Event name:Mindful Consumption
Event time and place:3-4pm 2113 STAMP
For my Excursion, I went to the Lecture by Dr. Baiocchi on Mindful Consumption on Nov 16 in STAMP. The talk was about the causes and effects of the levels of consumption in the US, as well as effective methods to decrease anthropogenic climate change. According to Dr. Baiocchi, instead of trying to make things more efficient, we should be trying to reduce our consumption of things that produce lots of greenhouse gasses. Improving the efficiency of those things can be helpful, but people have the tendency to just do more of that thing, which can make it counterintuitive. If we don't do anything to decrease our consumption of GHGs, climate change could have some drastic consequences. Weather patterns would become more erratic and large chunks of land would become uninhabitable. Dr. Baiocchi also talked about how these changes would disproportionately affect poor people and people that live closer to the equator. Some ways that we can decrease our carbon footprint is by eating less meat and using public transportation. In his presentation, Dr. Baiocchi included a graph that showed the carbon footprint of different lifestyles. The richest 1% of people had a much higher carbon footprint than most other people. The carbon footprint for college students was spread out, which makes sense since college students can have very different lifestyles( some people commute long distances, some people don’t leave their dorm room).
I found the main points convincing, but mostly because it confirmed what I already believed. I appreciated that he mentioned that global warming would disproportionately affect poor people and people that live near the equator. I think it explains part of why the people in charge of our government are so apathetic about climate change. The richest 1% of people having a higher carbon footprint than everyone else would also contribute to this in my opinion. I don’t have a lot of faith that the people that are directly profiting from industries that cause high GHG emissions (like oil) are going to do anything that would hurt those industries. To work around this, companies do greenwashing, which is when they pretend they are actually trying to slow down climate change, when they are not really doing anything that would actually help. An example of this from the lecture was planting trees with no regard for biodiversity and the needs of the region they are being planted in. Electric vehicles were also an example from the lecture, subsidies for EV owners don’t actually encourage normal people to buy EVs because EVs are very expensive. I agree that both of those are ineffective and that we can’t let ourselves be appeased by them. We have to work towards actual change. An effective way to do this is to focus on local governments which have been better at actively trying to decrease carbon emissions. I can see how this would be more effective, local politicians would have less attention on them from larger companies. Decreasing our meat intake could also help decrease our individual carbon output, especially bigger animals like cows. Beef farming has a much higher carbon footprint than other types of farming, like dairy farming and fish farming. Eating less beef (or less meat in general) could have a significant impact on your carbon footprint, if you are able to. Some people might not be able to find fresh produce near them, so it is understandable if they cannot make thatchoice. People that have the ability to make choices like that should do their best to decrease their carbon footprint in whatever way they can, whether that is eating less meat, or using public transportation.