The Citizen and Climate Change

A recent climate change article in the Atlantic Magazine discussed the social science theory called the expectations gap. The article noted that more than 50 percent of Americans want to do something for the environment, and expect they should be doing something, but don't yet know that anybody actually expects them to do anything. The article also explained that if just five percent of Americans switched from the typical American carbon-intensive lifestyle to a low-carbon lifestyle, it would have the same environmental impact as the Montreal Protocol. 

Following the advice of the article, we need to create an expectation for ourselves and our families, friends, and neighbors to adopt low-carbon living. Approximately 100,000 people live in Adams County; to do our part, we need just 5,000 people here to transition to low-carbon living. 

The average global citizen has a yearly carbon footprint of 4 tons; the average American has a yearly carbon footprint of 16 tons. In order to avoid a more than 2 degree celsius rise in global temperatures, by 2050, all humans must emit no more than 2 tons of carbon yearly. Put another way, in order to avoid a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, any child born in 2017 has a lifetime carbon footprint limit of 197 tons, which equates to approximately 2.5 tons of carbon a year, starting in 2017.  

To quickly and efficiently transition to a low-carbon footprint, start by assessing your diet, transportation, and household energy consumption. A diet heavy in beef emits as much as four tons of carbon a year, per person; a meatless diet means that you'll have a food carbon footprint of less than two tons a year. As for travel, it goes without saying that driving less, and flying not at all, limits carbon consumption (a single roundtrip flight from Philly to LA emits approximately one carbon ton, while the average American drives 13,500 miles a year in a car with 22 mpg, which emits approximately 8 tons of carbon a year). As for household energy consumption, it's best to keep your house cool in the winter and warmer in the summer, as the average American home emits 8 tons of carbon a year just by heating and cooling. The simple act of calculating your carbon footprint can act as a catalyst toward significant lifestyle changes--the Nature Conservancy's calculator is simple and straightforward.

My husband and I have two daughters, a one-year-old and a three-year-old, and we're scared for their future. The science is clear that the impacts of climate change are going to be so catastrophic, we can't say with certainty that Earth is going to be OK by the time they're grown. But one thing we can do is model for them the type of low-carbon lifestyle all citizens will need to adopt in order to keep global temperatures from rising. By the time today's children are grown, they will almost certainly have a government-imposed carbon allowance; we don't want our children and grandchildren to look back at their childhoods and wonder why their parents and grandparents squandered the remaining carbon allotment left to us through excessive meat eating, flying, driving, household materialism, and energy consumption. 

So, Adams County, let's raise our expectations for each other. Let's get 5,000 people to adopt low-carbon lifestyles, and make life better for our children and grandchildren.  

Carolyn Ryan moved to Gettysburg in 2019. She writes a family, meatless cooking, and environmentally focused blog, Lingering 'Round the Dinner Table. (https://moderatelycharmedbeginnings.wordpress.com/)

She can be reached at cwarner87@gmail.com.