On the other hand, to a fairly large extent, those one hundred companies are generating the emissions to meet the needs of individuals. So this guy not driving, for instance, would be covered in that 70%
I'm curious about the carbon emissions of elevators.
Mmm. That one seems misguided. On the other hand, it's at least harmless.
Is there any way I can spin my not drinking as an environmentally-friendly initiative?
3: Not if he hurts himself taking the stairs during chemo.
The leftover malt stuff from beermaking is fed to cows, which fart greenhouse. You're a goddamn hero.
I got takeout the other day, and I felt terrible about all the styrofoam containers. But I can't imagine trying to bring tupperware to the restaurant.
I get weird thinking about this stuff, because living the way that suits my taste gets me halfway to being this guy without thinking about it. So if I start talking about how important individual sacrifice is, I'm telling other people to give up things that are painless for me because I don't want them (lawn, car, frequent air travel (there are people who live far away who I want to see, but mostly they come to me)). But wow do I think it's important to set policy to make giving things up easier and less painful.
Dumb shit like waste-reducing packaging regulations: no one's in a position to make all their consumer choices to avoid single use plastics. But regulations requiring single-use plastics be minimized to where they're only really necessary wouldn't make individual people's lives much worse, it'd just change corporate decision-making. (Yes, there are disability/medical issues around some single-use plastics, but that's not most of it and could be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.) And of course my hobby-horse is walkable development.
7: Regulation could have made the containers paper boxes.
It may come as news to you, but those containers can actually be recycled. Or incinerated, to make fly ash for concrete. These problems are fixable by ublic policy, no-one need to wear hair shirts.
Welcome to our ublic. Notice there's no p in it. Please keep it that way.
I got takeout the other day, and I felt terrible about all the styrofoam containers. But I can't imagine trying to bring tupperware to the restaurant.
Pretty much everywhere here uses cardboard these days. Not that it's recyclable with food waste on it, but at least it biodegrades.
Also, framing the article around this guy seems like a bad choice, because he's a lunatic. Riding his bike home from chemo is not a sensible low-environmental footprint choice. If he wanted to call a bicycle rickshaw, sure, but doing it himself rather than taking a car for that purpose is not reasonable, and it kind of taints the whole article with "Anyone trying to take individual action is demented like this guy."
those containers can actually be recycled
I've been reading a lot of articles saying that plastic is recyclable in theory, but mostly not in practice, and most of what we put 'in the recycling' ends up in landfills.
ROC successfully recycles all their recyclable plastics? Excellent. Is there anything you could point me to describing how they solve the problems that seem intractable here?
New research points to another, more surprising disincentive for going green: the fear that others might question our sexual orientation.
https://psmag.com/environment/how-gender-stereotypes-affect-pro-environment-behavior
My little corner of science Twitter has been provoking me lately with expressions of concern about flying to conferences, up to the point where some people I consider generally reasonable are publicly swearing off going to any conferences they'd have to fly to, (which from London would include the biggest one in my field, in the US) and encouraging others to follow their example.
I don't WANT to stop going to conferences, I'm not taking a boat to America, and surely these smart sciencey people should be able to figure out that if every scientist in the world were grounded for a year it wouldn't be a drop in the bucket compared to, say, the first week of service for a fast rail line between Atlanta and Orlando, or practically any other policy-dependent intervention you can think of to reduce the need to fly/drive.
19: Forget all of it. We deserve to burn.
Does anybody have any thoughts on good, consumer-level carbon offset services?
Pizza comes to your house in a cardboard box delivered by somebody who gets paid without an app developer taking the largest cut. And cheap Chinese food comes in a paper box. Food delivery is easy.
"100 corporations cause" etc. is an outwardly compelling talking point until you realize that a lot of that is corporations selling consumer products to people that like those products - especially gas. Ending their excess power and profit is good, but we aren't going to get anywhere GHG-wise without significantly costlier gas and materials - and that is going to upend most people's lives.
Such an upending, if politically unlikely, is still the only plausible way we can get the climate in check, so I still think it behooves us to map it out. And the way to make it equitable is the carbon dividend. With a carbon tax, millions of people will have to move or change jobs, traveling to see family will be more expensive, everyone will probably pay more for meat and other current staples, but if that comes together with, say, a $25k/year minimum income for as long as carbon tax collections stay high, everyone will have the breathing space to accomplish that adjustment. (The Green New Deal job guarantee concept would work similarly, but its benefits would not be as widely dispersed.)
20: Relatedly, I can't feel guilty for flying in a plane to visit my mom in Israel. I've used up all my capacity for guilt on not visiting my mom for so many years.
I've only flown for professional reasons four times in my whole life.
And with the exception of meat, eggs, and dairy products, I eat a vegan diet.
Ethically speaking, fish is cheese and octopus is meat.
Until that point, I'm just going to reduce my beef consumption and bring reusable bags, and frankly do the smaller virtue signalling things, and call it a day. (And fight like hell to get Republicans out of office.)
Two David Roberts articles about the public policy side of the equation:
This one weird trick can help any state or city pass clean energy policy
There are many differences among these jurisdictions in size, ambition, and policy details, but one thing they all have in common is that Democrats have the power to pass policy despite Republican opposition. It's not that no Republicans voted for any of these measures -- there were R votes here and there, so some could charitably be called "bipartisan" -- but that Republicans were not in a position to block any of them.
How California became far more energy-efficient than the rest of the country
The answer traces back to the 1970s energy crisis, which hit the state particularly hard. During Gov. Ronald Reagan's tenure in the early '70s, the state legislature commissioned a study of how to deal with surging energy demand in the state without covering its coastline in large power plants. Among other things, that study produced the Warren-Alquist Act, which in turn created the California Energy Commission (CEC), empowered to create energy efficiency standards for equipment and buildings.
By 1978, the state had new standards on both. They were developed painstakingly, in consultation with engineers and experts, with a system that both codified current best practices and offered financial incentives to those who exceeded the standards (thus drawing new technologies into market, allowing standards to be tightened).
Best of all, the standards ratchet up automatically. In my interview with policy analyst Hal Harvey, he explained why that's so important:[California's building code] gets tighter every three years. It only took one law, in the 1970s, to make that happen. That bill, [which established] Title 24 [in the state building code], was signed when Jerry Brown was the youngest governor in California's history. He's now the oldest governor in California's history. In between, Republicans and Democrats alike saw the building code get stronger and stronger. It didn't require cashing in political capital, going back to the legislature, debating it -- it just happens."The standards have proven, by any possible measure, a triumph.
So, vote for Democrats and push for policies which build in a structure for continued improvement.
Using a vegetarian wedding as an excuse, I decided to finally take up vegetarianism a few months ago. Still eating fish on occasion, but trying to minimize it. So far, it hasn't been that hard, but I've been eating out far more than I was before. The recent improvements in meat replacements have helped.
23. Most paper used as food containers is not recyclable. Same with "recyclable" plastics, but in this case it's because people don't thoroughly wash them before recycling. (The nominal reason China stopped accepting recycled plastic from the US was that too much of it was contaminated with food residue and therefore too expensive to wash clean.)
Someone here linked a very interesting 35-adjacent article recently.
34: Thanks! I do remember reading about that. Although, looking back at your first comment:
These problems are fixable by public policy, no-one need to wear hair shirts.
The ROC policy that leads to very high levels of recycling includes requiring much more effort from consumers in terms of sorting/cleaning recyclables. That's probably necessary, but it's not behind-the-scenes painless, I think it'd feel like a hair shirt to Americans.
I think it'd feel like a hair shirt to Americans.
...
FWIW, Mossheimat is AFAICT very much like the US in its consumerist habits, and I don't find it onerous at all.
37
requiring much more effort from consumers in terms of sorting/cleaning recyclables.
Wasn't that the standard until 10-15 years ago, when "single-stream recycling", took off, a.k.a. "ship it all to China where companies are willing to say they recycle it but really don't", as per the article in 35 or one like it? I know that's what we did when I was a kid and I think my parents still do it. Is that just a Vermont thing?
Like maple syrup and human decency.
Washing your recyclables is not hard, for the most part. (Dunno if I'm up to Roc Island standards, though.) Just make sure to rinse anything that might congeal as soon as posisble.
40: It was, but many fewer people recycled at all. I'm not saying it's a bad idea -- I think that kind of recycling effort is probably necessary, and the mixed, uncleaned 'recycling' we've gotten used to was always kind of a scam. But it's a bunch of unfamiliar individual effort, the kind of thing the guy in the original post does. The public policy solution is fining people for not doing their individual recycling labor.
I really sound like I'm being negative about this, and I really don't mean to be, it's just coming out that way. Some part of the solution is going to have to be individual labor and discomfort. I don't think it'll be that bad, but it won't be nothing.
I've been working with my city's waste division, because I got appointed to a rate-setting commission. I am now thoroughly disenchanted with recycling.
Half of the recycling sent to China ends up in Chinese landfills. This was also true before the Chinese National Sword policy. If that is the fate, I don't see why it needs an ocean voyage first.
My sister works for Port of Oakland. She tells me:
Hawaiian recycling goes from Hawaii to Oakland.
In Oakland, it gets unloaded and every individual bale gets photographed and the picture sent to China for approval. If it does not appear clean enough, it gets reloaded and sent back to Oakland.
If it appears clean enough, it gets reloaded and sent on to China. In China, it is inspected again. If it is not clean enough, they ship it back to Oakland.
In Oakland, they have no idea what to do with it (Hawaii - Oakland - China - Oakland). The carrier unloads it onto Oakland's dock, but then it sits there. Hawaii won't take it back. The carrier isn't responsible for it. Port of Oakland isn't the owner of it. But it is accumulating there. That is what contemporary recycling is.
This is all fucking ridiculous. International recycling is a fucking joke. Intra-national recycling mostly only gets to zero waste if they do incineration.
A few, valuable commodities are worth recycling (glass bottles, metal cans, cleaned and separated 1's and 2's, clean cardboard). The remainder shouldn't exist. The majority of US household recycling is a pointless exercise to make people feel good. If your waste isn't cleaned, well-separated one of those things, it goes to the landfill EVEN IF you put it in the blue bin. EVEN IF they tell you that it is being recycled. (SF, you may be an exception, because of your Recology contract. But even they are accumulating mountains of stuff in hopes of a future use.)
Far as I can tell, the only answer is product stewardship, which is the fancy way of making corporations responsible for all their packaging.
Yeah, the City waste employees do think that going to mixed, single-stream recycling was a mistake. "We made it too easy for people" and now they don't think they can walk it back.
Sorry, should have been:
In Oakland, it gets unloaded and every individual bale gets photographed and the picture sent to China for approval. If it does not appear clean enough, it gets reloaded and sent back to Hawaii.
I realize this isn't the point at all, but Hawaii is closer to China than Oakland is. What's Oakland doing in the loop? They don't have cameras in Hawaii? (You probably don't know the answer, it's not going to be something that makes sense.)
It's possible that someone just gets off looking at pictures of trash.
I'm open to persuasion, but I don't see incineration per se as a problem. It doesn't require infinite land, it produces, as I say, fly ash, and done right it can apparently produce biochar, which sounds frankly like a miracle product. If overall pollution/carbon emissions aren't scaled back, it's a problem; but garbage is its own problem, not reducible solely to carbon.
45: The Hawaii-Portland leg I think is attributable to US shipping laws, designed to, but utterly ineffective at, preserving a US merchant marine.
If you have a dishwasher, at least, which I recognize not everyone does, it is just not effort at all to get your plastics clean (I hate effort! I would know!), which I do, and then realize it's hopeless because they're mixed with other people's who aren't doing that and don't seem to grasp that soft, crinkly plastics are not recyclable, etc.
Where I wish individual effort would be taken away from me is that I just wish carbon intensive products and experiences would be taxed appropriately (and that money redistributed). It wouldn't be trouble to eat less meat if it were expensive and were rolled into the constant calculation I do, along with the vast majority of people in the world, about how much things cost. *Making the decision* to not eat meat when it is cheap and ubiquitous is far harder, at least for me, than the experience of abstinence. It's one reason why, when I was vegan and annoying omnivores would get in my face about the extremity of it, I'd just say, it's a lot easier to have a bright line rule than trying to figure out what constitutes enough reduction. And if drinks sold in disposable plastic bottles got expensive enough, I'd start seeing them as a special occasion treat naturally.
Where I wish individual effort would be taken away from me is that I just wish carbon intensive products and experiences would be taxed appropriately (and that money redistributed). It wouldn't be trouble to eat less meat if it were expensive and were rolled into the constant calculation I do, along with the vast majority of people in the world, about how much things cost. *Making the decision* to not eat meat when it is cheap and ubiquitous is far harder, at least for me, than the experience of abstinence. It's one reason why, when I was vegan and annoying omnivores would get in my face about the extremity of it, I'd just say, it's a lot easier to have a bright line rule than trying to figure out what constitutes enough reduction. And if drinks sold in disposable plastic bottles got expensive enough, I'd start seeing them as a special occasion treat naturally.
Seconded.
I already wash and sort my plastic recyclables but I use things like zip-lock bags (or occasional bottled water) for which I don't want to have to do a moral calculation. I just want a price which reflects the environmental impact, so that I can use that to guide my decision making.
(You probably don't know the answer, it's not going to be something that makes sense.)
Right.
Product stewardship is also a way to price the costs of disposal (separate from carbon costs) into a purchase.
I think. Teo/DaveLHI will know. (No pressure.)
I don't think it's the Jones Act, which puts weird restrictions on intra-US shipping. This is sort of the opposite. My guess would be that it's just that international shipping routes are oriented around a high volume of shipping between China and California, whereas shipping to Hawaii is a marginal niche dominated by US shippers.
I was going to say 24, and 51.2, so, seconded.
One of the quixotic things about a carbon-tax-and-rebate is that it pits the free market against capitalism.
We bring our own containers to most restaurants (although not the candlelight and white tablecloth set - there we generally let them supply their own). In most cases, they are rewashed and reused containers from other restaurants - you can get quite a lot of uses out of each of those. We've gotten a lot of favorable comments from our servers, when we explain that we are just trying to reduce the number of containers they need to supply.
I'm open to persuasion, but I don't see incineration per se as a problem. It doesn't require infinite land, it produces, as I say, fly ash, and done right it can apparently produce biochar, which sounds frankly like a miracle product.
It can also produce energy, which is what the Scandinavians do. So it's true that the Swedes burn half their trash, but in the process they get a fair bit of their heat and electricity.
And, as Mossy says, biochar, which is the current straw I'm grasping at as having potential to actually draw down atmospheric carbon.
You can also get energy by burning landfill gas, so even landfilling isn't a complete waste. We have a very successful project like this at the landfill here.
I would never denigrate an individual trying to act on a collective action problem, but (just between us) it sort of misses the point unless you've got a program you can enlist other people to participate in. So recycling is good, even if its effects are limited. California taking action as an individual state is good even if California can't solve the problem.
Still, even though Warren Buffett thinks that rich people are under-taxed, it is totally beside the point to say, "Well, if he wants to pay more taxes, he can donate to the Treasury!" I won't criticize heebie (or myself) for not going all-in on individual action.
On the other hand, while it is also true that rolling coal doesn't do meaningful damage to the environment, it's a sure sign that you're an asshole. (Asshole-signaling is the opposite of virtue-signaling.)
60: Columbus was way ahead of the game, but somehow it didn't work out too well.
The last remnant of the former trash-burning power plant on the South Side, a financially disastrous venture for the city of Columbus, tumbled down yesterday morning in smoke and ash.
https://www.dispatch.com/article/20081019/NEWS/310199868
It's hard to imagine a worse messaging app but at least it won't end liberal democracy.
Mods, please change "end" to "tear apart." I don't want to sound like pessimist.
67: Much like Twitter, the most problematic users will be unbannable on account of being Republican politicians.
The internet needs to go back to unifying things, like girls shitting in cups.
It's this or watching Pearl Jam become classic rock.
Shipplng trash from Hawaii to Oakland to China is economically logical, and environmentally almost neutral, because Hawaii imports everything it has from the U.S., and exports pretty much nothing tangible (excepting a few coconuts, kona coffee, and such, but not much). Hawaii's balance of trade with the U.S. evens out because of tourism, and the torists don't want ot go home in containers. Similarly, the U.S. imports lots of stuff, and mostly exports stuff like graduate degrees, movies, and dollars (again, there are some ag products, but not much). So ships filled with empty containiers are always traveling from Hawaii to Oakland, and from Oakland to China. Throwing some trash into the empties doesn't have much economic or environmental cost. It may even be useful as ballast.
I'd guess that there isn't much direct trade between China and Hawaii because it takes a long time for Hawaii to use a container ship's worth of anyting. There is probably some garbage traveling directly, it's not just not within the knowledge of our source at the Port of Oakland.
73.1: I knew that in general, but I always forget how it comes into play specifically. That does make sense.
It's amazing to me that it still makes more sense to squeeze oil from rock layers thousands of feet under the arctic plain rather than from all the plastic we're throwing away. I guess they know what they're going.
We don't recycle glass here. People have tried various ways to do it, but nothing makes economic sense. People want to. It's just that no one wants the glass. One of the ways that was tried is Target would fill trucks deadheading to somewhere where they do recycle glass.
On the carbon front, watching a wildfire -- we have one right now just northeast of town -- dump a whole bunch of carbon in the air really deflates the sense that some act of individual virtue is going to amount to a hill of beans.
BUT THIS IS OUR HILL, AND THESE ARE OUR BEANS!
You are welcome. I hope we are all now product stewardship fans.
So recycling is good, even if its effects are limited.
Except recycling was a plot by the beverage industry to make it so they don't have to support deposit returnable bottles anymore. So actually, its bad.
I'm pretty sure the Jones Act is relevant here. The Jones Act bans large ships going from California to China from *stopping* in Hawaii and dropping off or picking up some containers. Instead it has to be sent on more expensive and infrequent ships going only between HI and CA.
The Jones act is some colonialist bullshit is what it is.
It's not unusual to be shipped by someone else.
81: I suppose, but I think unimaginative is right that it's mostly a matter of economic incentives. That is, it's unlikely that many ships going across the Pacific would stop in Hawaii even if they were allowed to.
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Is a mayonnaise and sugar on bread a thing? A counselor introduced it to Pokey at camp, but the internet doesn't seem to have heard of it.
It wasn't bad exactly, but it is still disturbing.
|>
And I don't want to know what Urban Dictionary thinks it is.
I spilled mayonnaise on the kitchen floor this morning while making my lunch. It's still a bit slippery.
Also, your camp counselor is clearly being paid by pharma to start kids on the road to diabetes.
When I was a kid, we used to sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on buttered toast.
I should probably clean that floor again.
When I was a kid, we used to sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on buttered toast.
Oh yeah, this. You'd let the butter melt just a little bit, and then coat with cinnamon, followed by a generous sprinkling of white sugar.
But sometimes you'd just have buttered toast, which you would then dip into syrup (corn syrup, mostly, but maple syrup was a real treat).
Also, we used to eat beans on toast for supper. Still one of my favourite comfort foods, ever.
Mayonnaise with sugar? I'm sorry, but no. That's some major category confusion right there.
That is, you put mayo on the toast and then the bean on that. Putting a dollop of mayo on top of the beans is strictly amateur.
Beans belong on buttered toast, with good Scottish or Canadian cheddar. I just don't even understand how mayo could even come into it.
3: That one seems misguided.
OK. Reading the comments and glancing at the article I now see that this story is in fact *not* an elaborate spoof playing off the Michael McKean character in The Good Place. But it almost could be (admittedly it was the unlikely location of Calgary that triggered that almost-a-thought).
Soylent Green Corporations is people!
Why isn't Calgary right where is always been?
33: I decided to finally take up vegetarianism a few months ago.
Absolutely trampling on the sanctity of off-blog communications I will simply note that this decision does not seem to preclude one from appreciatively savoring the aromas emanating from the BBQ food truck parked out front of a local brewery. Some of us did not get to free load in this manner and were instead forced to actually consume pulled pork and brisket to finance the olfactory pleasures of free-loaders.
I've eaten nothing from a truck at all, except the lobster rolls.
That is, it's unlikely that many ships going across the Pacific would stop in Hawaii even if they were allowed to.
I don't know... in a world without the Jones Act, one could plausibly see Pearl Harbor as an important transshipment hub.
I think 50 re: incineration/biochar gets to an interesting point, which how much of the carbon that is pulled out of the ground ends for the purpose of making plastic ends up in the plastic itself vs. used as energy or some part of the processing and thus CO2? If most of the carbon ends up in 5000-year biodegrable plastic, then isn't that sequestering the carbon pretty effectively?
I.E. trying to recycle plastic instead of just putting it in a landfill seems like a very 70/80s-ish boomer environmentalism, where "there's no more landfill space!" is the big issue, not "the planet is a dumpsterfire".
Compostable cardboard seems to work very well for carryout.
beans on toast are not as good as beans on a proper corn tortilla with lime and salt but it you don't have a good tortilla go for the toast. those super sweet navy beans should be avoided though, blergh, unless the apocalypse is nigh or brexit or something equally dire (e.g. corn tortillas in paris lo these many years ago, maybe they are better now - doubt it to be honest). excellent beans on toast can involve olive oil, red onion, anchovy, garlic, lemon and spinach leaves (see sunday night suppers, rosie sykes, follow that recipe and you are *set*, lovely book in gen.), or tahini & seared kim chee, or peanut butter & marmite with curry leaf podi. basically it is poss to live very very well on beans on toast.
surprised discussion re article in op hasn't gone into whether individual commitment to personally inconveniencing measures creates social effects spreading outwards and thereby pathways to bigger political asks, believe there is research to support this.
100: I'd guess a solid majority is atmospheric CO2 from the refineries and transport. I don't think the plastic sequestration point holds, because not all sequesters are equal: biochar can be dumped anywhere and actually make the soil more productive; plastic dumped anywhere gets in the way of/kills everything.
Landfill/dumpsterfire point is taken, but I think is mistaken. We aren't going to stop using plastics, they're too useful; plastics without recycling involves hugely energy- and carbon-intensive extraction and refining and produces intractable amounts of waste. Recycling the plastic can reduce those costs to manageable levels. That won't save the world, but it needs to be done anyway.
I really enjoy spanish style bean on toast. Sautee some garlic, smoked paprika, tomato paste, and spinach, mix in chickpeas, and on toast. Greek gigantes work well too.
I don't know... in a world without the Jones Act, one could plausibly see Pearl Harbor as an important transshipment hub.
Eh, I'm not seeing it. Modern container ships can cross the whole Pacific without stopping for fuel, and they're mostly going between China and the US with little need to send cargo anywhere else. It's not like the whaling era when Hawaii's location made it a key stop to take on supplies and labor. That said, the Jones Act is definitely a terrible law that causes all sorts of other problems and should be repealed.
Talking as usual from my ass, I'd think the potential is there, as SE Asia and Pacific Latin America grow.
Also I'll retract 103.1, seeing as plastics are solid and CO2 is gas. I stand by the overall points though.
I mean, it's certainly possible that the distances and costs are such that shipping from the US to SE Asia and from China to Latin America via Hawaii would pencil out in the absence of the Jones Act, but I'm skeptical.
I don't think Hawaii is on the great circle route from any major Asian port to Los Angeles or San Francisco. It's along the route to Australia and New Zealand, but I'd guess that trade is small.
106, 109: Technology dependent transport prominence, see also, Gander, Newfoundland.
I'm a bit surprised to see Anchorage is hanging in there in the air freight world. But I guess it extends the reach much further into SE Asia? Or maybe existing infrastructure makes it work as a Memphisian hub connecting US/Asia in general. Or a lot of air cargo still on planes without extreme flying ranges. or I could try to research it.
peanut butter and marmite
Together?
111: Fairly recent article here:
Some of the largest cargo planes have the range to fly non-stop from China to the US heartland without stopping. But more fuel means less cargo in their holds. With more cargo comes higher revenues and the need to refuel.
102: I'm pretty sure we're talking about the kind in cans with the red sauce.
112: Not only is this delicious, but the Marmite people make their own combo product and it is really good. I say this as an American who is generally bitchy about the quality of peanut butter available to me here in the UK.
102/104: Garbanzos and chard over toast also excellent.
https://www.cookinglight.com/recipes/stewed-chickpeas-chard-over-garlic-toast
Since lower effort things is the topic.
If I went vegan, I'd probably eat like 50% hummus with things on it and 50% things with cheese on it.
He grows some vegetables but laments that he could be growing more.
What a slacker. He should get cold frames.
I'm going to mix up some canned baked beans, tahini, lemon juice, and olive oil. I will call it British Hummus, in the fine tradition of "Yes, Minister."
Now I want some falafel, but I brought peanut butter and jelly.
If I went vegan, I'd probably eat like 50% hummus with things on it and 50% things with cheese on it.
Bad news, Moby! That wouldn't be vegan.
124: Substituting "vegetarian" for "vegan", that's not too far from my eating habits except it's more like 50% hummus, 25% peanut butter, and 25% cheese.
123: What a coincidence! I brought a peanut butter and jelly sandwich too.
Actually, it's not much of a coincidence at all - I bring a pb&j sandwich for lunch, just about every working day of my life.
124: It's not my fault they didn't trademark the term.
surprised discussion re article in op hasn't gone into whether individual commitment to personally inconveniencing measures creates social effects spreading outwards and thereby pathways to bigger political asks, believe there is research to support this.
That's an interesting question. I wonder whether an introverted eccentric like this guy is likely to create much of a social effect. Maybe when he gets written up in the newspaper?
||
belt fish, also known as largehead hairtailMmmmmmm.|>
I don't think *many* ships would stop there, but I do think a few would. It's hard to be sure since there's not many locations that are comparable (do container ships in the Indian Ocean ever detour to Perth?). When someone I know had stuff shipped from CA to Australia (via Shanghai) the ship to Shanghai also stopped in Korea.
Apparently, I make really bad peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
||NMM to Toni Morrison.|>
Sounds OK, but if you're opening a can anyway, why not use a can of chick peas, like Grandma used to?
132. Pity, but it's hard to complain about turning your toes up at 88.
Sula made my skin crawl. Made my hands feel dirty.
certainly possible that the distances and costs are such that shipping from the US to SE Asia and from China to Latin America via Hawaii would pencil out in the absence of the Jones Act
Interesting that this is precisely the direction in which trade shifts are moving right now, as the US hits up SE Asia for cheaper manufactured goods in light of the trade war, at the same time China is working hard to develop markets/extract resources in Latin America.
That China/Latin America shipping is probably mostly cargo and not container? But US SE Asia would be container.
I believe there are also transhipment ports for bulk commodities like iron ore.
Sorry, I thought we were still talking about recycling.
96: Guilty as charged. Delicious smells are an unavoidable public good. No ethical consumption under meatocracy, or something.
I don't think I could go full vegan. Cheese is just so good, and fills up a meal well.
Would you like to join Reform Vegan? You're allowed cheese and female rabbis.
Ok, HI great circles actually mapped. At first look it's competitive on every route from Asia to Latin America. It's right on the great circle for a handful of routes, only ~10% longer on the rest; and a lot of the theoretical great circle routes are physically impossible anyway.
So is it resolved that we should revoke the Jones Act is support of establishing Hawaii as an Asia/Latin America transshipment hub?
Can you click on lines to get the distances? I think maybe you have to be signed into Google.
You can also just use Google Maps' measuring tool. (Right click in regular Google Maps to activate, doesn't seem to work in the My Maps mode MC used). It measures shortest distance between two points, you can string multiple points together to get a piecewise distance, and close the polygon to get an area. Shortest distance between two points follows the great circle.
I never would have guessed that the shortest distance from the southern Philippines to central Chile goes through the Cook Strait.
147: Yes. I drew the thing so I could see all the distances listed together. Annoying that isn't shareable.
This map drawn from shipping logs since 1945 has some relevance. Shows the Panama Canal to Asia routes going to/by Hawaii. Wonder if there has been much change in more recent years.
Oh neat, a thread to which Hawaii is actually relevant, and I've missed most of it. I started a comment yesterday but never finished, and now it's all been said. Except that the whole west coast of South America for which Hawaii might theoretically be a sensible waypoint from Asia probably consumes less Asian-made goods than Los Angeles County. And we don't have any direct flights to South America to connect with all the flights to Asia, so that opportunity must not look especially appealing. Basically these are small islands a long way from anywhere, and it's hard to see how a 21st-century lifestyle can ever be anything but wildly unsustainable here.
When Singapore got started I bet the whole of Asia bought less consumer goods than LA County.
Back on the OP, and the whole discussion around flights: people talk about flying in really starts terms, e.g. "air travel produces by far the largest amount of GHG emissions per passenger kilometer of any form of transportation." But according to that same website, the ratio between driving and flying is 1:4.25.
So when people describe reducing flying as an extraordinarily effective way for individuals to reduce their emissions, they're basically pretending that significant reductions in driving are simply unavailable, and that's stupid.
Now, if you're jet-setting around, it really is a completely different scale from driving. But in a couple weeks, Kai is flying to Boulder to spend a week with my sister, a trip that has a GHG equivalency of 11,000 driving miles. That's a lot of miles! But the baseline assumption for a family like mine in America is 23,000 miles/year, and our IRL tally is just over 8,000 (very consistent over the life of the car we just replaced after 15 years). And there's really no hair shirt to our lifestyle: we live in a walkable neighborhood and prefer bus/bike to driving, but nobody's biking to chemo.
Now, it's jarring that a single round trip wipes out 75% of a year's benefit from our car-light lifestyle, but the benefits of that lifestyle accrue every year, while eliminating our flights to CO save GHGs... twice in the last 10 years. Point being, moving to walkable places* saves more than skipping any given flight, and for most people the benefits add up much more steadily.
*and yes, there aren't as many walkable places as there should be, NIMBYs are evil, etc. But the reality is that Americans choose suburbs for reasons other than housing costs, and it bugs the shit out of me that YIMBYs pretend that people buying $450k houses in White Haven are only doing it because they're priced out of the 25 major cities that aren't NY, SF, Bos, DC, and Seattle.
I will say that, in terms of family vacations, flying is an absolute killer: family of 4 uses 3.4 kg/km to fly, but perhaps 0.25 kg/km to drive. I could drive to LA and back for the GHG cost of a round trip to DC.
Not competitive on the Bering routes, except maybe for South America. And on would have to compare the Panama option there.