Where greenhouse gases come from, in one graph

[madokie]

You should click and look at the big version, or better yet get the PDF from Ecofys and zoom in really close, where you can see the sectors further broken down.

No grand conclusions to draw, just something to think on. Every one of these sources can be dialed down, through conservation and efficiency if nothing else, but off the top of my head I’d say the easiest targets for rapid emission reductions, in no particular order, are: 1) stop chopping forests down, 2) zero out emissions from residential and commercial buildings, 3) capture methane everywhere, from agriculture to energy to solid waste, 4) reduce vehicle-miles-traveled with densification and transit, then electrify the hell out of everything else in transportation.

The tough nut to crack, it seems to me, is industrial uses of coal. Industry uses coal for high-heat operations like coking for steel production and it’s difficult to replace that kind of thing with electricity. Maybe renewables will eventually crowd natural gas out of electricity and into industry, where it can displace coal? I’d like to hear more about how to squeeze coal out of industry, if anyone knows of good studies.

Anyway, what do you think? What are the top-line lessons of this graphic?

Link: http://grist.org/climate-energy/where-greenhouse-gases-come-from/

[Socialistlemur]

1. I guess we should eat less red meat?

If cattle pollute this much I'm going to eat less red meat.

[Sirveri]

2. To reply to their 4 targets:

1) stop chopping forests down

How so, we use considerable amounts of lumber for a variety of things, everything from paper to homes to furniture. If you mean sustainable logging techniques with replanting and other conservation techniques that would probably work.

2) zero out emissions from residential and commercial buildings

How... I'm willing to bet most of that is from electricity usage, solar can help but that requires retooling the power grid, which needs to happen anyways.

3) capture methane everywhere, from agriculture to energy to solid waste

LOLWUT, so let me see, we're going to put a giant plastic dome over every farm animal and garbage dump? Better would be to reduce household solid waste, and reduce meat consumption (which would in turn decrease agricultural emissions and improve sector efficiency)

4) reduce vehicle-miles-traveled with densification and transit, then electrify the hell out of everything else in transportation.

So we're going to totally rework the entire industrial society we've accomplished over the last 100-150 years? I'd love to see it happen, but that'll take a massive amount of money and/or time.

Too bad there isn't the political willpower to actually do any of these things, even though most are common sense and not even that expensive or difficult to do...