Sustainability - - A Focus On Carbon

What's the significance of buying products made outside Oregon or outside the U.S.? Certainly, there are many reasons why we might care about where - and how - the stuff we buy is made. What I'm interested in is how total CO2 equivalent (CO2e) of goods purchased by Oregonians changes as the locus of production changes.  For 2005, CO2e emissions from consumption of goods and services by Oregonians resulted in 56.7 MMT CO2e (note that some but not all the goods purchased were from within Oregon). If Oregonians purchased the exact same goods and services but they were all made outside of Oregon, those emissions would climb to 67.7 MMT CO2e. If instead of buying U.S. made products, Oregonians purchased that same bsdket of goods  all made outside the U.S., total CO2e emissions jump to 113.5 MMT.

Here's an EPA document that provides quite a good overview of greenhouse gas emissions from activity across the U.S. economy. Hopefully, this compilation of GHG data (including but not limited to CO2) provides both an understanding of the range of activities that generate CO2 but also how they chage over time. I've spent some of yesterday and most of today reading through it. Here are some initial observations, mostly with an eye towards activities in and around Portland and the Tri-County Area. Land Use decisions affect overall CO2 emissions. For example, CO2 emissions are reduced by not converting ag. and forest land to development, or demolitions.  For 2015, it’s estimated that the net effect from all types of land use changes/avoiding changes was a reduction in CO2 emissions of 670MMT CO2 equivalent. Turning to electric generation, from 1990 to 2015 overall emissions rose 4 percent while carbon intensity rose ~16 percent. Most of the increase in carbon intensity was ...

By using Trump’s decision to exit the Paris Climate Accord as a justification for setting a target of 100% renewable energy, our political leaders are in reaction mode. It's like having an alcoholic in the family, something I have personal experience with.  If we use the alcoholic’s actions as the reason for our choice, we don’t change our narrative.  It's incumbent on us to act with the gravity and wisdom that changing the narrative on climate change will require.  One of the more important ways we can begin is to resist the temptation to engage in sloganeering.  It’s not “Big Oil versus Humanity."  We don’t wear the White Hats while “They” wear the Black Hats.  To be sure, sloganeering seems to be part and parcel of marketing and politics.  Even so, politics and governance are different specialties that require different skill sets. Here are three steps we can take to be smarter about climate change. First, stop drawing boxes around people and ...