The first few are little better than buying carbon offsets, IMHO.
> don't have children
This still leaves the rest of humanity! We need to change the system so that human existence is more sustainable. While having fewer humans on earth might seem to make the challenge slightly smaller, if we have a huge generation of people in retirement and a tiny fraction of working age folks who are both supporting the older generation and rebuilding all our industry, that actually makes the problem harder!
> vegetarian diet
Looking at the bigger picture, if you discard of your vegetarian foods scraps in the trash, they get converted to methane, having emissions on the same order of magnitude as cattle emissions. And we need ruminants to provide the fertilizer to soil to make it into a positive carbon sink.
We must instead look at soil, and using soil as a carbon sink. Modern industrial farming causes huge amounts of carbon release from soil, and that includes organic farming on the industrial scale, like what one could buy in Whole Foods. We instead need to shift agriculture to modes (e.g. no-till) that regenerate soil rather than depleting it. And that will include some animals. Preventing a burn of a gallon of gas has clear and definable implications, and if we stopped all gas burning tomorrow, that would be fantastic. However cutting out all beef tomorrow would leave us in a tough spot for our food system, everything is far far more complex when it comes to out agricultural web. We must come up with a food system that is carbon neutral, and preferably carbon negative. That means composting, no landfills, and some degree of animals. Fixing the food system requires systems change, just like fixing industrial processes does, and personal action can not cross that gap.
As far as personal things one can do, I would add a few more:
1. Replace natural gas furnaces and water heaters with heat pumps. These are a carbon win even if tour grid is burning a lot of natural gas, because heat pumps move 3+ units of heat doe every unit of energy consumed. If you can't do that now insulate the hell out of your home (a good idea anyway)
2. Get involved in local politics, to force local policies to encourage systemic change. A local government with a policy of only financing construction with carbon-neutral steel and cement has a chance of forcing market change, where personal action has no chance.
I do a lot of your list, because I want to do something, but I think we need to realize that it's not really close to enough. We need to change all of society, and personal responsibility will not get us there.
> Looking at the bigger picture, if you discard of your vegetarian foods scraps in the trash, they get converted to methane, having emissions on the same order of magnitude as cattle emissions
Oh, c'mon. 1. No they don't. 2. Cows' methaney burps aren't the only greenhouse gas issue w/ animal agriculture. Those animals definitionally eat more food than they produce (in in the case of cows, it's by a large factor). Meat is inherently an inefficient form of food. 3. Don't throw your food scraps in the trash—it's easy to compost.
> need ruminants to provide the fertilizer to soil to make it into a positive carbon sink
No. No you don't. Composting works just fine. But furthermore, the number of cattle we have today is laughably excessive for talking about fertilizer production. It's not even worth mentioning at this point in time.
> don't have children
This still leaves the rest of humanity! We need to change the system so that human existence is more sustainable. While having fewer humans on earth might seem to make the challenge slightly smaller, if we have a huge generation of people in retirement and a tiny fraction of working age folks who are both supporting the older generation and rebuilding all our industry, that actually makes the problem harder!
> vegetarian diet
Looking at the bigger picture, if you discard of your vegetarian foods scraps in the trash, they get converted to methane, having emissions on the same order of magnitude as cattle emissions. And we need ruminants to provide the fertilizer to soil to make it into a positive carbon sink.
We must instead look at soil, and using soil as a carbon sink. Modern industrial farming causes huge amounts of carbon release from soil, and that includes organic farming on the industrial scale, like what one could buy in Whole Foods. We instead need to shift agriculture to modes (e.g. no-till) that regenerate soil rather than depleting it. And that will include some animals. Preventing a burn of a gallon of gas has clear and definable implications, and if we stopped all gas burning tomorrow, that would be fantastic. However cutting out all beef tomorrow would leave us in a tough spot for our food system, everything is far far more complex when it comes to out agricultural web. We must come up with a food system that is carbon neutral, and preferably carbon negative. That means composting, no landfills, and some degree of animals. Fixing the food system requires systems change, just like fixing industrial processes does, and personal action can not cross that gap.
As far as personal things one can do, I would add a few more:
1. Replace natural gas furnaces and water heaters with heat pumps. These are a carbon win even if tour grid is burning a lot of natural gas, because heat pumps move 3+ units of heat doe every unit of energy consumed. If you can't do that now insulate the hell out of your home (a good idea anyway)
2. Get involved in local politics, to force local policies to encourage systemic change. A local government with a policy of only financing construction with carbon-neutral steel and cement has a chance of forcing market change, where personal action has no chance.
I do a lot of your list, because I want to do something, but I think we need to realize that it's not really close to enough. We need to change all of society, and personal responsibility will not get us there.