Lowering your carbon footprint

[Dr H]

In the case of CFLs, the switch from incandescent to CFLs was significant,

Depends on your definition of "significant".  I've analyzed the bulbs and run the numbers -- several times -- and the average American household would have saved more energy -- and more money -- by simply lowering their thermostat one degree over the winter, than by converting every bulb in their home to CFL.

The average home only uses about 10-15% of its total electric load on lighting; in the best-case scenario CFLs brought that down by maybe 20-30% (the energy savings advertised on bulb packages was highly inflated).   LED bulbs provide a much greater savings, but you're still only talking about reducing a portion of 10-15% of the residential load.

Meanwhile, Alcoa's aluminum smelter in Wenatchee was using as much electricity in a day as some moderate-sized Oregon and Washington towns used in a year.

As usual, the onus and the burden for reducing usage, improving efficiency, and saving the planet  was shifted from the real sources of the problem, to the individual citizen.

My personal carbon footprint is already so low, to reduce it much more I'd have to become a silicon-based lifeform.

Or dead.  And that will happen, eventually, without any help.

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Saying that purchasing a more fuel efficient doesn't lower your carbon footprint is rather advocating burning car tires to save space in the landfill. You REALLY want to lower your carbon footprint?  Kill your pets.

Boru

Or cease having children.

Reducing global population would go a long way towards relieving many of our pressing problems, including atmospheric carbon.

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Buying a hybrid or battery-powered vehicle allows one to move the pollution to those coal-fired plants in Utah.

Tesla did a study on this.

For starters, coal supplied just under half of the power in the US in 2008 and it's down to 30% (and falling) today.

Beware of letting the fox study the hen house.

45% of Tesla's components are foreign-manufactured.

If they're being made in places like China, 62% of the power in China currently comes from coal-fired plants.  

As Tesla announced that tariffs imposed on China in the current trade war "will impact our gross profit negatively by roughly $50 million", it would seem they are indeed making parts in China.

[The Grand Nudger]

Not only that, their (china's) silicon and heavy metals production is outsourced to an even dirtier area of the world.

Going green is a great idea, and the average person in the us can significantly reduce their carbon footprint (though not through the means that have been so successfully commercialized)...and while this doesn't amount to a significant reduction individual by individual...as a whole, it's worthwhile. Ultimately, power production, agriculture, and industry will provide the most significant overall reduction but none of these things will happen without the consumer demanding it, anyway.

We're too busy buying free trade coffee and recycled totes to give a shit, though, lol.