The UN is gathering worldwide opinions on what matters to us, the planet's citizens. The survey, called MY World, "aims to capture people's voices, priorities and views, so that global leaders can be informed as they begin the process of defining the new development agenda for the world." The survey, which takes a few minutes to complete, allows you to choose six out of sixteen major priorities; once you're completed the survey you can see the current results displayed in a very nice interactive graphic that breaks down the responses according to gender, age, and HDI. A country's Human Development Index or HDI is a"summary index" that indicates the levels of health, education and income in that country. Interim Results The results of the survey so far have a few trends that I find very interesting. It's still early days so the current results may be different from the final tally, but over half a million votes have been recorded, so the statistics are reasonable. First of all, there is a broad concensus about the top three priorities: "A good education", "Better healthcare", and "An honest and responsive government". Beyond the first three, priorities vary, as you would expect for the diverse worldwide collection of people. The priority put on "Equality between men and women", and "Freedom from discrimination and persecution", is higher in countries with higher HDI. Perhaps these things are are luxury items: something you worry about once the more basic needs are met. In low-HDI countries other things have higher priority, such as "Access to clean water", "Better job opportunities", and perhaps related to the latter, "Better transport and roads". Better transport and roads comes in at #6 of 16 for low-HDI countries, #10 for medium-HDI, #12 for high-HDI and #16 for countries with very high HDI. This just says that rich countries already have good infrastructure, while poor countries do not. Here is a cognitive disconnect: Globally, "Access to clean water and sanitation" ranks as #5 of 16, "Affordable and nutritious food" as #6, and "Protecting forests, rivers and oceans" as #9. All very worthy priorities, no? Then why is it that "Action taken on climate change" takes the back seat across the board, coming in at #16 of 16 globally? I mean, after "Phone and internet access"? Climate change acidifies oceans, dries up forests, and melts glaciers that feed rivers. Sea level rise would inundate large river deltas where a lot of the world's food is grown, and that are home to millions of people. Generally, climate change has dire consequences on agriculture. On top of that, between reduced flow in rivers, and the systematic depletion of aquifers (more irrigation is necessary as droughts become more severe), we're headed for a global water crisis. It is especially among respondents from low-HDI countries that climate change has the lowest priority (#16). But it's still only at #10 for high-HDI countries, and at #6 for very high HDI countries (#8 for the US). Even though it is citizens of low-HDI countries who are most at risk from the consequences of climate change. This may reflect a difference in time horizon: it's easier to think decades or a century ahead if you are secure in the knowledge that your food and water needs for today are met. For all of us on this planet, a stable climate should be the highest long-term priority; without that, most of the other priorities would be much harder to reach, certainly for our children. Somehow, we haven't put two and two together on that. It seems that all of us are right to put such a high priority on "A good education". Shared at Small Footprint Fridays and Simply Natural Saturdays. You may also like: 1. Climate Justice and Our Shopping Choices 2. Slash your carbon footprint
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A while ago, I looked into the carbon footprint of manufacturing a car, and found the GREET model (short for "Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation"), a lifecycle analysis developed by a team at Argonne National Lab. Photo Wouter HagensThat lifecycle model is process based, that is, they look at all the components of a car and ask how much energy it takes to make the steel frame (counted all the way back to the energy required to mine the iron and/or recycle the steel from scrapped cars), the glass windows, the plastic parts, the aluminum engine, the various fluids (except the gasoline) the electrical wiring with insulation - the works. This estimate is a huge undertaking. For a "vanilla" car weighing 3330 lbs (think a Honda Accord sedan), they arrive at 8.5 tonnes CO2 for the Vehicle-cycle Energy. That's 8500 kg or about 18,800 lbs of carbon dioxide (or CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas). Driving this vanilla car for 160,000 miles at an efficiency of 24.8mpg (both typical numbers for cars in the US) emits 68.4 tonnes CO2 from burning the gasoline. That's a "well-to-wheel" number, and includes the energy required to pump the oil out of the ground, refine it, and transport it to your local gas station. So in its lifetime this vanilla car causes 76.9 tonnes of CO2 emissions, of which 8.5 tonnes, or 11%, accounts for its manufacture. So much for the argument to drive your old gas guzzler until it falls apart. But wait: I have seen other numbers. And those numbers, quoted often by European writers, suggest that building the car causes up to half of its total lifetime carbon emissions. Half is a lot more than 11%. Half suggests that the planet is better off if you did keep your old guzzler until it falls apart. Okay, European cars are more fuel efficient, on average, than American cars - but surely not enough to account for that large a difference. I was puzzling over the discrepancy until recently I read Mike Berners-Lee's book, "How bad are bananas? - The carbon footprint of everything". It's a cool book, very readable, and covers everything, from sending a text message (0.014g CO2-e), an ice cream from an ice cream truck (500g CO2-e), to a computer (200-800 kg CO2-e), to the whole world (50 billion tonnes per year, and rising). Very useful for setting out to slash your personal carbon footprint. One of the items in the book is the carbon footprint of making a car, and indeed in rare cases that can be half of its total lifetime footprint. If you don't want to read the book you'd be missing a bunch of interesting stuff, but you can still read a re-cap of the automotive bit in this Guardian article. Berners-Lee argues that doing a lifecycle analysis by looking at the underlying processes tends to underestimate the total carbon footprint, simply because it is too easy to overlook some contribution, no matter how painstakingly you go about the analysis - and obviously, the GREET model is nothing if not painstaking. Instead of building the total carbon count up from every nut and bolt that goes into the car, Berners-Lee takes the macro, top-down, approach and asks, how much energy does it take to produce a dollar's worth of car? This is known as an input-output analysis of the carbon intensity of a manufacturing process. Such an analysis makes for easier estimates (well: a bit easier). I don't understand the underlying economic math, but I imagine the estimate includes such things as the electricity needed to drive the conveyor belts at the assembly line, the pencils (OK, and computers) used by the development engineers, the power for the elevator carrying autoworkers to the cafeteria, the marketing, the private jets used by the executives as they go to London / Washington / wherever to lobby the government on behalf of the auto industry, and everything else that makes the auto industry go. Coming at it from this angle, Berners-Lee arrives at an estimate of 720 kg CO2-e per £1000 worth of car. See, Berners-Lee is a Brit, so he measures carbon emissions in kilograms, and money in pound sterling. I am actually not being flippant: his estimates are derived from data of the UK's Office of National Statistics. In the American edition of his book he translates a car's carbon intensity into "450 kg CO2 for every $1000 of the price of a new car", by doing a straightforward conversion of the pound sterling to the dollar. But this translation is dicey because the OTR (on-the-road) price of cars in the UK is about 50-60% higher than in the US, once you add various sales and vehicle taxes. More on that below. Following this recipe, Berners-Lee considers, among other cars, a Land Rover SUV: the high-end Discovery SDV6 3.0L. The UK price is £57,750 (at today's rate US$90,950), implying a footprint of 41.6 tonnes CO2. ( In America, this SUV is known as the LR4 and costs at most $59,220 even with a 5.0L V8 engine; see what I mean about the pricing?). Driving it for 100,000 miles at 23 mpg causes emissions of 46.6 tonnes CO2. Assuming you scrap it after that, then yes, the manufacturing accounts for 43%, nearly half, of its total lifetime carbon footprint. But how many cars get scrapped after only 100,000 these days? The US lifetime average is about 160,000 miles. Even in Europe it's 130,000 miles, and nearly twice that for diesel cars. So let's look at a more typical vehicle. As a concrete example, consider the six-seater Mazda 5, with kerb weight 3417 lbs (very close to GREET's "vanilla" car of 3330 lbs), and fuel efficiency 26 mpg. Under the GREET model, there would be 8.5 tonnes CO2 in its making. Its MSRP in the US is $19,600. At current exchange rates, that is approximately its price in pound sterling; according to Berners-Lee's analysis its manufacture would cause 0.720 * 19,600 = 14.1 tonnes CO2. In other words, 1.7 times the GREET estimate. That sounds like a big difference, but that's just the reliability of these very difficult estimates. Driving this car for its US average lifetime of 160,000 miles would cause total lifecycle emissions of 80.3 tonnes CO2, of which 18% attributable to its manufacture, according to Berners-Lee's input-output analysis. Remember in the GREET process-based analysis, manufacture is 11% of total emissions. For my own purposes, I'm going to treat this spread as an error bar, albeit a large one, in the estimated carbon emissions to build a car: building a Mazda 5 causes as least 8.5 tonnes CO2 emissions, and as much as 14.1 tonnes. My personal guess is that Berners-Lee's higher estimate is closer to the actual total carbon emissions than the GREET estimate. But even using the high estimate, the manufacturing emissions is only half the total lifetime emissions in the case of conspicuous consumption: e.g. when you buy a large luxury car and scrap it after driving it a scandalously small total distance like 100,000 miles. I'm starting to see how imposing a carbon tax on goods at the point of sale, such a powerful and simple feedback mechanism in principle, can be a nightmare to implement.
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