Talk:Individual action on climate change

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Split

The Community Portal said that the page Individual and political action on climate change needed to be split. I took the info that I thought was right for the individual action and made a new article. I couldn't figure out how to change the title, so I left it the way it was. I'm only trying to become a certified Wikipedian. Please don't delete this page. Pchittg2 (talk) 21:09, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Hey Pchitt. You're reacting well to having one of your firsts attempts at creating an article nominated for deletion. From what I've seen, that's a great first step as almost everyone's first attempt at an article is deleted. Mine was. I'm not saying that this article will definitely be deleted but as it stands, it's basically just the text from another article. If you want to create a new article, I would start it in your userspace. I'll ask an admin to userfy this article for you so that you can work on it while it's not in mainspace. Feel free to ask questions here or on your talk page if you want. I'll be watching both. OlYeller^Talktome 21:14, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Patrolling Admin

Patrolling admin, per the conversation above, will you please userfy this article for the author? Of course, if they object, that's up to them. OlYeller^Talktome 21:15, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

splitting properly

Whether or not the split is desirable is for consensus at the talk p. of the original article, about which I have no opinion. But I see no reason for a speedy deletion, as the material does not at present duplicate. Speedy criterion A10 does not apply to splits. And if the decision there is to undo the split, the original text there should be restored, not the material eliminated.

The actual split was done improperly by copying the page as it appeared, not the coded wikitext from the edit window; this loses the references; I re-did it, using the version at [1] DGG ( talk ) 22:01, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

At the time of nomination, the text was not removed. Thank you for doing the work to make sure that this content is properly split. OlYeller^Talktome 22:03, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Erroneous content

The article erroneously states: “The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization reports that rearing livestock contributes more greenhouse gases than all fossil fuel burning combined.[4]” In fact, reference (4), i.e. the report of Steinfeld et al. (2006), indicates 4 to 5 billion tonnes carbon emitted annually from fossil fuels. Expressed as carbon dioxide, this is over 14 billion tonnes from fossil fuel burning. In contrast, reference (4) estimates 4.6 or 7.1 billion tonnes [100-year] carbon dioxide equivalents annually assigned to livestock production, where the higher of these figures includes "the land use, land use change and forestry category".

The Wikipedia article states “A 2006 study from the Department of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago found the difference between a vegan diet and red meat diet is equivalent to driving a sedan compared to a sport utility vehicle.[5]6]” However, the cited study from the University of Chicago failed to confirm the accuracy of one of its data sources. As a result, it used erroneous figures for fossil energy used in production of various meats, overestimating such energy use in production of beef and pork by 70 percent, relative to original figures in the citation chain, and overestimating energy use in production of lamb by about 2000 percent, as a result of using a feed energy figure instead of a fossil energy figure. (The feed energy represents solar energy captured by net photosynthesis and stored in the portions of plants used as feed.) The extremely inflated fossil energy figures were used for estimating carbon dioxide emissions. [Also, the paper failed to account for emissions associated with production of substitutes (used by vegans) for the non-food products derived from food-yielding animals.] Because of the various errors and omissions, the paper's quantitative conclusions cannot be accepted; they greatly exaggerate the emissions difference between the compared diets. (Citation of this problematic paper might have been avoided by observing the Wikipedia guideline that “Any exceptional claim requires multiple high-quality sources".) Schafhirt (talk) 17:52, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

cleanup

This article is a bit of a mess, structurally and in terms of information presented (or lack thereof) - I am going to attempt to clean it up. Needs: more detail on each topic, context for each topic, a global perspective, and better organization. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 14:30, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

THANK YOU!!!! Start by assembling reliable sources you want to build upon. Too many editors try to write first and only look for supporting citations after the fact. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:57, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Of course. I'm a librarian :) -- phoebe / (talk to me) 17:41, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

I hear that's a dangerous profession... lots of neck injuries from always looking things up! Thanks for your interest here. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 19:00, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes you are right - a cleanup sounds like a very good idea. For example I think individual countries and especially individual brands of scooter should not be mentioned.Chidgk1 (talk) 13:27, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

As of Sep 2022, the article is still hard to read. Much of the text is tangential and seems to be there in order to create a citation point, and much of it is repetitive. I'm too new to editing to be ripping out some of the extraneous mentions, but perhaps a more experienced editor might give it a go? --Ceolas (talk) 15:40, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Problems with the having fewer children action

Although currently uncited it is perhaps based on this study via this one

1) There is no reasonable system of carbon accounting that attributes people’s emissions to their parents.

2) The original study is specifically about the USA whereas this article should not be biased towards the USA.

Chidgk1 (talk) 09:20, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi, @Chidgk1: While Wynes and Nicholas's calculations may be challenged, their figures have been widely reported in reputable sources, such as

• http://theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children
• http://thetimes.co.uk/article/survey-looks-at-practical-measures-to-help-the-environment-d25tsbdf9
• http://forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2017/07/13/the-four-most-effective-things-you-can-do-about-climate-change-according-to-science
• http://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017ERL....12g4024W/abstract

We should add refutations from reputable sources, but not unpublished original research. Cheers, cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 13:08, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

FYI, I haven't analyzed this Forbes site, but usually they are op-ed opinions of the authors, rather than real RSs under editorial control of the media outlet. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:14, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for those links @Cmglee:. I am not registered for The Times so did not read the whole article. The last link is the source for your well drawn graph I think, and that in turn cites Murtaugh and Schlax 2009 which I don't have access to, but could easily afford to rent for a day if necessary to find out exactly what countries they studied. As a lot has changed in the past 10 years (e.g. some countries have built lots of coal power stations and others have closed lots) I would not like to rely on the 58.6 tonnes figure. Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources seems to make a distinction between Forbes and forbes.com but rates Vox as reliable (as I don't wish to say anything partisan or about American politics). However the criticism in Vox is not related to the countries studied, but the accounting principle of assigning descendants emissions to their ancestors. I had not seen the Guardian article before so thanks that will be a useful cite for me to explain the timescale criticism at the end, although it does not properly explain the calculation.Chidgk1 (talk) 14:20, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

@C.J. Griffin: Your moving the paragraphs is an improvement on my placing thanks. But I am confused about the calculation of 58.6 tonnes as I could not find it in the 2017 paper so assumed the result had simply been copied from the 2009 one. Now I see that in the supplementary materials 5 they have averaged figures for Japan, Russia and USA. Obviously there must be more to the calculation than that and what is mentioned in the Guardian but do you know the details?Chidgk1 (talk) 18:01, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Great jobs, Chidgk1 and NewsAndEventsGuy. For the purpose of the article, perhaps we should state that this figure was reported by Seth Wynes of UBC and Kimberley Nicholas of Lund Uni with refs (and make no claims about its veracity), and add reputable refutations with refs to leave readers to decide for themselves, as is typically done for contentious topics? Cheers, cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 19:04, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

P.S. Here's a non-reputable-source calculation of the 58.6 tCO2e value.

Thanks cmglee for the link, which says that the 2009 researchers assumed that the fertility rate will drop to 1.85 everywhere in the world by 2050. But the claim as written in this article now is given undue weight. As far as I know including descendants in the carbon accounting for an individual is the view of a tiny minority of researchers. And if you look at personal carbon footprint calculators very few would ask how many children you have had in your life. Anyone who thinks this claim should remain in Wikipedia: as this article is supposed to be of worldwide scope might considering moving the claim to Greenhouse gas emissions by the United States. I don't know if in 2009 the figures were reliable but since then Russia has ratified the Paris Agreement, and Japan's electricity sources have been affected by their nuclear debate after Fukashima and Japanese car manufacturers have started making electric cars. So whatever assumptions were made in 2009 about the big emitters electricity generation and transport in those countries are likely no longer valid.Chidgk1 (talk) 08:17, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

The 2017 study should indeed remain in the article because it is WP:RS, and one published by a peer-reviewed scientific journal at that. It also received widespread media coverage, including in Science, so assertions of undue weight are not accurate. There is no justification for removing notable, reliably sourced material. Most of what you write above is speculation, based on your own opinions and assertions, and nothing based on what reliable sources say about the study in question (the link above does NOT constitute a reliable source). Do you plan on removing other data from the same study as well, relating to plant-based diets and air travel, etc? That would be absurd. I would vehemently oppose removing the 2017 study. EDIT: Moreover, there is already a rebuttal by those who don't agree with the study, with this as a source. So purging reliably sourced content, IMO, is totally unwarranted.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 14:25, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Hello again @C.J. Griffin:. I assume what you consider original research in the footnote is the statements about Wynes and Nichols such as 'Wynes and Nichols seem to have used simple arithmetic to divide these figures by the average lifespan for each country to produce a "per year" figure' and 'Wynes and Nicholas have then averaged the last 3 figures without weighting by the population of the countries or taking into account any countries not studied by Murtaugh and Schlax, such as EU countries'. Therefore I am rewriting it to cover only the Murtaugh and Schlax paper itself, so that readers who do not have the money or time to read the paper can understand what the Wynes and Nicholas numbers for Russia, Japan and the USA are based on. As far as I can tell as a layperson Murtaugh and Schlax reach a logical conclusion (although they do not state the end time of their modelling) if you accept their clearly stated premise; and their data sources were presumably reasonable at the time of writing. After rewriting I expect you or plenty of other editors would be able to check the paper to make sure that I have correctly explained the relevant points from Murtaugh and Schlax.Chidgk1 (talk) 06:25, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Mayer Hillman's opinion

I moved this from the article to hear for discussion

Still others, such as Mayer Hillman, British town planner and environmentalist, contend that both individual action and political action by national governments will not be enough, and only a global transition to zero GHG emissions throughout the entire economy and a reduction in human population would be sufficient to mitigate global warming.

References

(A) Per WP:WEIGHT I'm not sure one mayor's opinion is really all that relevant (B) But even if his view does merit inclusion, the particular section where it used to be was about citizen's being involved in the political process and Hillman's point is not about that. Rather Hillmans point is about a possible objective of political lobbying. So it was in the wrong section, assuming it merits inclusion, which is not clear to me anyway. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:28, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Mayer is his first name rather than position. However I agree it could be shortened and moved to another section. Maybe it should just say that he thinks individual action is futile.Chidgk1 (talk) 12:00, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Oops, thanks for the correct. There is indeed a range of opinion from it's not happening to we can't do anything anyway. Mayer's position isn't all the way to the Doomer end but close. The text as written makes me wonder as to the depth of Mayer's (or the Wikipedia editors) thinking. IPCC defines mitigation as human actions that will reduce or slow the impacts of climate change. They didn't say "cure" "fix" "eliminate" or any such thing, but the text I removed suggests Mayer is talking with that meaning. If we include his view at all, we should be sure to cast it in the proper scientific context compared to his own meaning of the word. And maybe there's no difference, I haven't studied the sources. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:48, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Switching electricity supplier to buy only green electricity

It appears in the graph, so is this possible in many high-carbon electricity countries such as Germany, Poland, South Africa, China, India etc or is it just a UK (and presumably USA) thing so not worth adding?

In UK people can also switch gas supplier to 10% biomethane.

Chidgk1 (talk) 11:08, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Either I missed it before or it has been added since this comment - thanks.Chidgk1 (talk) 19:02, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

By wealth graph request

I have asked at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Graphics_Lab/Illustration_workshop#Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_personal_wealth

Feel free to add your views there.

Chidgk1 (talk) 07:43, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

merge

I (finally) merged in Individual and political action on climate change to this article and climate movement - I know it's a little messy now, I will try to tidy it up (see old discussion here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Climate_change/Archive_1#Merge_/_restructure_proposal) -- phoebe / (talk to me) 19:58, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

"Individual purchase of carbon offsets" section?

Is lacking cites.

Is https://www.investopedia.com/best-carbon-offset-programs-5114611 a reliable source?

If not what is?

A lot of info seems to be for businesses rather than individuals.

And I think the carbon offset article is confusing for individuals looking for guidance on whether or not to buy them and if so from what company.

The article should explain properly how the individual can check the company is following a standard - and which standards are the best.

Chidgk1 (talk) 06:18, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I don't understand what you were saying here. Could you please clarify or just go ahead and make the necessary changes? EMsmile (talk) 12:45, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Should statements ultimately based on Murtaugh and Schlax (2005) be deleted?

I contend that statements based on cites which depend on https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378008001003 should be removed because:

1) By projecting an unspecified number of years into the future they have estimated the emissions of a person born in 2005 and half their children, quarter grandchildren etc. This timescale is now known to be far too long to be relevant to this article

2) IPPC AR6 WG3 (2021) supersedes many previous papers including that one

I can add other reasons if these are not sufficient. Chidgk1 (talk) 05:34, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi User:Chidgk1 I agree with you and have now removed this entire text block (is this what you were suggesting?) - it seems to me too dubious and not WP:DUE:

+++++++ It has been claimed that not having an additional child saves "an average for developed countries" of 58.6 tonnes CO₂-equivalent (tCO₂e) emission reductions per year and "a US family who chooses to have one fewer child would provide the same level of emissions reductions as 684 teenagers who choose to adopt comprehensive recycling for the rest of their lives." This has been criticised: both as a category mistake for assigning descendants emissions to their ancestors and for the very long timescale of reductions. +++++++ EMsmile (talk) 12:43, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Chidgk1 (talk) 10:17, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

References

Individual action on climate change or climate activism?

There are several climate action groups. They are not individuals. --BoldLuis (talk) 13:44, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Family size section biased towards not having children

it's easy to find sources arguing against the idea of not having children as a way to reduce emissions:

https://theconversation.com/why-parents-shouldnt-be-saddled-with-environmental-guilt-for-having-children-189933

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/02/climate-kids/

https://theoutline.com/post/7925/having-babies-climate-change-birthstrike

https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/climate-change-scary-having-children-global-warming-1492131

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/opinion/climate-change-should-you-have-kids.html

Really we should perhaps split this off into its own article so the various sides of the argument have room to be presented. Eldomtom2 (talk) 21:55, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

At this stage, I don't think a separate article is needed yet. Maybe later. For now, I would say flesh out the existing section on family size and then see how it develops. It could be good to give it a sub-structure with Level-2 headings to make it easier for the readers to orientate themselves. And not to create too much overlap with the other articles: Voluntary childlessness and Human population planning. It is certainly an interesting topic! The fact that China's population is now shrinking might generate various problems for China but in the context of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions it has to be a good thing (my personal opinion). EMsmile (talk) 11:44, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Others would argue that fewer young Chinese means fewer climate activists and so a lower chance of getting rid of stupidities such as incentives for provincial leaders to build more coal-fired power stations. Personally I would prefer to delete the whole section as too speculative and confusing to readers. Chidgk1 (talk) 20:28, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it would be fair to delete the entire section on family size. It is one of the factors that can increase or reduce GHGE. It just needs to be well sourced, with a logical flow, and needs to present to the readers the different trains of thought. Compare also with lengthy discussions we had at biodiversity about the role of population growth: here, here, and here. People involved were User:C.J. Griffin and User:LoomCreek. Population growth is probably one factor in any topic that deals with environmental degradation issues, but the "due weight" aspect has to be observed of course. So I think we do need a section on family size but it needs to be balanced and well written. I am not sure if the content of the current section is quite right yet. EMsmile (talk) 08:12, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate the ping, I would personally somewhat agree with chidgk1. I think we should address the argument, since it's often made.

But 'population control' is not an actual legitimate solution to the environment for a few reasons. The poorest 50% of the global population is responsible for only 10% of emissions. While the richest 10% are responsible for 50%.

What this means is, since poorest countries are growing the fastest, the global increase in population has at most a very small effect. Because again most of those people being born poor have negligible effects on the environment.

The driving factor for climate change, biodiversity destruction and environmental exploitation. Is economic growth, not due to population, but instead the pressure for companies to infinitely expand (and how as technology gets cheaper, this exploitation of the environment becomes easier and easier.).

The point being that while population could be considered a small factor, it's not an important one and kind of misses the bird for the trees. It's entirely overshadowed by other issues. We should address it but it doesn't deserve undue weight, because in my opinion it's just a really easy scapegoat. LoomCreek (talk) 09:36, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

The section is well sourced, by peer-review academic sources. It qualifies as WP:DUE by my estimation. Deletion would not be justified by What I've seen argued so far.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 11:54, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

I think given how common the thought process is it'll probably have to remain. But I don't think it should be on this page so uncontested because of its, controversial and highly criticized nature. That's my suggestion LoomCreek (talk) 12:17, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

I think the case of China is quite unusual though with regards to how population growth is now slowing and the per capita GHG emissions having gone up and it being formerly a developing country and now not anymore etc. I think there can be no disagreement on the fact that a slowing growth of population in China will also slow down China's GHG emissions and is therefore a good thing with regards to climate change mitigation.

Which parts of the current section would you find weak, and in which sense do you find it "uncontested"? I think the different sides of the argument are already included to some extent in this section; what is still missing? Do you think we need more content to explain that the impact of having smaller families (for certain countries) might be weaker than some people think? EMsmile (talk) 13:37, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Older populations less innovative

I was not saying all older people are less innovative but that on average we are. It would be easy to source that to the original study but I guess I need to have a single source which also says that innovation is important for mitigation otherwise people will say I am synthesizing Chidgk1 (talk) 20:17, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, you'd need to find a source (ideally not behind a paywall) that would state that an aging population would be less able to tackle climate change mitigation than one with a lower age average. I doubt that such findings exist. My anecdotal evidence from asking around is that amongst older people it often older women who are far more concerned about climate change than older men. I know many older men who flat out deny that this could be a problem, whereas I know many older women who are openly expressing their concern for the future of their grandchildren because of climate change... EMsmile (talk) 08:15, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Should adaptation be in the article?

The short description implies not. But if we wanted to include it there are sources like https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/adapting-climate-change-individuals-take-action-while-governments-plan/ Chidgk1 (talk) 14:46, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

I think adaptation for individuals fits better at climate change adaptation. One of the actions is, sadly, simply more air conditioning, which is already mentioned at climate change adaptation... EMsmile (talk) 15:23, 14 August 2024 (UTC)