Carbon Dioxide Removal Technology

Yesterday I sat in on a panel discussion on the ethical permissibility of carbon dioxide removal. While we clearly need to reduce CO2 emissions, many climate scientists also argue that stopping climate change will require removing existing CO2 from the atmosphere and binding it. This is known as carbon dioxide removal. The last IPCC report …

Ask Edgar

Today while following up on some sources for a paper, I stumbled across EGDGAR-Food. It is part of the European Union’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research and is an incredibly comprehensive collection of information on greenhouse gas emissions along the entire food production chain – from field to fork. EDGAR-Food compiles and aggregates a …

Twenty-seven terawatt hours

The Austrian federal government is finally getting off its keister, albeit slowly, and starting to do something about climate change. A carbon tax will go into effect in July 2022. It is set too low, and the reimbursements designed to gain public acceptance are counterproductive and overly bureaucratic. But hey, it’s a start. We will …

Pumpkin Seed Oil

Astrid and I live modestly. We don’t own an automobile or a television. Our small apartment is warmed with thermal heating and powered by renewable electricity. We buy most of our food from the local farmers’ market. Our bicycles are our primary means of transportation. We strive to maintain a minimal ecological footprint and enjoy …

Flight shame reloaded

One of my earliest posts back in October 2019 was about flight shame. I wrote it in the international departures terminal of Frankfurt Airport waiting for a flight to the United States. My return flight a week later was my last time on a plane. As data from Eurocontrol shows, in 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic …

Cathedrals or climate?

Two years tomorrow ago, a fire broke out in Notre-Dame de Paris causing the spire to collapse and severely damaging the UNESCO world heritage site. At the time, class conflict in France was playing out in violent street demonstrations as the gilets jaunes movement protested Emmanuel Macron’s economic reform policies. The destruction of Notre-Dame demonstrated …

Plastics reloaded

Last October I posted about excessive plastic food packaging. Today I am revisiting the topic based on a recent article in my daily newspaper, Die Presse. Citing a study conducted by the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), they reported that less packaging does not always have a better climate balance. The …

Responsibility reloaded

Two posts ago I examined how stopping profligate bread waste could reduce C02 emissions. Earlier in a comment to my post on climate change responsibility, Jordan had astutely noted that while consumers bear some responsibility in reducing emissions major corporations should also be held accountable. Today I will explore how assigning responsibility to both consumers …

Our daily bread and GHG emissions

As examined in recent posts, one reason that people lack motivation in addressing climate change is that they have difficulty in conceptualizing how their actions can affect amorphous global problems. Wearing your clothes longer or driving less doesn’t result in a discernible reduction in GHG emissions. We need help in quantifying how our individual actions …

Climate change and FMGCs

Following up on my last post, today I want to examine the importance of narratives in getting people – especially Europeans since I’m Austrian – involved in climate change activism. First, it is important to note that current inaction is not because people reject climate science. Europeans overwhelmingly agree that “the climate is probably or …