Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.
A couple of weeks ago, we did a show on how many greenhouse gas emissions are created by the fashion industry and that got me wondering which industries create the most emissions, but I quickly hit a problem.
Here to help me out is our founder Stephen Porder, who’s also the Provost for Sustainability at Brown University.
Megan Hall: Hi, Stephen!
Stephen Porder: Good morning!
Megan Hall: So, here’s what’s going on- I went on the internet to find out about which industries create the most greenhouse gas emissions. But the numbers just don’t seem to add up.
Stephen Porder: Yeah, it’s a problem. You want to go through it and we can add them up together?
Megan Hall: Okay, yeah, can you just do a running tally like on a calculator?
Stephen Porder: You bet. Ready to go.
Megan Hall: Let’s start with one of the big ones- according to an article in the Guardian, all of the mining sectors combined account for 53% of the world’s carbon emissions.
Stephen Porder: Got it
Megan Hall: Alright. Agriculture is responsible for twenty-six percent of the world’s carbon emissions.
Stephen Porder: We’re up at 79
Megan Hall: Ok… the fashion and footwear industry creates 8 percent of the world’s climate impact.
Stephen Porder: 87…
Megan Hall: The HealthCare industry creates nearly 10 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions.
Stephen Porder: 97… I hope there’s nothing much more.
Megan Hall: No, there’s a lot more!
Stephen Porder: Uh-oh…
Megan Hall: I found an article that says buildings account for more than a third of global climate-changing emissions.
Stephen Porder: 130%
Megan Hall: What? Ok, there’s plastics- that’s 3.8%,
Stephen Porder: Let’s say 4…
Megan Hall: Aviation- 2%, Shipping- over 3%, tourism- 8%, Deforestation, 20%
Stephen Porder: I’m at 167%
Megan Hall: See what I mean? Why don’t these numbers add up?
Stephen Porder: It totally sounds crazy, but there’s a pretty simple reason for it. It’s basically just double counting.
Megan Hall: What do you mean? In what way?
Stephen Porder: Well, let’s say you have a farmer who’s growing apples, and they drive those apples to the market. You might say, well, they use a certain amount of gasoline on the way to the market. That’s a transportation problem. So those emissions count for transportation. But someone else is doing a study on agriculture might say, oh, no, but they were growing apples. And that’s an agriculture thing. And so if you’re not careful that farmer’s trip get counted both for agriculture and for transportation.
Megan Hall: Is it even worth dividing our emissions up by industry? Is it just arbitrary?
Stephen Porder: It’s not really arbitrary, but it’s just harder and harder to do as those buckets get smaller. So I think we should focus on the big picture. Energy production is the major source of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s electricity production, heating, transportation, and a few other things. Food production, probably 10 to 15%, deforestation, another 10% or so.
Megan Hall: So are those the things that we should really be focusing on?
Stephen Porder: In my opinion, absolutely. Those are the things where we really need big change.
Megan Hall: And what can we do? What kind of ways can we affect those main categories?
Stephen Porder: So for energy, the whole key is to switch to renewables. For food production, by far the biggest problem is red meat production. So cut down or eliminate the amount of red meat. For deforestation, the biggest problem is in the tropics right now. Stay away from tropical wood products.
Megan Hall: Great! Thanks, Stephen
That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way you recycle, use energy, or make any other choice that affects the planet, go to the public’s radio dot org slash possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts.
Possibly is a co-production of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and the Public’s Radio.
The post Why don’t emissions numbers add up? appeared first on TPR: The Public's Radio.