US emissions broken down by household

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Mooderator
Staff member
Nov 18, 2005
104,429
South Puget Sound, WA
This is an interesting breakdown of greenhouse gas emissions based on our households. The data illustrates how our lifestyles and consumer society add to atmospheric CO2. When taken as a whole, the numbers are astounding.

"Household consumption – food, housing, transportation, apparel and other personal services – is an important contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Everything you eat or wear, or every time you drive, you add to the global total emissions. The typical American’s annual per capita carbon footprint is over five times the world per capita average."

 
Nice article. But I was unclear what the domestic/overseas thing meant. And didn't like the 'percentage' business, rather than actual CO2 emission numbers.
 
Nice article. But I was unclear what the domestic/overseas thing meant.
I think they mean emissions generated overseas for the manufacture, shipping, etc. of the product parts. They gave an example:
The remaining emissions are generated outside the U.S. These emissions come from global supply chains. For instance, the family car might have been manufactured abroad. So emissions from manufacturing of the car are created outside the U.S., but the emissions from tailpipe are domestic.

Yes, data is good. This is one of the source docs:
 
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The more time I spend on this forum, the more irritated I get with our current political landscape. It is so clear that history will not look favorably on the GOP, with regard to this issue. But as long as the party supporting reform is proposing to take and redistribute 40%+ of the money I’m setting aside for my kids to inherit, or to increase my yearly tax burden in other ways, it is impossible to support their campaign.

We need to decouple the climate debate from our politics, but it seems unlikely as long as stalling climate change is perceived as negatively impacting business, and our businesses are continuing to try to compete on a global stage against those not facing the same restrictions. Many analogies can be drawn here to the demise of R&D heavy companies of the past, such as Westinghouse, GE, Lucent, etc., all of which failed to compete against lighter and less restricted foreign entities.

I don’t have a solution, but I know the answer is in fixing our politics, and finding tech that allows us to achieve these goals without further crippling American based industry.
 
I think more parties would solve the political issue. Right now, people tend to vote for the party that irritates them least. Throw in 2 more as legitimate choices, say Green and Libertarian.

Competition will make all of them better.