{"id":3184,"date":"2014-12-27T11:04:01","date_gmt":"2014-12-27T16:04:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=3184"},"modified":"2015-05-25T08:48:55","modified_gmt":"2015-05-25T13:48:55","slug":"protecting-our-symbols-or-the-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/protecting-our-symbols-or-the-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Are we protecting our symbols? or protecting the earth?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warm greetings, real math.<\/em><\/p>\n

________________<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We publicize the “special places” that are threatened, and people respond, yes.\u00a0\u00a0 But we have to face that after 100 years of doing that, the environmental movement that our conservation groups and actions have been at the center of, has protected lots and lots of **special places** but is still not protecting the **ordinary places**.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Protecting\u00a0thousands of special places, the ordinary places left unprotected<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The effect of our organizing has been as if we didn’t know the ordinary places were just as threatened as the special ones, by the same visible and ever expanding encroachment from our economy.\u00a0 Don’t we need to get that straight?\u00a0\u00a0 Don\u2019t we need to be much more direct in saying that the threats to the special places (that get everyone’s attention) also symbolize the threat to the earth as a whole?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Places like Tucson we haven’t protected<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If we do that it could materially change the common goal, recognition that really save the earth we need to **remove the threat**, not just **protect the things that symbolize the threat**.\u00a0\u00a0 Isn’t that a change in view we need to bring about?<\/p>\n

You can see the dramatic difference in how you\u2019d then calculate your CO2 footprint… adding to what we normally count the CO2 produced in delivering *our normal goods and services* too, whether it\u2019s spending on rent or dinner.\u00a0 The money we spend all ends up being very widely spread around to pay for doing millions of other things, and ends up as being responsible for close to an average share of all the services that generate GDP.\u00a0\u00a0 The world average for $1 of goods or services is about 2.4 kWh of energy and .46 kgCO2, a much larger part of one\u2019s global footprint than the direct energy consumption that any available footprint calculator is designed to report.\u00a0\u00a0 To get the real picture we should combine them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Average World Energy & CO2 footprints for a $15 share of GDP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To combine your directly energy use footprint with your economic energy footprint and convert to total CO2 I generally just use \u00a090% of the average economic footprint.\u00a0 That reduces the proxy measure to avoid double-counting.\u00a0 The 90% the amount that research suggests won\u2019t be directly counted because it\u2019s so widely distributed to be untraceable.\u00a0 Then you can combine the directly traced and distributed economic impacts, for the best estimate of the true total.<\/p>\n

The result still has some uncertainty, but is much more accurate on the whole.\u00a0\u00a0 The average rates also decline for improving world efficiency over time, but quite slowly. \u00a0\u00a0The above averages are for 2006.\u00a0\u00a0 The world\u2019s economic efficiency improvement hardly shows the big efficiency gains you hear advertised, being outweighed by all the things already working at maximum efficiency.\u00a0 The resulting average rates steadily decline, but only by ~ 1.3%\/yr or a total of \u00a0~5.6% from 2006 to 2014.\u00a0 One\u2019s uncertainty for other calculation errors may add another 10% or more.\u00a0 \u00a0So I just use the 2006 figures as just approximations, only going to the trouble of update them for new research when really needed.\u00a0 The end the result doesn\u2019t really change.\u00a0 It\u2019s still that your total footprint probably goes up by 400% or more, since 90% of the energy consumption you directly cause by paying for is so widely distributed it doesn\u2019t get counted.<\/p>\n

If you convert to English units, the average economic energy impact of consumption is around 8000 btu and 1 lb CO2 per $1.\u00a0 What that means is illustrated by the impact of a $10 glass of wine.\u00a0 There\u2019s the nice 6 oz fermented drink for you, add 10 lbs of warming CO2 for the earth.\u00a0 \u00a0Since ALL your spending has a similar scale of impact… the question stops being what to spend on.\u00a0\u00a0 It becomes how to \u201cdo more good\u201d with the impacts of your spending, to have a growing counter-effect sufficient to change the global system producing the global warming, some \u201cvery new math\u201d.<\/p>\n

That seems to be the question that people need to ask to \u201cgo beyond consumption\u201d in causing change, and make their plan to spend for impact on what matters to them the most.<\/p>\n

_______________<\/p>\n

ref’s<\/p>\n

How full is a \u201cGlass Half Hidden\u201d?<\/a><\/p>\n

Easy Intro, \u201cscope 4\u2033 use & interpretation<\/a><\/p>\n

A World SDG \u2013 global accounting of responsibilities for economic impacts<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Warm greetings, real math. ________________   We publicize the “special places” that are threatened, and people respond, yes.\u00a0\u00a0 But we have to face that after 100 years of doing that, the environmental movement that our conservation groups and actions have been at the center of, has protected lots and lots of **special places** but is … Continue reading Are we protecting our symbols? or protecting the earth?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11,15,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy","category-research","category-trans","category-whattodo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3184"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3264,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3184\/revisions\/3264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}