Source for the 6.4% number: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00090-3
In: 5
Shockingly to many ordinary people (although not to the large oil companies), consumers are actually not big contributors to emissions and climate change…it’s almost as if the whole “carbon footprint” thing [was made up by an oil company to make consumers blame themselves and not take action against big oil](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oil-coined-carbon-footprints-to-blame-us-for-their-greed-keep-them-on-the-hook).
This was brilliantly evidenced by the statistics you cite in your post, OP.
Keep in mind also, in terms of energy costs, if 100 people go work in a building, you expend energy to heat / cool that building, have the lights on, etc., but that’s at least partially offset by people, not being home and not using as much energy at home. During Covid, people stayed home, used more energy at home, and a lot of those buildings*still* used energy to maintain a certain level of heat/cool. People using energy to cool/heat individual homes is not a particularly efficient use.
Because that’s about how much the public directly contributes to the total. The overwhelming majority is produced by large scale, industrial contributors. Those sources do not stop, just because some folks have to stay inside.
The pollution isn’t from the end user. It’s from manufacture and production of good and energy.
This is why I always point out that even if we were to switch all consumer vehicles to EVs across the entire planet tomorrow, that our long-term GHG emissions would only decrease by like… ~3-5%. A lot of people misunderstand GHG emissions and that’s intentional. Corporations want you to believe that it’s your fault for climate change and they want you to believe that you can fix everything by buying more of their products.
Just because global passenger travel was curtailed during the pandemic, global shipping and air cargo continued. Yes, many aircraft have been hanging out in deserts since 2020. But for other reasons (such as slot-constrained airports and payroll protection programs backed by government), many commercial passenger jets flew empty for months, and later with covid-related passenger capacity restrictions (such as empty middle seats) for more months. Wealthy travelers also turned to their private jets and megayachts, and bought new homes to travel to, all of which are known to be huge emitters of CO2 and other pollution.
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