…they’re the ones who are consuming the bulk of the US consumables and emitting most of the emissions. An op-ed in the NY Times a few weeks ago said each person in the big 4 western economies — North America, Japan, Australia, and Western Europe — was consuming, on average, 32 times as much as a citizen of a developing country. And in our country, half of the income is earned by the top 20% of the people.
Now, they don’t spend all their money producing direct emissions, but they do have the most SUVs and the biggest houses. So responsibility for emissions falls primarily on Americans whose backs are not against the wall, and who have the means to change if they can find the motivation.
Friend Kyle pointed out recently in a R4A post that 50 to 60% of emissions originated at the household or individual level. He also wrote that a 30 to 40% reduction was really not very difficult. So, just figuring on the back of an envelope, you can make a reasonable guess that if everybody at the top of the heap would cut back by 30% on just household and automotive emissions, fly less, shop at farmers markets, and lay off the beef, we could see emissions drop a lot. The really big spenders could hire me and Juan and Maria to compost their scraps, hang their laundry out to dry, and take care of their organic vegetable gardens. Couldn’t that add up to as much as 12% in one year?
Once committed to greening, wouldn’t these movers and shakers start demanding renewable energy for all and more public transport for the rest of us?
I think Friedman’s wrong on this. I think we need to win over the well-off people if we’re going to get anywhere.
