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i signed up just so i could make this comment. THelper♦ provided a good link to a DOE report on this topic, which i was researching because my roommate is skeptical about the advantages of efficient bulbs.
the report THelper♦ cited has the following bar graph that pretty much answers the question:
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If we diverge slightly from the request for CO_2 per passenger km, and look at energy use per passenger km, then David MacKay's book "Without Hot Air" has a rather good chart.
Pulling from that the methods by which one might plausibly cross the atlantic (figures are approximate, as I'm reading them off the vertical scale):
A Boeing 747: 52 kWh per 100 ...
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While this doesn't fully answer the question in terms of ecological impact, David MacKay provides a good chart of the energy use of various modes of transport, here.
I'll extract some figures from it (they're approximate, from me reading off the vertical axis). They refer to typical occupancy unless otherwise stated.
Note that, as pointed out by a ...
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From the first search I tried the first result says:
According to the Second IMO GHG Study 2009, which is the most comprehensive and authoritative assessment of the level of GHG emitted by ships, international shipping was estimated to have emitted 870 million tonnes, or about 2.7% of the global man-made emissions of CO2 in 2007. Exhaust gases are the ...
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The ecological footprint method does not directly convert consumed resources into global hectares, at least not via a single conversion factor.
Instead first the amount of required land/sea area in physical hectares is calculated by dividing the amount of resources by the yield of the specific land/sea area where those resources were harvested. The physical ...
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It is hard to say because there is such a wide variation in ink formulations. Also, no company is going to tell you what is in their ink, as they will consider that a trade secret. That being said, the only consumable part of a mechanical pencil is made entirely of graphite which is 100% Carbon and Clay. Go with the pencil!
Here is a "How it is made" video ...
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On the positive side economically you are expanding the market for sustainable products, which will help lower their price and make them more likely to be developed.
Another reason to make the effort is that the grandchildren of the people who aren't pursuing sustainability may be, for example, traumatized like the grandchildren of war criminals, and wish ...
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Well, if you are really into it and quite handy, you could turn it into activated charcoal, and then add it to your soil!
Grind it into small bits, heat it anaerobically, then introduce high-pressure steam. The result will be charcoal with many fissures and cracks, which is ideal for gardening purposes.
Then, before introducing it to your garden, pee on it ...
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A study of canned mackerel and herring shows that the production of the aluminium can is responsible for most of the products carbon footprint (Buchspies et al. 2011). Impacts associated to transport are slightly smaller compared to frozen codfish. Storage of frozen fish obviously requires more energy than storage of canned products, however it doesn't seem ...
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There are several databases like this online. Just google on 'sustainability OR csr database companies' and you’ll find a lot of hits. However, I have found that very few are easy to use.
For example, the Sustainability Disclosure Database lists data on thousands of companies on sustainability and environmental and social and governance transparency. I did ...
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Electricity is just a vector of energy: it is neither sustainable nor unsustainable per se. It depends how it is generated and how it is used.
No ponzi scheme is economically sustainable; and BitCoin is no exception. Those who created the first quarter of the total possible bitcoin stock did so extremely easily. Every block thereafter gets harder and harder,...
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Not reasonable to do. Firstly, what you describe is only the final assembly. I don't see any advantage to doing that on site instead of at a plant. And I see considerable disadvantages.
Paint on PV while demonstrated in the lab, has serious issues with longevity.
Even at the household scale the infra-structure is now more expensive than the PV panels ...
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"Is there no significant consequence to how we use our bodies' own generated energy - from a resources sustainability point of view - or are there considerations one can put into use in terms of harnessing one's body energy for external power consumption purposes?"
I feel like this one question you asked fairly neatly sums up your entire overall question. ...
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Unfortunately--and I realize this is not very helpful--the best choice in terms of carbon footprint is almost certainly not to go. It's a good point that freighters are likely to be much more efficient per passenger than cruise ships, but when comparing them to airplanes, you have to keep in mind what's being brought along to accommodate the passenger, not ...
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You have to also consider the climate where each type of cooler will be used and how each type of cooler works.
Refrigeration coolers transfer heat from inside a building to the outside. However, the hotter the outside temperature the less effectively such coolers work. If the outside/atmospheric temperature is 50 C or higher, such coolers will struggle.
...
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I have an incomplete answer, but at least this is something to get the conversation started. At the bottom of your comments, you restate the question as "is organic any better because it costs more, meaning consumers buy less?"
Throughout this sustainability Q&A forum, there is a misunderstanding that sustainability equates to the minimization of ...
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Just buy a used USB cable. You can go to a computer recycler and they will have thousands.
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I think you have the right idea. Your question addresses exactly what the ecological footprint does not measure, and the question you link to is trying to explain that.
Fundamentally, ecological footprint is about energy. Sunlight arrives and is used by plants (or a tiny amount is used directly by people via PV or other solar power systems), which use it ...
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To answer this portion of your question:
"But what other ways can one use one's own body energy wisely, and in general what principles / themes can one explore to put it into practice?
"
You made mention of using your body for transportation but you can go beyond just transportation. You can use peddle power or a rowing machine to power your cell phone, to ...
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Yes, to a certain extent. In economics this is called the 'rebound effect'.
The rebound effect is that the effectiveness of a new techology or measure is reduced because it is counter-acted by other parts of the system.
To give an example: people who insulate their house tend to keep their house at a higher temperature than before the insulation was done. ...
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The social signals you send might well be more important than the economic ones. Consumers are not rational. Look at what people spend money and time on - it does not make them happier. We know what causes mental well being (such as these five steps). So people's consumption is highly illogical and does not follow economic theories of maximizing happiness. ...
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It's all a matter of how you do the counting! If you take into account how much diversity you destroy, non-organic food is worse than "too much" cardboard packaging. But how do you count this? Life has no price, and damages are potentialities.
On the other hand, the more you use "non-organic" method for farming, the more you need them. So it's even worse on ...
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Humans have released around 3 × 10^11 tons of carbon since the industrial revolution.
Agriculture, particularly modern industrial agriculture, releases massive amounts of carbon from the soil which then forms CO2. Since the dawn of agriculture, 8% of the world's soil carbon (1 × 10^11 tons of carbon) has been "lost" - released to form atmospheric CO2 (or ...
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I think this is question is difficult to answer for several reasons:
There is no agreed upon carrying capacity of the Earth. The Global Footprint Network organization does a nice job estimating the Earth's capacity in terms of land usage (biocapacity), but their ecological footprint is a very rough estimate and is not suitable for decision-making. For ...
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In general these are non-trivial questions. I don't know of a single source of answers, other that possibly the SL branch of StackExchange .
Your best option, I think, is to learn how to reason about such things. For this you will need to do a bit of digging: Most of the carbon cost is really the energy cost. So you learn how to convert kWh to pounds of ...
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This is quite a broad question, but here are a few thoughts towards an answer. Some are more opinion-based than others.
Some people prefer to read some things on paper.
There was, for a long time, a shortage of open standards for documents that could be adopted by all; instead, companies and individuals were incentivised to adopt proprietary formats. To a ...
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You must read The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Kieth:
http://www.bookdepository.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Lierre-Keith/9781604860801
It's an excellent book, well cited and rich in information, presenting a factual viewpoint that my vegetarian-of-17-years self had to stand up and take notice of. Such a complicated topic, this book really opened my eyes. Needless to ...
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I made a literature search and just present here all the significant results I could find with small excerpts from the abstracts:
Growing green money? Mapping community currencies for sustainable development Link - 2013
Parallel sustainable monetary systems are being developed [..] to promote sustainable development by localising economic development, ...
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There is a lot of efficiency variation that depends on the quality of the LEDs. Cheap LEDs are no better than CFLs.
High quality LEDs from brands like Cree or Philips can be over double the efficiency of CFLs.
Also under-powering LEDs will make them more efficient and last longer. They can last indefinitely when underpowered by a certain level.
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