I just got a CO2 meter and checked the levels in my house and went down a rabbit hole trying to address the issue. Apparently it would take 249 areca palms to offset the carbon RESPIRATION of one adult.
So okay 249 trees just for me to breathe, not to mention the rest of the bad things we all do.
So how can this math ever balance? 249 trees just to break even seems like an impossible number. Then all the flights I have been on, miles driven, etc.
I feel like that’s… Way too many trees. Is it hopeless or am I missing something?
You’re not supposed to. It is a marketing ploy from oil and gas companies to shift the blame from corporations to individuals for their pollution.
The oil and gas companies and their “environmentalist” buddies.
We could have prevented climate change with nuclear power in the 1990s.
Even without solar and wind (they were too expensive at the time) or carbon taxes, Sweden and France managed to get emissions down to 5 tons per capita with old nuclear and hydro technology. If all rich countries had done the same thing, climate change would have been a non-issue.
We can still solve it today with today’s technologies: solar, wind and battery technology has evolved and become affordable. Carbon taxes are politically feasible. And old nuclear technology is becoming more acceptable and gearing up.
Sure, try to help by reducing your energy use where possible and investing in things like home insulation and energy efficient heating and transportation.
But the actual big things that need to be done can only be done by politicians, to force economies to change.
Even without solar and wind (they were too expensive at the time)
This is true and I’m not disputing this fact, but had the oil companies not interfered with and killed off any attempts at alternative energy sources, things may have been quite different.
carbon taxes are politically feasible
Not in the United States, they’re not. I actually work with politicians as a climate lobbyist and carbon taxes are a complete non-starter.
Batteries are not quite there yet. It’s still quite a large investment to build massive batteries that can help small to medium towns for short periods of time. As an EE I’m hoping we make a breakthrough soon that will allow us to increase their energy density. Either that or move to different liquid fuels, which have an energy density advantage.
We’re burning these fuels and spending the energy on these sectors.
It’s mostly due to burning coal, oil and gas while expecting to get electricity, heat and motion out of it. Which sectors need to change urgently? Industry in general, road transport and buildings.
Yeah holy shit I can’t believe that people are braking their head about this …
I don’t know is mistype or not, but I find that both “braking” their heads and “breaking” their heads work in this context.
Mistype haha but it’s staying
Breathing does not create Carbon, it is only transformed.
There are basically 2 pools of carbon. The carbon already in circulation in the athmosphere, plants, animals and so on, roaming at the surface. That Carbon can be CO2, or other mollecules, but there is always a fixed amount. You breathing is simply borrowing the carbon for a bit and putting it out again in the air when exhaling.
The second pool is carbon locked away in the ground, as coal, oil and whatnot. That carbon is OLD and is not supposed to be in the first pool. When you burn oil, the carbon from the 2nd pool ends up in the 1st one. You cannot really offset it because even planting trees just transforms it as wood for a bit, but if the tree burns or rots, the carbon goes back in the air. The only option long term is to send the carbon back in a locked state in the second pool.
But for you, just reduce the amount of carbon you move from pool 2 to pool 1 to help the earth. Cut on oil, gas, coal as much as you can. The rest is basically irrelevant.
You can compare it to the water cycle. You are at a lake with a pump, and pump the water from the lake back into the lake. You can keep going forever and will not cause the lakes to rise since the water is pumped from there anyway. BUT, if a mega corporation starts pumping from underground sources and dumping it in that lake, it would overflow for sure. And they would blame you for all the water you are pumping.
This is a really important insight. To add to it: back when the carbon from Pool 2 was in the atmosphere, dinosaurs were roaming the earth and it was a lot hotter than it is now.
This is obviously a simplification, it but it drives home the point that once the carbon is out of Pool 2 it will cause global warming. The only way to stop that is to stop moving carbon from Pool 2 into Pool 1, ie stop fossil fuel mining.
Of course we could try to move carbon from Pool 2 to Pool 1, but it took the Earth millions of years to do that, and many of the plant species that did it are now extinct. Perhaps once we’re exinct, they might evolve again.
Is there any way to bring carbon from pool 1 into 2? Or we already fucked up and have to live with it now?
Yes, carbon sequestration is the term for it, but none of them are currently practical to do on a scale that would mitigate the effects of the fossil fuels we burn. Growing trees is an example of this, as they do lock up carbon in the process of growing, but they’re kind of a risky prospect since if the tree dies and rots or is caught in a wildfire then it releases the carbon again. Another option is literally just sticking it back underground in mines or oil wells, but of course that takes a lot of energy to do and then whole point of burning fossil fuels is to get energy so this one is currently a bit self-defeating. They’re things that might be helpful to do if we succeed in transitioning to clean energy and have an excess of it available
If we can get nuclear fusion to work, that would be the kind of things that would then make sense to do. I can only hope that we figure it out as soon as possible.
Absolutely. Or even just excess capacity of wind and solar, to be honest. Whatever works, so long as we don’t need it to replace fossil fuels and it isn’t itself making more CO2 to lock away the CO2
Re trees: It follows that growing some trees doesn’t help much, but growing a forest on otherwise bare land will act as a carbon sink as long as it’s not cut down - dead trees will be replaced without human intervention
As others have pointed out, individuals are not the problem nor are they the solution. How we produce energy and manufacture goods are the issue. The corporations producing energy and manufacturing goods don’t want to change to sustainable alternatives because it will cost them money. So they’ve invented the idea of a carbon footprint to make it seem like it’s your desire for electricity that is the problem and not how they generate it.
Don’t say we because you’re not part of it. You’re the victim of it.
You’re part of it if you use electricity or consume anything you didn’t grow in your own garden.
Everyone likes to say “it’s the oil and gas companies” but like, no shit, we burn oil and gas, and billions of people die if we just suddenly stop.
Corporations aren’t giggling madmen burning gas for fun. They’re shipping things across oceans and powering cars and buildings, they’re making shit you buy.
Every single person contributes to climate change and it is by changing spending and investment habits (which is ongoing and has been for a while) that we overcome climate change.
I’m the victim of it. I can’t save the planet by not using electricity, by not drinking water, or by not going to the grocery store. The only viable hypothetical way of me saving our planet is becoming a mercenary which is, you know, GOD DAMN STUPID. I would GLADLY be more ecologically responsible if I could afford it AND if the opportunity was presented to be(because OBVIOUSLY that option is not always available even), and you know that prices for basic needs are NEVER EVER EVER regulated by consumers because the demand for these things never goes down no matter the price because ITS A BASIC NEED.
You also know that corporations are maximizing their efforts to get maximum profit, which means they neglect safety of their employees and THE ENTIRE PLANET. Oil ends up in the rivers, seas, oceans ALL THE GOD DAMN TIME. Are you trying to tell me that I’m to blame? Don’t you realize that for me, by your logic, to not responsible for it I’d need to quite literally just kill myself? Are you telling me I should be thankful for it? You are batshit crazy
P.s. fyi the rich does burn the oil for fun, when they decide there’s “too much of it”. Don’t remember the negative oil price a few years ago? There’s not just one instance of it. You know what they don’t do? Push themselves to be as ecological as possible. They’re too busy experiencing record profits that are unproportional relative to yearly us dollar inflation.
Get. Lost.
Did a child write this?
“🤓” type of comment
By the way it’s very interesting that you perceive a thought out, fact checked pre publication comment, as “something a child would write”. You should think about your place in society for a bit LMAO
Lol it’s so weird you described your comment that way.
Keep trying to gaslight bud
This is so pathetic and embarrassing for you bruh
If we were actually net zero, humans would still reproduce until we aren’t anymore.
Overpopulation is an unsolvable problem.
One thing that the carbon neutral concept overlooks is that the world is perfectly capable of absorbing the carbon output of a single person.
For average individuals we are not able to overwhelm the world with our carbon output. There is a carbon cycle and as CO2 increases in the atmosphere, plants grow faster and bring it back to a stable median.
It is massive industrialization that has overwhelmed the capacity of the earth to absorb the excess carbon dioxide created by humankind.
What you should do is spend your money on companies that have embraced carbon neutrality or being carbon negative, purchase items from low carbon companies, and be reasonable and responsible with your use of energy, including fuel and electricity.
When you have opportunities to vote for environmental initiatives, you should vote for them.
While you should be conspicuous of your carbon footprint in the environment that we have, you should also know that your ability to actually fix the issue is practically non-existent. The only thing that is going to fix the issue is government ruling that forces industries to stop polluting the environment at the rate that they are doing even if it causes our economy to decrease.
The only way for such initiatives to ever happen is if the population becomes carbon conscious and pushes for such initiatives. If enough of us do enough then the people in power will move to come towards us and make changes that will help keep them in power.
- Folks generally don’t consider offsetting their own breath, that’s extreme.
- The vast majority of oxygen comes from phytoplankton in the ocean.
Offsetting your own breath seems unnecessary. A human being does not produce CO2 out of nowhere. It comes from oxygen, which we breathe in, and carbon which we eat. The food absorbs the carbon from the atmosphere when it grows, so taken in total the whole cycle is completely carbon neutral.
The reason CO2 concentration is increasing is because we’re digging it up from the ground and releasing it into the air. Taking CO2 from the air and then putting it back a short time later is not really an issue.
Also, I’m really questioning OP’s numbers here. The CO2 a person produces should be absorbed by about 15 trees, from what I can find. Or is he trying to solve the global climate problem with only potted plants?
The world has its own CO2 cycle so it’s not that we need to reach 0, we just need to reach a balanced emission threshold. Though at this point we will also need to aid this process with further removal.
The issue is mostly that we are outputting too much. Shipping industries, energy production, other transport such as cars and planes. These industries are a big part of the problem and the ones fueling (e.g. oil) them are the ones most interested in your feeling of hopelessness, as then they have free reign over their actions.
The world has and will get hotter. There will be more disasters. But it’s unlikely to be the end of civilisation. The more we act now, the fewer people will suffer.
It’s not a hopeless cause at all. Look at our tech now vs 100 years ago. Humanity has the means to do it.
Individual guilt is never gonna beat organized engineering.
There’s a lot of greenery on Earth - seaweeds recycle a huge amount of CO2, as are all the plants we use and eat. It would be completely enough, especially as we keep killing off all the other animals that produce CO2.
It’s just unfortunate that we’re destroying the oceans too, and agriculture is a heavy industry with more polution. And while we kill off the harmless or useful wild animals, we replace them with livestock, and you know where that is going.
As individuals, we really can’t do much in this regard. I guess you can do more biking instead of driving, reusing older products, buying local, stuff like that, but this really won’t make a dent when industries keep using the dirtiest possible processes to save a cent, or if nuclear power keeps being lobbied out.
Last estimate was something in the range of three trillion trees, palms are probably not the most carbon dense tree for removing CO2. But all kinds of organisms help break down CO2 including Algae.
But don’t think that your breathing is to blame for CO2, it’s deforestagion, shipping, fossil fuels, war and bushfires are.
Make things, buy local and travel local.
How many extra trees do you need to offset the manufacture of that unnecessary CO2 meter?
That’s why you buy a second CO2 meter and go measure at the factory the first one was built in. That way you’ll know how many trees to plant for the two CO2 meters.
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A quick Google search says there are 3 trillion trees on Earth. So that’s 500 trees per person but as mentioned before things like algae and other sources make up more.
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The carbon from your breathing is carbon neutral since all the carbon in your body comes from food which comes ultimately comes from plants. However the carbon dioxide used to produce and transport your food is where the excess comes from.
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If you want to minimize your carbon footprint it’s more about understanding which behaviors contribute the most. Eg an economy flight from the US to Europe is like 1.5 tons of CO2. That’s like years of respiration.
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Of course the problem is hard to solve as an individual. Maybe there just needs to be assignable liability for certain activities and the correct legal and economic system setup to optimize better for ecological issues.
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Become a vegan activist and if you convince a few people to go vegan you can actually become carbon negative.
Also plant some trees.
CO meter for sure, but a CO2 meter? It’s actually a good idea to have CO alarms in your house if using natural gas powered appliances. However CO2 is only a concern if you’re in a hermetically sealed environment like a submarine or space ship. I suppose it could be useful to check proper ventilation in the home, but normally you can just open a window.
Anyway the Earth has a carbon cycle, in other words it filters natural CO2 emissions through environmental processes. The problem is the amount added by industry is more than the natural carbon cycle can process. So levels are steadily increasing.
When we talk about zero carbon footprint we mean sources from industry like driving gasoline powered cars, generation of electricity, and production of consumer goods. A good amount already comes from natural processes like volcanos and erosion so we don’t actually need a zero carbon footprint, just need it low enough to avoid overwhelming the natural cycle.
At a personal level it would be just about impossible to have a zero carbon footprint. If you had a solar and wind powered home off-grid and used it to charge an electric car you could be well below average. However any consumer goods you use put carbon in the air to produce them. Even if you went full native you’d still be putting carbon in the air burning wood and candles.
Actually the CO2 meter showed levels in my home during the day at 1350 (I think over 1000 is bad - 10% cognitive decline I think occurs at 1500) and in the morning over 2100 in my bedroom! The AC turns off and the CO2 just builds up I guess.
I did the research to see if any amount of houseplants could offset it (nope), but yes, opening a window is exactly the solution. Problem is I live in Florida and it is way too hot to do that. So I compromised and turned on a bathroom vent all day and it is keeping the levels to around 800 per day. It basically is slowly sucking air through the not perfectly sealed home and expelling it through the roof.
But I recognize now my AC will have to work harder to cool the incoming air and make my home less efficient, thus doing worse overall. Happily we have a nuclear power plant here but still.
Most people use CO2 meter at home to measure air quality. If you’re in room that is not well ventilated, depending on the size of the room, CO2 will reach pretty high levels within minutes. Unless it’s really bad, it’s not high enough to kill you (which is why people have CO detectors) but spending long time in the environment (hours) might cause issues with how well you can focus, trigger headache or migraine, cause tiredness if this is your bedroom, etc…
Just try to act responsibly. Don’t drive if you don’t have to, recycle, start a compost heap. If you spend all day worrying about the “carbon footprint” of your own breathing then you’ll just end up driving yourself crazy and blowing all your money on online scams
Overpopulation is an issue that has to be aknowledged but the earth would be able to sustain a lot more people if we wouldn’t pollute as much.
