I sometimes think of carbon emissions as a business problem. Business engages in risk management. Carbon emissions are a risk. The likelihood is high, the scope is high, the risk is high. It's a high impact risk. Any business with any sense would engage in mitigating that risk. The only way to mitigate that risk is to reduce carbon emissions. But by how much? This leads us to consider that there is some amount of carbon budget that is sustainable and sufficiently low risk. How do we want to spend that budget?
Here on these forums, we mostly talk of vehicle emissions and power production. Those are sufficiently low hanging fruit. But we might want to do some analysis to look across the board at carbon emissions, and think about what carbon emitting activities do we most want to use while simultaneously not having any good substitutes for? I think it would be an interesting topic to delve more deeply into.
For example, I think some of that budget would have to go towards agriculture. I hear concrete production also contributes to carbon emissions. Are there ways to reduce carbon emissions in concrete production? If not, we need budget spent there. I'd like us to continue to be able to use natural gas for cooking if nothing else. There's an interesting array of activities to look at, in terms of how much do they emit, how attractive any alternatives are, etc.
Here on these forums, we mostly talk of vehicle emissions and power production. Those are sufficiently low hanging fruit. But we might want to do some analysis to look across the board at carbon emissions, and think about what carbon emitting activities do we most want to use while simultaneously not having any good substitutes for? I think it would be an interesting topic to delve more deeply into.
For example, I think some of that budget would have to go towards agriculture. I hear concrete production also contributes to carbon emissions. Are there ways to reduce carbon emissions in concrete production? If not, we need budget spent there. I'd like us to continue to be able to use natural gas for cooking if nothing else. There's an interesting array of activities to look at, in terms of how much do they emit, how attractive any alternatives are, etc.