Post B2exFeXft4XNMoAIIC by jones@todon.nl
(DIR) More posts by jones@todon.nl
(DIR) Post #B2cskQ5n3XxQ7nVZ0y by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T15:13:30Z
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Climate conscious folks, can you help me answer this question: If we want to stay within the planetary boundary defined by 1.5°C global warming, how many emissions in CO2e can each person make per year?I know there are several ways to make the calculation. I just want to get a ballpark number so we can get some proportions in our lifestyle choices.#CarbonFootprint #EmissionQuota #Degrowth
(DIR) Post #B2cskR0rdLbwyoD8yW by fideldonson@mas.to
2026-01-06T16:21:54Z
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@malte I have been relying on 1.5t per person. It is backed up here... https://www.atmosfair.de/en/green_travel/annual_climate_budget/
(DIR) Post #B2cskRxi6YgNvJk8hM by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T16:28:43Z
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@fideldonson Thanks! I'm happy to get a response to my question. This is significantly less than 2,3. Still many countries in the world are below that quota, but for people like us in the overdeveloped world - quite drastic changes we need to make.
(DIR) Post #B2cskY7VD4531QN2nI by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T15:18:23Z
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The Institute for European Environmental Policy set the qouta at 2,3 tonnes. That's roughly half of an average Danish person, but most countries in the world could actually increase their per capita emissions under that quota, esp. in Africa, but also places like Brazil, Armenia, India and Pakistan are below the quota today https://ieep.eu/publications/carbon-inequality-in-2030-per-capita-consumption-emissions-and-the-1-5c-goal/
(DIR) Post #B2cskfnaeyuEpz7Frs by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T15:22:35Z
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That study was made in 2021 and given that we've not seen drastic degrowth in the last four years, we've made a significant overspending of our budget, leaving less for the coming years. That means the number would likely be adjusted down. But how much - who has a more recent calculation?
(DIR) Post #B2csknMaXG3oIYXntI by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T15:43:51Z
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You might ask "Which kind of lifestyle choices could this help us change our minds on?" I think a good example to start with is flying. Consider that a long trip like flying from Europe to Thailand burns between 1,2 to 3,4 tonnes CO2 per passenger, depending on airplane type etc.
(DIR) Post #B2cskv2K0UbQ617jPc by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T15:47:07Z
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Best case scenario, you're burning more than half of your annual emissions budget on that trip, leaving very little room to heat your house, buy socks and food and transport yourself. Worst case, you're burning up more than a whole persons annual budget in that trip, leaving less energy for other people in the world to live and thrive.
(DIR) Post #B2csl31uHv1Yt2zVsO by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T16:16:43Z
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In the over-individualized world, some people might be unable to imagine how to use this kind of thinking for anything else than individual action. There's a certain type of apathetic radical that gets easily triggered into that assumption. I get a bit annoyed with this lack of imagination, but 50 years of neoliberal assault on the imagination also makes it understandable.
(DIR) Post #B2cslBGjefdgRLzT6G by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T16:21:42Z
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Just consider this idea: Imagine we had the power to set limits to our common energy use together. Just skip the part of how we would get there (having that kind of power) and imagine what we would do then. Imagine we had made capitalism come to a grinding halt, toppled the global oligarchy and had some good-enough global structures for making wise decisions for the health of planet and people. How much energy could we spend per person and still live within the planetary boundaries?
(DIR) Post #B2cslJUr43gdxSerDc by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T16:35:34Z
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I'm actually a bit surprised how most people reacting to my post are not responding to the question, but letting their mind wander off to other places and taking me with them.
(DIR) Post #B2cslSMg5pUfShtxDs by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T16:42:38Z
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Where I come from we often call these kind of misattunements "flight behaviors", ie. their implicit goal is often to avoid the explicit goal of the context. In this context, the most immediate goal was to find an answer to the question above. So flight behaviors typically do something else than that. As a climate-focused psychologist I've spent lots of time observing how we evade all kinds of things related to climate change. Sometimes, like today, I'm surprised how common it is.
(DIR) Post #B2ct8j0aNWE9k3fBcu by jones@todon.nl
2026-01-06T16:23:16Z
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@malte it's not much a matter of countries, it's much, much more a matter of wealth, with the kind of huge differences that are described in the attached graph, and with the most rich 0.1 emitting 304.82 tonnes per capita, the next 0.9% emitting 51.99 tpc, the next 9% emitting 15.84 tpc, the middle 40% emitting 5.19 tpc, the bottom 50% emitting 0.79 tpc (see the table at section "Emission Summary by Global Income Group" here: https://emissions-inequality.org/).
(DIR) Post #B2ct8ka4X4CucPH2Zs by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T16:32:28Z
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@jones You're missing my point and not responding to my question. Imagine we managed to abolish the most extreme inequality (which causes the emissions you're referring to and of which I'm very much aware of) and now lived in a much more equal world. How many emissions would there be for each person to use if we wanted to live within the boundary of 1,5C?
(DIR) Post #B2ct8ongqNTdhnfyMK by Basic_barbie@helvede.net
2026-01-07T07:28:12Z
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@malte @jones not to be nelly negative or anything, we don’t really seem to abolishing anything that looks like any inequality in any near future.It feels like this is just to individualise the climate responsibility, just like the neo liberal playbook wants us to.I mean the idea is good, but there is this giant thing in the way called the global elite, who is a the moment making every thing worse
(DIR) Post #B2ct8q0UMHJDRmfhwm by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-07T16:03:31Z
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@Basic_barbie We disagree somewhat on this point. My analysis of neoliberalism is that it has been a decades long war on the imagination. So much so that not even the most radical people can imagine how we would live without capitalist inequality. @jones
(DIR) Post #B2ct8tEmLbWRSyNf8a by jones@todon.nl
2026-01-08T07:39:39Z
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@malte @Basic_barbie I disagree, i think Murray Bookchin's communalist and libertarian municipalism is an example of imagining how we could live without capitalist inequality (the most desirable and at the same time the most viable, for me), but there are others, so i think the matter is not much to imagine alternatives, but to make them real.
(DIR) Post #B2ct8uJmKV7EoljAZM by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-08T08:56:30Z
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@jones The same point has been made by one of the movements that have made Bookchins thought real, the experiment in Kurdistan. Dilar Dirik called her anthology on that topic "Dare to imagine" for that reason. @Basic_barbie
(DIR) Post #B2ct8v73NIWzHamWNE by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-08T10:34:39Z
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@jones One of the most scathing critiques I've heard from kurds in the movement when sharing their perspective of radicals in my part of the world is - you don't even know what freedom is and your overly individualized society has made you forget to imagine a free life
(DIR) Post #B2cu1zmDjg03fuIbWS by mbletmathe@mastodon.social
2026-01-06T19:17:52Z
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@malte May I ask you from which source you got the impression that there is any budget left at all?
(DIR) Post #B2cu21BmU82Y3TGX0C by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T21:15:05Z
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@mbletmathe Sure, even if I suspect you're not really interested in the answer. One of the primary cycles of matter on the planet is the carbon cycle. As part of that cycle, carbon gets sequestered in soils and living plants. That means it is possible to get to a point where the planet is sequestering more carbon than we are emitting, a threshold called drawdown. It would take drastic reductions in our energy use and my question is basically to ask how much. https://drawdown.org/
(DIR) Post #B2cu22HUQOCVRSwbXU by mbletmathe@mastodon.social
2026-01-07T13:38:54Z
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@malte Thanks for your answer.I'm interested in how people who are actually aware of the problem (and even doing something against it) are thinking. Now I know your calculations are based on the drawdown metrics instead of the actual EEI (Earth Energy Imbalance), and your definition of "budget" is different from mine. Tbh, maybe I expected some "hopium", even as I'm mostly immune to it. Sorry.
(DIR) Post #B2cu238JG0S45Hemrw by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-07T15:58:47Z
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@mbletmathe I think I know that kind of hope, the kind that dulls the senses and feelings and leads to inaction, like opiates. I would call that a "positive prediction". Hope for me entails some unpredictability, which means there's still room for action. And to have reasons for both optimism and pessimism.
(DIR) Post #B2ewUwou73ZCRbxA5A by fideldonson@mas.to
2026-01-06T16:30:37Z
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@malte and the point is that the longer we wait the more we need to cut.
(DIR) Post #B2ewUxWrTcjEdwWGbA by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T16:33:35Z
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@fideldonson Yes, the more we're overspending next years' budgets, the less there is left!
(DIR) Post #B2ewZrJa0ajgomdx6O by snippet@fe.disroot.org
2026-01-06T15:52:17.438574Z
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@malteNowadays 1,5 is only mentioned together with overshoot. So you'd better prepare to have negative personal emissions. Or shed some delusions.
(DIR) Post #B2ewZsLkA23q1mfC76 by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T16:07:28Z
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@snippet I'm preparing for both (and have been a carbon farmer for that reason the last ten years). I'm also ready to shed some delusions if you can help me get the numbers. Do you know the answer to my question above? You're saying that the number is negative - so what is it?
(DIR) Post #B2ewZt2daYN8AojRyK by snippet@fe.disroot.org
2026-01-07T03:38:51.901297Z
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@malteThe numbers aren't useful anymore, because we are too far gone for 1.5. And the number alone always has said less than the assumptions its calculation is based on and the modeled possible passways to reach it, see methods in IPCC reports.If you must know a number, whatever the assumptions, look it up at global carbon budget:„The remaining carbon budget to limit global warming to 1.5°C is virtually exhausted. With a warming of the planet attributed to human activities of 1.36°C in 2024, the remaining budget for 1.5°C is 170 GtCO2, equivalent to 4 years at the 2025 emissions levels.“ (2025 key messages)https://globalcarbonbudget.org/
(DIR) Post #B2ewZtgLCw8C9xJ9rE by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-07T16:08:40Z
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@snippet I'm working on the assumption that a viable plan for living within the planetary boundaries would include massive transformation of agriculture to get higher carbon sequestration rates. That means we could get to drawdown where we start reversing global warming.
(DIR) Post #B2exFBmCpxvi9TjzPs by urlyman@mastodon.social
2026-01-06T15:32:46Z
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@malte thanks for the link. A quick look at page 3 of the source report (https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621305/bn-carbon-inequality-2030-051121-en.pdf;jsessionid=A159EA1F6294BE9447493003B3F9F179?sequence=1 PDF) cites the “2.3” figure but doesn’t make clear how it’s arrived at. I presume theres’s a flawed and (as you say) out of date carbon budget being divvied up.I note that https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-carbon-dioxide-does-earth-naturally-absorb says there’s a ~100^9 tonne annual natural carbon cycle. Where to go from there I don’t know
(DIR) Post #B2exFEDvjrILk2j9uK by urlyman@mastodon.social
2026-01-06T15:36:52Z
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…presumably there needs to be a decent assessment of Earth’s total biomass and what our own mass represents of that as a subset, but I understand there are many large uncertainties there – e.g. vast volumes of bacteria living deep within rock. I’m aware of the picture below when it comes to mammals https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/113917611142953955
(DIR) Post #B2exFeXft4XNMoAIIC by jones@todon.nl
2026-01-06T16:51:56Z
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@malte i got your question and i don't know the answer, i just wanted to point out it's mostly a matter of income.
(DIR) Post #B2exFfyeYFiBolnLyy by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T16:57:59Z
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@jones Thanks, sometimes all it takes to be responsive is to admit you don't know the answer.
(DIR) Post #B2exFgmdYPh6JnBGtM by jones@todon.nl
2026-01-06T17:16:41Z
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@malte yes, but what's an "average Danish person"? :)I mean, if you set "Denmark" as the country here, https://emissions-inequality.org/national/, and look at the "Emissions Summary by National Income Groups", you read that in 2022 the most rich 0.1% emitted 180.38 tonnes per capita, the next 0.9 29.82, the next 9% 12.78, the middle 40% 8.36, the bottom 50% 5.50.
(DIR) Post #B2exFgppMYFKTgforg by rhelune@todon.eu
2026-01-06T17:02:20Z
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@malte The worst thing one can do for climate is reproduce: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541/metaBut, of course, people do not want to hear that. If anything, they dump the responsibility for their offsprings' emissions onto those offsprings themselves (who had no choice in coming into the existence). Humans also hate to be told that they should stop consuming animal products (except billionaires).
(DIR) Post #B2exFhRP6qIuMEFpR2 by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T21:24:49Z
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@rhelune Yes, this could be another example of how to have the (difficult) conversation with yourself and your partner whether to have children. And I agree with you that's not a conversation most want to have. Having children is like a sphere of its own - different from our other lifestyle choices. The good thing is the birthrate is going down all on its own where women are economically independent, have access to contraceptives, abortions and other family planning services.
(DIR) Post #B2exVH7cjMShMcQfia by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-06T16:13:24Z
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@mmm_kay This kind of reply makes me annoyed. I'm a full-time gardener so your advice is a bit ridiculous. Also, it misses the point. If you would want to have collective agreements about limits to our energy use, you need to define those limits.
(DIR) Post #B2exVOJE0ctvecuXGy by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-25T07:52:47Z
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@gemlog And I would support that - those who pollute the most, would have to change the most. @fideldonson
(DIR) Post #B2ey3K5qBqM4QOpYWG by snippet@fe.disroot.org
2026-01-07T05:15:36.150019Z
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@malteIf you want to think about lifestyle (what is a good thing to do) a more helpful question might be: What is the amount of longterm sustainable carbon emissions, and how can we reach it collectively?
(DIR) Post #B2ey3MHy1jF9EaWGhM by malte@radikal.social
2026-01-07T16:05:19Z
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@snippet Great question and if it helps you to paraphrase it like that I would say it is close enough to mine. And you can even leave out the last part of your question. So what is the amount of longterm sustainable carbon emissions?