My wife is in Rwanda at the moment. Or maybe Uganda. She’s on track for all seven continents in 2008; with luck, I’ll get six.
The big news of the week is that Emmylou Harris has released a new album. My wife and I generally have different musical tastes, but we’re both nearly obsessed with Harris, still making tremendous records in her sixties. We’re off to see Emmylou at the Orange County Fair at the end of July. One track off the album is the bonus this week. And #4 has been my theme song so far this month.
1. “Banks of Marble”, Iris DeMent and Leo Kottke
2. “Alternative Ulster”, Stiff Little Fingers
3. “The Special Two”, Missy Higgins
4. “Soon Love Soon”, Vienna Teng
5. “Power in the Blood”, Shane Barnard, Shane Everett, and the Peasall Sisters
6. “Comfortably Numb”, Dar Williams
7. “Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)”, David Allan Coe
8. “Kingdom of the Blind”, The Men they Couldn’t Hang
9. “Poor Poor Pitiful Me”, Warren Zevon
10. “Diamond in the Rough”, Jennifer Knapp
Bonus Track: “All That You Have is Your Soul”, Emmylou Harris
Wait, wait, wait.
She’s in AFRICA? As in, transatlantic flight putting out a billion tons of carbon dioxide, Africa?
And you are hoping to visit SIX continents personally?
I don’t know what your wife does. Maybe she’s a doctor and she’s going around doing surgeries in primitive villages, and her travel is necessary, life-saving work. I doubt it, but maybe.
But I do know what you do; you’re a college history professor. Your bona-fide occupational requirement for transcontinental travel is nearly zero. You teach American history, for crying out loud. What, you need to hit China to check? “Yep, this isn’t America either. Now on to Australia!”
Six round-trip tickets from New York to London amounts to 35.39 tons of carbon emissions, according to the calculator here. That’s the equivalent of having six large SUVs on the road full-time, or owning six large single-family homes in California on the grid. You’re using up the resources of two or three full-size, energy-belching, Gaia-smashing American families just on your personal pleasure travel.
How can you possibly justify spending such enormous quantities of environmental resources?
To paraphrase Glenn, I’ll start believing you think there’s a climate crisis when you start acting like there’s one.
Have you heard her sing with Bright Eyes (Conor Oberst)? “Landlocked Blues” is just lovely. I believe she sings a couple others with him on I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning.
I’ll look it up, Nav.
Robert, come on, you ought to know that going vegan does more for the environment than restricting jet travel. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/vegetarian-is-the-new-pri_b_39014.html
Animal agriculture: “accounts for 9% of our carbon dioxide emissions, it emits 37% of our methane, and a whopping 65% of our nitrous oxide”
Jet travel: 2% of carbon emissions, less than a quarter of what comes from animal ag. A jet-setting vegan is doing more for the environment than a home-bound carnivore, though of course a home-bound vegan would be doing even more.
We buy carbon offsets for all our trips, too, in addition to living vegan.
Oh, and I teach European history primarily; my doctorate is in English Medieval history.
My mistake regarding your area of expertise.
You’re conflating personal totals with the total carbon load on the planet. Yeah, air travel isn’t a huge proportion of the total, total. But it’s a huge proportion of YOUR total. You can be as vegan as you want to be, your carbon budget is still huge.
The typical American - meat-eating, SUV-driving, “turn it up to 76, Marge, it’s cold in here” American - is thought to use 16.64 tons a year. You’re doing two Bubbas, personally, at least, just on the air travel portion of your pleasure trips. Your wife is doing another two, at least. You guys could be CORPSES for the remainder of your time, and you would still be blowing through the carbon equivalent of 16 ordinary citizens of the world, just on plane travel.
Oh, well, you buy offsets. That means it didn’t happen.
No, it just means that in living a vegan lifestyle and campaigning for others to do the same, we are fighting carbon emissions more effectively than by campaigning against air travel.
And offsets aren’t marriage annulments; it’s a compensatory scheme that makes a good deal of sense and has real potential to do good.
Sure, carbon offsets are great. You’re still blowing through a lot of jet test.
I’m not criticizing your campaigning. I’m criticizing your actual consumption.
You just finished telling me how wealthy westerners have to sacrifice to save the Earth; what exactly is sacrificial in your family’s 13+ intercontinental round trips? OK, fine, you’re sacrificing in other ways, by being a vegan for example. But those ways are grossly swamped by the level of your other consumption; you’re saying “look, I drink diet Coke, so it’s not relevant that I also eat four pounds of cookies every day.”
It kind of is. Your total energy use is absolutely enormous. You’re waaaaaay over at the right-hand side of the energy bell curve, even factoring in you skipping McDonald’s and not driving the Tahoe.
If you were a plutocratic Republican who didn’t believe in AGW, fine. You’d be consistent, at least. But you’re doing this while telling other people “hey, you guys should use less energy!” In fact, you’re doing this while thinking that (however regrettable), it’s OK that poor people are getting it in the shorts because of high energy prices, because it means that rich people like you will have to consume less. Well, when does that part start?
Like I said before, you’re telling me there’s a crisis. But your own behavior doesn’t show it. Why shouldn’t I conclude that you’re a huge hypocrite who doesn’t practice what he preaches?
You can conclude what you like, Robert. I don’t claim perfection or even a close approximation thereof. Sooner or later, most of us contradict ourselves to one degree or another. We fly a great deal, sometimes for pleasure and often for volunteering. (I flew to the Philippines to give lectures in January; my wife is volunteering this week in Africa.) Could someone else do it in our stead? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
great list! would you lay with me in a field of stone is the breath taker! happy grading