Because you can't really have your cake and eat it too. Way too large a fraction of the lifestyle of living in that house and filling it with things requires petroleum-derivatives to either make those things or lubricate those things.
https://innovativewealth.com/inflation-monitor/what-products-made-from-petroleum-outside-of-gasoline/
That depends on the house, and on what's in it, and how people live in that house. I suspect that you are thinking of North America. Almost no-one else in the world lives in the wasteful and extravagant ways of North America.
Australia does. :)
But you're right. There's a huge gap between living in tents and lowering our emissions enough to stop global warming. The changes required aren't all that massive either.
To paraphrase an MMM line, "One can live a rich, fulfilling, life even when living sustainably."
That’s interesting. Where do you get those figures? For instance,
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Australia/United-States/Environment seems to say otherwise.
People who think technology can solve this problem don't understand that technology hasn't even provided clean water to 2 billion people yet or 4 billion with proper toilet provision.
And at the other end of the scale the richest 1% are beyond the control of any national government: technology isn't going to stop them emitting greenhouse gases at whatever rate they want.
Climate change is not a technology problem, it's a people problem, and that's why there are no solutions.
Clean water is an economic scarcity problem, not a technology problem.
Clean water and sanitation is a people problem: solutions are available and affordable and are not implemented. Climate change is also a people problem: solutions are available and are affordable and are not implemented.
Just look at the people on this forum: all relatively rich, all well educated, all well informed, all conscious of and regulating their spending to a greater or lesser degree. And yet, still driving long distances for pleasure, flying long distances for pleasure, living in (and creating) bigger spaces than they need, buying carbon heavy out of season foods and new technology. All of us every day contributing more than our fair share to climate change. None of us prepared to make major change on our own account, and none of us voting for politicians who are willing and able to make those changes for us.
Examples of those behaviours are all over every single journal on the forum, so it's undeniable. Some people forgo some of them, but no-one forgoes all of them and forgoing all of them is the only thing that currently gets us to carbon neutral, and as matters stand is the only thing that will. And it's not going to happen, because that's how humans, individually and en masse, are.
I agree. There’s a lot of nuance in these things.
I chose to live in the ACT (a territory, rather than a state), where we pay for 100% renewable electricity, because the government we elected has paid for all our electricity needs to be generated by renewables from power plants they’ve built in multiple locations in Australia. However, all our electricity comes from the state we’re surrounded by (NSW), which means the electricity we actually receive is 70% non renewable. Of course, one third of Australian homes have solar panels, leading the world. The states and territories are having problems with the power grid because of the amount.
The ACT is governed by a Green/Labor coalition, and has been for many years. We have quite a number of climate friendly policies, and have been mocked by the media for them (we were paying more for our electricity than anyone else because of having so many renewables, until the oil price increase a couple of years ago). Our federal representatives are all left wing, so we have done as much as we can to get climate friendly politicians. The current federal government has increased our climate friendly policies dramatically, and is trying to turn around years of climate sceptic federal government. And yet they’ve increased oil and gas exploration.
I halved my water and energy usage some years ago when I made some changes to my house, but I still live in a large house. I do fly. When I fly, I pay more because I tick the carbon offsets box, but is my flight actually carbon neutral? I’ve recently been on a couple of cruises with companies who are certified as having zero emissions, but do they really? In theory, this means that my recent travel was carbon neutral, but any is worse than doing none at all. I grow a lot of my vegetables, and usually have grown more than half of what’s in my meal, but not the meat, which is the most problematic. I have 23 different fruit trees on my suburban land, so I’m self sufficient in fruit, and also have done a reasonable amount to increase my tree canopy. I’ve changed the water flow of my land, so rain takes longer to leave it, and just soaks into the ground. This enabled me to disconnect my storm water (reducing pollution in the river system). The ACT has also built large wetlands to increase the quality of our stormwater and reduce downstream water pollution.
