also need to be making efforts to waste less actual material - both because it litters up the planet and harms all life, and because material manufacturing is its own source of greenhouse gasses.

Honestly, I am tempted to put together a page with a list of ideas to help fight the crises facing our planet. I’m not a professional, but if I can at least get some ideas down, it will help me stay focused on what I can do and maybe help other figure out what they can do.