IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT

David Suzuki used to have this metaphor he'd use when talking about climate change. He likened the problem and our inaction to a car driving toward a cliff with all the passengers in the backseat fighting about who is going to stop the vehicle. He was close.

The part he missed was that when the fighting got really bad Darla pulled the emergency brake and everyone hopped out. Then she hopped into the front seat, Thomas hailed an Uber, Quan rented a Lexus, Sherry hotwired a dead motorcycle she found, Fredrik converted his pedal bike to diesel, and Larissa bought a 2021 Mercedes-Benz G 550 (gun metal grey with a set of pink fuzzy dice.) ...with which they all raced toward the cliff (blaring their A/C and their own favourite dance beats, naturally.)

Decades into this discussion, we like to talk about broad categories for sources of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Typically, any assessment you find will be broken down to a handful of categories, such as: agriculture, industry, commercial, residential, energy, and transportation, say. But we talk in these broadest of terms largely to obfuscate reality.

If you drill down to look at the subcategories within each of these, you find the most productive (worst) source is not among the categories we like to blame for climate change. The bulk of our greenhouse gasses do not come from mills or mines or industrial-scale cattle farms but light-duty vehicles. (That is: cars [yes, your car]).

Together, small personal vehicles produce more than twice the GHG emissions as the next largest transportation source: medium- and heavy-duty trucks. NASA has been spelling this out since 2010. And the US Environmental Protection Agency agrees that thirty-years-worth of data makes all this clear.

US EPA - Fast Facts on Transportation Greenhouse Gas Emissions

NASA - "Road Transportation Emerges as Key Driver of Warming"

What does this look like on the ground? Well, Germany had one of the most aggressive greenhouse gas reduction strategies on earth a decade ago: down 40% by 2020. In a country with such large energy and manufacturing sectors this was seen as effectively impossible. But they did it. By 2020 the country had invested almost $600 billion toward low-carbon energy solutions and cut GHG emissions across industry, agriculture, and more by a tremendous 28%. But they missed their mark precisely because the auto industry, in one of the largest vehicle manufacturing nations on earth, was not on board. Vehicle ownership boomed as the economy grew and this resulted in, instead of reductions, a 2.3% increase of emissions in the already gargantuan transportation sector. So, you see, you can do everything imaginable and more and still fail by not sufficiently addressing internal combustion-powered elephant in the room.

All that is to say, individuals have more agency and responsibility than we tend to think. And, if you were to ask me, if you want to do something about climate change, I'd say you should have kids and eat steak but drop your onerous and costly dependence on diesel, gas, and, yes, even electric vehicles.