Poll of the Day > Looking at carbon footprints, re: food and transportation

(+) Yeah! (+)

First glance suggests the average American drives 16 miles to and from work each weekday, and this is roughly equivalent to the carbon footprint of eating 32 pounds of chicken every day (1 average mile driven is approx equivalent to 1 pound of chicken).

I've already eliminated beef so comparing to chicken is most appropriate for me as it's the most carbon intensive thing I eat.

Say someone drives 16 miles to/from work each weekday, and eats a pound of chicken every day (a large 8oz breast at lunch and again at dinner). Looking at food plus transportation, that's 32 carbon units from driving and 7 units from chicken. Eliminating the daily commute would have five times the benefit of eliminating chicken, in terms of carbon footprint.

I am doing a lot of plant based dinners but thinking through this has made me feel less guilty about occasionally having meat. I'm living locally and walking to/from work, taking advantage of public transportation for medium distances, and lastly driving (husband and I share a single vehicle and our local driving is fully electric).

This comparison highlights the importance of residing somewhere you can live, work, shop, etc. with as little driving as possible.

Imagine the people who drive 30 miles each way in an inefficient SUV or truck!

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I used to drive over 60 miles total every day because of work .__.

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The furthest commute I've ever had was 8 miles

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I usually walk to work. Lucky me.

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Ask anyone with a long commute and they'll pretty much all tell you they want to live where they want to live, not to be tied down by being close to work. When I rented I used to make a point to live near work, but I wonder if that was good for my long-term happiness and financial stability. I always wanted to find my "perfect" job first, hoping it was in an ideal location, and then buy a house near it. Eventually I gave up on that cause I found myself in a good spot to buy and everything went remote with the pandemic. Uh I made that a bit too about myself, anyways the point here is that it's not always easy to get a job near where you live if you want to stake out a more permanent place.

You're not really wrong but like all this stuff we're pretty much fucked already. The time to move out of the boonies and into the city was 50, 100 years ago. Now we're rife with inefficiency but if we were to have millions of homes getting abandoned so people could live in more convenient and concentrated areas (where new homes would need to be built), that's not really a solution either. It makes more sense to push for people to eat more plant-based diets since cultural obstacles aside, that's a relatively simple and low-risk behavior change compared restructuring your home, work, transportation, etc.

I have a lava lamp that I use most days

so Im probably not doing great tbh

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You need a planet based car

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I don't want to live in a world where little moralists go around with their rulers like church ladies and tell each other how to properly live. I swear to the God they don't believe in, secular humanists will find a way to become the religious clergy they replace.

It's like you gotta be apart of their collective hivemind of correct political thought these days or else yer tha devil! Only... they don't believe so it's the pretend devil or.. Nazi is a popular one.

I really just want to be left the fuck alone. I dont want to stand in some check line where the statists interrogate me for wrong think and place an armband on me or lower my social credit score like some fascist utopia. I just want to be left the fuck alone. I don't want to live in zero-privacy pods and get all "social" and compare how morally moral I with the new trendy politics. I want to be left the fuck alone.

"Well, this is our new world! Everybody pariticipates! If you're not for us you're against us!"

So be it, dude. Just kill me and get it over with.

Anyways, when it comes to politics, that's what I think. I don't want to join any cult. Religious or secular.

Not to come off all sideways. You just gotta understand. Where I live, people are 180 the opposite and it looks like you guys are going to start a war with each other. Bro, I just wanna go to the movies with my girlfriend and go hiking sometimes. I don't wanna fight a war.

Straughan posted...

I don't want to live in a world where little moralists go around with their rulers like church ladies and tell each other how to properly live. I swear to the God they don't believe in, secular humanists will find a way to become the religious clergy they replace.

It's like you gotta be apart of their collective hivemind of correct political thought these days or else yer tha devil! Only... they don't believe so it's the pretend devil or.. Nazi is a popular one.

I really just want to be left the fuck alone. I dont want to stand in some check line where the statists interrogate me for wrong think and place an armband on me or lower my social credit score like some fascist utopia. I just want to be left the fuck alone. I don't want to live in zero-privacy pods and get all "social" and compare how morally moral I with the new trendy politics. I want to be left the fuck alone.

"Well, this is our new world! Everybody pariticipates! If you're not for us you're against us!"

So be it, dude. Just kill me and get it over with.

Anyways, when it comes to politics, that's what I think. I don't want to join any cult. Religious or secular.

Not to come off all sideways. You just gotta understand. Where I live, people are 180 the opposite and it looks like you guys are going to start a war with each other. Bro, I just wanna go to the movies with my girlfriend and go hiking sometimes. I don't wanna fight a war.

I think youre having a massive overreaction
to this topic

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It's a reaction to all the politics on this board that I finally responded to. I see it pop up a lot. I felt like venting.

Besides, all politics does is divide people. It's all fighting. I don't like to fight. I just like to get along with people. They never used to be a problem years ago. Our family used to live next to two lesbians with two little girls and we were completely opposites, yet we got along great.

Nowadays, if you even breath the wrong opinion, you're the devil and people remember you and hate you. It's almost like the only answer is to avoid it. If you want to be friends with everyone.

Straughan posted...

It's a reaction to all the politics on this board that I finally responded to. I see it pop up a lot. I felt like venting.

it isnt a political issue

if you think it is, youve been bamboozled

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It's just a reminder for me not to say anything and avoid politics here. Even being unaffiliated and venting marks me as an undesirable. I swear, years ago, I used to be the sane type. I'm honestly beginning to think I happened through a portal somewhere by accident a few years ago and went into a new dimension where everyone hates each other.

I use to drive like 1-2 hours commute every weekday when I was younger for one of my jobs. And still had a second one to go to later (And I knew some people who would drive to New York from out of state everyday)... My daily commute is shorter these days, though I did drive like 300 miles today. Maybe a little more. And had some sort of chicken sandwich for first dinner...
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Straughan posted...

Even being unaffiliated and venting marks me as an undesirable.

Id again say that I think youre overreacting if you cant tolerate simple disagreements over a non-political issue

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Getting massive Whiskey vibes from this mysterious new account from July

Straughan posted...

Nowadays, if you even breath the wrong opinion, you're the devil and people remember you and hate you. It's almost like the only answer is to avoid it. If you want to be friends with everyone.

That's generally only true if by "wrong opinion," you mean "gay people don't count as humans," or similar sentiments. And, really, that's fair, because that is a horrible opinion to hold and nobody that holds such beliefs can ever remotely be considered a good person.

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Even if I was still driving, I'd continue to walk to work most days, which is a mile away. I already miss the time last year when barely anyone was on the road, and the air looked and smelled cleaner.

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adjl posted...

That's generally only true if by "wrong opinion," you mean "gay people don't count as humans," or similar sentiments. And, really, that's fair, because that is a horrible opinion to hold and nobody that holds such beliefs can ever remotely be considered a good person.

That sounds rational, but I've been a bit bewildered in the last few years in contrast of my past reality. What you say is true, but it sure as hell seems like there are a lot more extremists out there and fewer neutrals.

To elaborate on your example, that was never hard for me. I had loved from when I was young so the idea of someone telling me I wasn't allowed to love someone I did seemed insane. I cannot imagine how that must feel to those that were ever told that.

Straughan posted...

That sounds rational, but I've been a bit bewildered in the last few years in contrast of my past reality. What you say is true, but it sure as hell seems like there are a lot more extremists out there and fewer neutrals.

To elaborate on your example, that was never hard for me. I had loved from when I was young so the idea of someone telling me I wasn't allowed to love someone I did seemed insane. I cannot imagine how that must feel to those that were ever told that.

part of it is a matter of perception

Im sure as hell not being as responsible about my impact on the environment as some other people are, but its always good to strive to be better about that kind of thing and just be mindful of it

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Mead, I wasn't referring to the issue Clench was mentioning specifically, merely the topic and associating it with the way people around here talk and in trucking. You must imagine what I heard on a weekly basis.

Where you guys live, it might be post-political, but I can see now that "perception" indeed is a large area of a breakdown in communication here.

You'll just have to trust me that all these people I'm talking about aren't bad people. But I get the feeling, you guys would think they are. I only knew how to identify the sides of the argument by being exposed to both of you.

And besides, that makes sense, doesn't it. If indeed two rational parties are diametrically opposite on certain issues then it would follow that they come from very different places. Much like different cultures we are taught to respect.

Anywho, long story short. You were right. It was an overreaction, but I never disagreed or wasn't intolerant of the idea of the disagreement. I just have lived through the past 5 years and am tired of my relatives and my friends fighting over shit we never used to fight over. It has really been toxic to a lot of social spaces. And I avoid toxicity like the plague. But I'll be honest with you. I cannot figure out how to relate to many of you on some levels and it feels like I have to censor myself to even talk. But hey, that's only true here. I just don't have other people to talk games with. And I've been gaming lately.

Straughan posted...

You'll just have to trust me that all these people I'm talking about aren't bad people. But I get the feeling, you guys would think they are.

Its never a good idea to try to assume you know how other people think. That works both ways. Someone can be better about some things without having ever been a bad person, I think its good for everybody to just evaluate themselves sometimes and try to be better about how they live and how it affects others.

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Carbon footprint is kind of a farce. Big business is the one that's doing the major polluting. That being said, individuals doing what they can is also nice. Work from home should be bigger than it is and unfortunately, shit stains are trying to force people back into the office, so they can micro manage them.

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CoorsLight posted...

Getting massive Whiskey vibes from this mysterious new account from July

same

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We really need more public transportation. There's no excuse for the dearth of it.

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less than a 2 mile commute round trip for work
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I have no idea what precipitated the events in this topic

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dragon504 posted...

Carbon footprint is kind of a farce. Big business is the one that's doing the major polluting. That being said, individuals doing what they can is also nice. Work from home should be bigger than it is and unfortunately, shit stains are trying to force people back into the office, so they can micro manage them.

This'll shock you, but businesses exist to meet the needs of the consumer, so your carbon footprint includes what your needs make big businesses have to produce to meet that.
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CoorsLight posted...

Ask anyone with a long commute and they'll pretty much all tell you they want to live where they want to live, not to be tied down by being close to work. When I rented I used to make a point to live near work, but I wonder if that was good for my long-term happiness and financial stability. I always wanted to find my "perfect" job first, hoping it was in an ideal location, and then buy a house near it. Eventually I gave up on that cause I found myself in a good spot to buy and everything went remote with the pandemic. Uh I made that a bit too about myself, anyways the point here is that it's not always easy to get a job near where you live if you want to stake out a more permanent place.

You're not really wrong but like all this stuff we're pretty much fucked already. The time to move out of the boonies and into the city was 50, 100 years ago. Now we're rife with inefficiency but if we were to have millions of homes getting abandoned so people could live in more convenient and concentrated areas (where new homes would need to be built), that's not really a solution either. It makes more sense to push for people to eat more plant-based diets since cultural obstacles aside, that's a relatively simple and low-risk behavior change compared restructuring your home, work, transportation, etc.

Personally, my ideal job would be one close to home. I hate commuting. Hate it. Longest Ive had to commute was like a 45-ish minute drive one way or so and even that was too much for me. I now only have to drive a little under 25 minutes one way and even then Id like something a little shorter.

Of course, I wouldnt mind a longer commute IF the work day was shorter, but working eight or eight and a half hours and then driving almost two hours on top of that? F***. that.

And yes I know there are people out there who have longer commutes and work longer days. They might be ok with that Im not.

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Kyuubi4269 posted...

This'll shock you, but businesses exist to meet the needs of the consumer, so your carbon footprint includes what your needs make big businesses have to produce to meet that.

I hate to agree with Kyuubi, but yeah, pretty much.

Also a similar argument to this that I often see is "Most of it is China!" Yeah, because a bunch of greedy companies that are owned here weren't happy enough with our already pathetic labor laws and outsourced the carbon-heavy parts of their production.

I have no choice but to drive. Theres no public transportation here. Just to go to a non-expensive store like Safeway is about 20 miles or so. I really think these stupid wildfires are worse for Californias (and the states east of us) air than my little pickup.

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Whats the comparison to beef since I almost exclusively eat that. But my truck has the double tires on the back so it probably rolls a little more efficiently. Nvm I'll just round it down to chicken anyway.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

This'll shock you, but businesses exist to meet the needs of the consumer, so your carbon footprint includes what your needs make big businesses have to produce to meet that.

Indeed. There's still room to push for more stringent regulations on businesses, since in many cases consumers don't have more environmentally friendly alternatives to choose, but you should still make some effort to research the products and services you consume and try to make more environmentally conscious decisions around them (which may boil down to "consume less").

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Fierce_Deity_08 posted...

I have no choice but to drive. Theres no public transportation here. Just to go to a non-expensive store like Safeway is about 20 miles or so. I really think these stupid wildfires are worse for Californias (and the states east of us) air than my little pickup.

And it's just entirely coincidental that there are constantly more/severe wildfires in western states

dedbus posted...

Whats the comparison to beef since I almost exclusively eat that. But my truck has the double tires on the back so it probably rolls a little more efficiently. Nvm I'll just round it down to chicken anyway.

Beef is like 4-8x worse, pound for pound

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CoorsLight posted...

And it's just entirely coincidental that there are constantly more/severe wildfires in western states

A lot of them were caused by our incompetent power company, but you do you.

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Fierce_Deity_08 posted...

A lot of them were caused by our incompetent power company, but you do you.

some were triggered by that, but the fires likely would have happened either way due to droughts, lack of wildlife to eat away brush, and increased carbon that trees are pulling from the air

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I mean you aren't really gonna find me simping for power companies lol