Rolling Stone USA - 04.2020

APRIL 2020 / ROLLING STONE / 75

THE TRUE COST OF CARBON

FROM TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT: CANADAPANDA/SHUTTERSTOCK; BRANKO DE LANG/KEYSTONE/REDUX; OLEKSANDR DELYK/SHUTTERSTOCK; ANDREY YURLOV/SHUTTERSTOCK; SOMCHAI SOM/SHUTTERSTOCK; DMITRY LOBANOV/SHUTTERSTOCK

H

EAT-TRAPPING POLLUTION is invisible in the at-

mosphere. And the unit used to measure the

gas at the heart of the climate crisis — metric

tons of CO2 — doesn’t translate to the lived

experience of most people. Can you visualize your

own CO2 emissions? Or how changing your behav-

ior might help limit your damage to the climate?

Consider a gallon of gasoline. Burned in your

car’s engine, that single gallon will produce 20

pounds of carbon dioxide. The average American

car, driven over a year, will create 10,000 pounds

of CO2 — or 4.6 metric tons. That’s far more than

double the mass of the car itself, but, because it’s a

gas, the CO2 occupies a far greater volume.

How to imagine that pollution in the atmo-

sphere? Picture a hot-air balloon — the kind you

might ride on a tourist excursion in Napa or New

Mexico. The yearly CO2 emissions from that aver-

age car would overflow the volume of that balloon.

Now picture four hot-air balloons. The aver-

age American generates that volume of CO2 emis-

sions every year — roughly 16 metric tons in all. If

you can imagine all 330 million Americans launch-

ing a total of 1.3 billion CO2-filled hot-air balloons

— this year alone — to join billions of other bal-

loons, launched over decades, that have never

come down, you’ve begun to visualize the scope of

the U.S. contribution to the climate crisis.

Limiting that pollution will require big, systemic

changes — to power our homes and industry, grow

our food, and move us around without fossil fuels.

In the meantime, daily individual choices make a

difference. It takes roughly 6 pounds of CO2 emis-

sions to put a quarter-pound of beef on your plate,

for example, while a quarter-pound of tofu re-

quires less than one-tenth of that. Driving to work

releases nearly a pound of CO2 every mile, but you

could travel 10 miles on a commuter train with the

same output. As the chart below illustrates, some

frequently touted suggestions for reducing your

carbon footprint (e.g., changing your lightbulbs)

have a modest effect, while the biggest impacts

are achieved by forgoing things like large families

— with each additional child locking in emissions

for generations — and air travel. Private jets exact a

staggering toll. Take the travel habits of Bill Gates.

It’s been estimated that the billionaire’s 59 flights

on a private jet in 2017 produced a colossal 1,629

metric tons of CO2 — or the equivalent of the year-

ly output of 100 average Americans. TIM DICKINSON

Ways to reduce your CO 2 emissions *

Annual reduction in tons of CO2

Upgrade

lightbulbsHang laundry

to dry Recycle

Wash

clothes cold

Vegetarian

diet

Buy green energy

Cancel a trans-atlantic flight

Switch to an electric car Don’t use

a car Have one

less kid

117.7

No More Meat

Close to a quarter of

CO2 emissions come

from food production,

and more than half

come from animal

farming. Americans eat,

on average, 270 pounds

of meat a year.

Go LED

Switching out incan-

descent bulbs for

compact-fluorescent or

LED bulbs is one of the

actions recommended

to reduce carbon emis-

sions at home, but the

impact is modest.

Green Power

This stat assumes a

house’s energy needs

are met using strictly

carbon-free sources,

such as solar and wind.

About 17 percent of

American energy comes

from renewables.

Stay Grounded

Air travel produces

two to three percent of

global CO2 emissions

annually. Avoiding one

long-distance flight has

eight times the impact

of recycling for a year.

One Less Child

This stat accounts for

the generational carbon

impacts of having a

child (who will have

children). Caveat: An

American produces

40 times more carbon

than someone from

Bangladesh.

4

3

2

1

*DATA SOURCE: Seth Wynes and Kimberly A. Nicholas 2017 Environmental Research Letters

Cold Wash

U.S. residential washing

machines emit a whop-

ping 179 metric tons

of carbon a year, equal

to powering 21 million

homes. The average

household washing is

289 loads annually.