Right now, could you prepare a slice of toast with zero embodied carbon emissions?

Since at least the 2000s, big polluters have tried to frame carbon emissions as an issue to be solved through the purchasing choices of individual consumers.

Solving climate change, we’ve been told, is not a matter of public policy or infrastructure. Instead, it’s about convincing individual consumers to reduce their “carbon footprint” (a term coined by BP: https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oil-coined-carbon-footprints-to-blame-us-for-their-greed-keep-them-on-the-hook).

Yet, right now, millions of people couldn’t prepare a slice of toast without causing carbon emissions, even if they wanted to.

In many low-density single-use-zoned suburbs, the only realistic option for getting to the store to get a loaf of bread is to drive. The power coming out of the mains includes energy from coal or gas.

But.

Even if they invested in solar panels, and an inverter, and a battery system, and only used an electric toaster, and baked the loaf themselves in an electric oven, and walked/cycled/drove an EV to the store to get flour and yeast, there are still embodied carbon emissions in that loaf of bread.

Just think about the diesel powered trucks used to transport the grains and packaging to the flour factory, the energy used to power the milling equipment, and the diesel fuel used to transport that flour to the store.

Basically, unless you go completely off grid and grow your own organic wheat, your zero emissions toast just ain’t happening.

And that’s for the most basic of food products!

Unless we get the infrastructure in place to move to a 100% renewables and storage grid, and use it to power fully electric freight rail and zero emissions passenger transport, pretty much all of our decarbonisation efforts are non-starters.

This is fundamentally an infrastructure and public policy problem, not a problem of individual consumer choice.

#ClimateChange #urbanism #infrastructure #energy #grid #politics #power @green

  • Jack of all trades@mas.to
    71·
    1 year ago

    @ajsadauskas @green

    Why not both?

    Individuals need to change their expectations and consumption patterns, while the policy and infrastructure need to change in tandem.

    You are not going to get radical reforms from the government without popular support from the population. That requires sacrifices and changes in societal norms.

    In your toast example, the option that is available to everyone right now is to _not_ make the toast.

    Just eat the damn bread.

    You don’t need a toast.

    • JungleJim
      2·
      1 year ago

      Yes, the problem is reheating the bread, not everything it took to make the bread you glossed over that OP listed. It’s the toasting the bread that makes it so bad

      • Jack of all trades@mas.to
        23·
        1 year ago

        @JungleJim Yes.

        It’s not a problem that people eat bread. Growing wheat and making bread is not a problem.

        Producing a toaster is a wasteful use of resources that further adds to a growing mountain of e-waste.

        Toasting the bread is a wasteful use of energy.

        So is driving a car to get a loaf of bread, because one lives in a food desert.

        There are both individual and structural reasons for the situation we are in. Shifting the blame and focusing on just one aspect is counterproductive IMO.

        • JungleJim
          2·
          1 year ago

          You know can toast bread with any source of dry heat though? You don’t need a toaster. Use a solar oven if you like, or a camp fire, or wait for lightning to hit a tree, or a lava flow, or a regular stove.

          Growing all that wheat takes acres of native prairie and turns it into a tilled monoculture devoid of soil life, turning a carbon sink into a net increase in atmospheric carbon. The bread is the issue; Grow cassava and beat it into a paste, then dry that in the sun. There’s your bread. Don’t make it hot twice though, toast is bad.

          • Jack of all trades@mas.to
            1·
            1 year ago

            @JungleJim

            Yes, you can toast bread over a campfire, but that wasn’t the example being discussed.

            If people only grew wheat and ate bread we wouldn’t have climate change.

            It’s all the other stuff: the high-energy industrial lifestyle enabled by fossil fuels that is the problem. So the cars running on gasoline, and the electric toasters, and yes, even the diesel tractors and chemical fertilizers.