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nvironmentally minded Americans recognize that global climate change is the single most urgent ecological and political issue facing the planet. If you are like me, you want to live in a way that is consistent with your beliefs about climate change. We all know we need to reduce our carbon impacts. But we don’t know by how much, and most environmental organizations don’t give us a clue about what a sustainable carbon footprint would look like. The rate of global carbon emissions overwhelms us and makes individual action feel futile. And giving up carbon emissions entirely seems inconsistent with a contemporary, comfortable lifestyle in the developed world. But most people share the basic ethical sense that it is wrong to make lifestyle choices that cause harm to other people. And we know that climate change will cause grievous harm to millions of people around the globe. It’s easy to blame capitalism and large, impersonal oil and coal companies for climate change, but we can’t ignore our own complicity in the fossil fuel economy when we burn gas to get to work, jet fuel to go on vacation, natural gas to heat and cook, and coal-generated electricity to light and cool our houses. As cartoonist Walt Kelly put it forty years ago, “We have met the enemy, and he is us!” Walt Kelly’s poster for the first Earth Day celebration in showed woodland characters from his weekly Pogo comic strip despairing of the trash and detritus discarded in their forest. For about ten years now, I have been trying to live on an individual carbon budget of about tons per year, while still living well. I have gradually
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cut down on the biggest carbon emissions in my daily life, leaving some room for occasional carbon luxuries. Not incidentally, reducing your daily carbon emissions can save you money, too. The idea for this book came to me in June of as I was preparing to give a talk at an environmental conference on defining and living within a defensible, quantified individual carbon budget. I wanted to total up my own carbon emissions for the year and compare them to the -ton budget I considered sustainable. But I was a little worried that I would expose myself as a hypocrite, since the previous twelve months had included international travel as well as the usual household emissions of living and working in the northeastern United States. The easiest way to figure out my carbon tab was to go to an online carbon calculation website and see what my total was. The best carbon calculators let you enter exact numbers for the big-ticket items like natural gas or electricity use. So I went to one of the more thorough online carbon calculators, www.carbonfootprint.com, and plugged my travel and consumption figures in with the same foreboding I have when I do my taxes with a tax preparation program: did I blow my carbon budget that year? I had those thoughts as I clicked open the calculator. No one would look at my previous year, or my life generally, and accuse me of being a self-denying ascetic. (One of my friends has even accused me of being a “fun hog.”) That past year, I had skied powder in tall mountains, scuba’ed and snorkeled in translucent azure waters, lazed on tropical beaches, visited new countries and cultures, walked through some of the greatest cities on the planet, camped and paddled in the wilderness, and enjoyed many a fine meal and equally fine drink and music. After the annual Waterkeeper Alliance conference in June , I rafted the rapids of the Youghiogheny River in western Pennsylvania. In July of that year I traveled to the volcanic Azores Islands in the Atlantic and climbed Pico, their highest peak; I also visited Spain and Portugal’s ancient cities of Santiago de Compostela, Porto, and Lisbon. During the fall, I commuted by zippy motorcycle to my job lecturing in environmental law. I made a trip north to Vermont for the New England foliage season, piggybacking on an academic conference. During a winter-spring sabbatical, I split my time between our cozy house in the suburban woods in Rockland County, New York, and a ski cabin in the mountains. I attended a conference in Washington, DC.
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In late winter, I traveled to Dakar, Senegal, to lecture on clean water regulation at a conference of West African environmental activists. Taking advantage of my sabbatical freedom, on the way home I visited the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Turks and Caicos, and the Bahamas. And yet I discovered, to my great relief and surprise when I went to carbonfootprint.com and plugged in my numbers, that I had done it all while keeping close to my -ton annual carbon budget. The carbon footprint calculator asked for my auto travel, electricity usage and provider, air travel, and train travel for the year, in addition to some questions about eating, shopping, and recycling habits. My individual carbon footprint for the year, including all that international travel, those ski trips, heat, and utilities, was about . tons of carbon dioxide, including an estimate of the elusive “indirect impacts”—not far above my personal goal of tons per year (though the current version of the calculator would assign a higher value to indirect impacts—those over which an individual has no direct control). This represented about percent of the average U.S. individual direct carbon footprint. How was this possible? To be sure, that year was not a typical year in my life or in the life of anyone with a full-time job. The flexibility of an academic schedule and a sabbatical semester freed me from many of the constraints of modern life. This flexibility allowed me to travel nearly carbon free on my sailboat from New York to the Azores, Spain, and Portugal in the summer of , and to return with the boat via Dakar and the Caribbean in the spring of . Our ski cabin in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York is off the grid, solar powered, and heated with deadwood from the surrounding forest lands, and our home in Rockland County is also partially heated with wood from our downstate backyard. The motorcycle I commute on is electric powered and charged with solar panels on my roof at home. I pay a few pennies more per kilowatt at home for an all-wind-power electric supplier. I didn’t own my own car, though I shared a -miles-per-gallon Prius with my wife, which we used for travel to the mountains for skiing. I took the train to Pittsburgh and DC for my conferences, so my only air travel for the year was one round trip between Spain and New York. My tons or so of carbon footprint included this plane flight (the biggest single item), my share of the natural
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gas heat for our house, my share of the diesel we burned on our sailboat getting through calms and in and out of harbors, and my share of the gas we burned getting up to our ski cabin and back. This past sabbatical year may not be typical. But for some five years now I have been living happily in suburbia, commuting to work, having fun on weekends, and traveling to interesting places on vacations—all while keeping close to my -ton carbon budget. Now I would like to share my experiences. The dual, mildly contradictory, premises of this book are that () we all share a personal ethical obligation to maintain a sustainable carbon footprint and that () life should be fun and fulfilling. This book will not try to convince anyone of the ecological, political, and humanitarian disasters that will arise from climate change, or that climate change is caused chiefly by the human activity of burning fossil fuels. There are plenty of excellent treatments of that subject. This book is for people who already recognize that global climate change is the single most urgent ecological and political issue facing the planet and who wish to adjust their own lifestyle to be consistent with their beliefs about climate change. In a word, this book is written for people who are committed environmentalists. This book is not for environmentally conscious -percenters, either; there are plenty of stories of celebrities spending millions of dollars to build a state-of-the-art, geothermally heated, solar panel–roofed, triple-insulated mansion with two electric Tesla roadsters in the garage, while they jet off to Kilimanjaro in their private jets to see the last snows before they melt with global warming. These are inspiring stories despite the mixed carbon footprint message, but those choices are far out of reach for most of us. Nor is this book written for the hair-shirted ecohermits living full-time in an off-the-grid cabin with acres of woodlot, home-grown vegetables, a flock of chickens, and a milk cow (Mother Earth News gives great advice to this group on a quarterly basis) or for their urban self-denying counterparts. No Impact Man by Colin Beavan tells an inspiring story of personal commitment, but it leaves most people feeling, “I really don’t want to live like that,” or worse, “What a self-righteous bore; his poor wife and children. Must be nice not having to go to work every day.” Even Beavan didn’t want to live more than one year with “no impact.”
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Rather, this book sets out to establish a sustainable new American dream, with a family living in a single-family house in the suburbs, raising children, commuting to work on a daily basis, and enriching their lives and having fun when they can—all while keeping their carbon impact to a sustainable level. The global poor, which unfortunately continues to mean most of the people on the planet, live sustainably because they have no choice. Sustainability has little meaning for the global superrich as long as they remain few enough in number to mute the outsized impacts of lifestyles that would not be remotely supportable for the masses. I know, the reader might be thinking, “ocean sailing, ski cabin? Sounds pretty -percent to me. How are the rest of us supposed to have fun on your carbon budget?” There is no question that I am fortunate in life. Like most middle-class Americans, I am one of the global lottery winners. Twenty years ago I leapt at the chance to become a professor, trading a law firm income for the autonomy and flexibility that come with a career in legal academia and compensation that was less than from a private law practice but more than adequate. And it turns out that a low-carbon lifestyle will save you money, especially if you give up the big-ticket items like a large house, multiple automobiles, and regular air travel. Ocean sailing has a bum rap as a rich man’s sport: buying and maintaining a used offshore-capable sailboat costs about as much as owning a recreational vehicle or a large sport-utility vehicle, but without the carbon footprint. And our ski cabin is quite modest—just one room. This book is my attempt to articulate a philosophy of individual carbon sustainability in the developed world, as well as to document my own attempt to live—and live well—with a sustainable carbon footprint for one year. As I explain in chapter , I believe that an achievable and defensible individual direct carbon footprint for a middle-class American is about tons of carbon dioxide per year, representing about percent of the U.S. average direct carbon footprint. In between the substantive chapters I report on my own success in sticking to this carbon budget for one year while getting myself to work every day in the suburban New York communities where I live and work—and having fun on weekends and vacations. If the world is going to reduce its carbon footprint to sustainable levels, someone has to start by showing that it can be done by individuals in the
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comfortable classes in the developed world, the source of most of the planet-destroying greenhouse gas emissions. If committed environmentalists don’t start living sustainably now, the environmental movement at large has zero chance of convincing the rest of society to make the structural changes necessary to save the planet. The technologies for low-carbon living have already been invented, they are available as mass consumer products, and they are available now. Some of them, like the Tesla roadsters or (for much less money) Zero electric motorcycles, are among the most exciting consumer products available on the market today, carbon spewing or carbon free. And many of the choices for a low-carbon lifestyle come with huge side benefits: improved health, improved self-image, sense of independence and selfreliance, and increased connection with family, life partner, and local communities. So go ahead. Live. Sustainably. Now.
PRAISE FOR LIVE SUSTAINABLY NOW “Karl Coplan’s vision for living an ethical, meaningful, and sustainable life in the face of the climate crisis is an inspiration to all those who care about the environment. Without losing sight of the need for collective global corporate and governmental action, he shows us that it is possible to enjoy life and have fun without sacrificing the future of the planet for the instant gratification many of us have come to expect from life in the twenty-first century.” TATIANA SCHLOSSBERG, FORMER NEW YORK TIMES SCIENCE WRITER AND AUTHOR OF INCONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION: THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT YOU DON’T KNOW YOU HAVE
“Coplan reminds us that low-carbon living not only contributes to the cultural shift required for systems-level change but also is satisfying, meaningful, and fun.” PETER KALMUS, AUTHOR OF BEING THE CHANGE: LIVE WELL AND SPARK A CLIMATE REVOLUTION
“A paralytic feeling can come when deeply confronting the global nature of climate change, given how a multitude of dispersed human activities are contributing to worldwide shifts in climate and coastal patterns that will build and persist for centuries. In this educational, entertaining account, Karl Coplan, law professor and long-distance sailor, argues for and, better yet, demonstrates a completely different kind of reaction—passionate engagement in shaping a fulfilling and fun low-carbon life.” ANDREW REVKIN, FORMER NEW YORK TIMES ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER AND DIRECTOR OF THE INITIATIVE ON COMMUNICATION AND SUSTAINABILITY, EARTH INSTITUTE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
“In clear prose, sometimes taking a colloquial turn, Coplan walks the reader through questions of individual culpability for global warming, ranging—quite usefully, in my view— between philosophical abstractions and quantifiable realities of daily life. He balances theory and practice with aplomb.” MARK HINELINE, AUTHOR OF GROUND TRUTH: A GUIDE TO TRACKING CLIMATE CHANGE AT HOME
“Talking the environmental talk is one thing, but if you want to walk the walk, too, Coplan’s book will tell you how to do it and how to do it happily.” COLIN BEAVAN, AUTHOR OF HOW TO BE ALIVE AND NO IMPACT MAN
COLUMBIA UNIVERSIT Y PRESS | NEW YORK | CUP.COLUMBIA.EDU ISBN: 978-0-231-19090-9
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A .