SH52: The Climate Crisis — What's Going On?
How many trees would you have to plant to offset your carbon footprint?
Which countries are environmental leaders? And which are laggards?
In this episode, the humans discuss environmentalism and sustainability. Looking at how humanity is doing globally, how Canada matches up to the rest of the world, and what you can do to help.
Standard Humans is hosted by Aidan Dennehy and Evan.
Shownotes:
This Is Your Brain on Pollution - Freakonomics Podcast Ep. 472
Carbon Neutral Goals by Country
Economic Freedom Index - Bhutan
Country CO2 Emissions per Capita
List of countries by population
Economy of Trinidad and Tobago
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Evan: I think honestly, in Canada, and in the U.S., because we have so much exposure to nature around us, we take it for granted. Because we're like, I can drive out camping, like I did this weekend, two and a half hours in my gas powered car. And just hang out there and make a ton of garbage while I'm there and then throw it away. And then, it takes away the pressure to like actually make more sustainable sort of stuff.
[00:00:23] Evan: Yeah. Welcome back. It's been a little bit due to various working and cottaging. Maybe not more than normal. I don't know.
[00:00:33] Aidan: Actually, I was a little bit ahead before this, on the editing so that there hasn't been a delay yet. And we'll see what happens in the future.
[00:00:40] Evan: Well then hello listener after may be the normal amount of time.
[00:00:44] Evan: Much for you cottaging and for me, going around Gatineau has been done. How was the Cottage?
[00:00:50] Aidan: Cottage was excellent. The goats were fantastic.
[00:00:55] Evan: What?
[00:00:55] Aidan: Oh, yeah, it it was just a guest house on a farm, a little outside of Peterborough. And they had all sorts of animals. And we got like fresh eggs from chickens, maybe like 50, or a hundred meters away from the house.
[00:01:07] Evan: What is this place called?
[00:01:08] Aidan: It was an Airbnb, it was like Cielo farm or something like that.
[00:01:13] Evan: That's amazing.
[00:01:14] Aidan: Yeah, actually, it's a public listing. So like, why not just give them a little plug there? It was a great experience.
[00:01:21] Evan: Holy cow. That's that sounds like the most cricket and me place to ever exist.
[00:01:25] Aidan: It does actually, it's pretty chill. And it has a stupendous view because their house is like a little bit on a hill, like overlooking, just like big fields and farms.
[00:01:34] Aidan: Would recommend. I'll leave the link in the show notes.
[00:01:38] Evan: Yeah, these guys are going to be like, oh thank you. Because we got one new visitor and it was Evan.
[00:01:45] Aidan: Hey, that's the standard humans effect. When we check someone out who they go viral.
[00:01:52] Evan: Yeah. We're going to leave an Amazon link to buy the farm on Amazon. And so we get 10%.
[00:01:58] Aidan: Oh, that'd be great. I've heard that rural real estate agents make a killing. So like, if we can get a cut of that, like cool.
[00:02:04] Evan: Oh yeah. This is what the whole podcast is actually been about.
[00:02:08] Aidan: It's a play to get into rural and farm real estate.
[00:02:11] Evan: Sweet rural money,
[00:02:13] Aidan: Perfect. That's where the real cash is at, all those fools moving to the city.
[00:02:18] Evan: But that this is kind of related. Sorry, if somebody was excited, that's not actually what this one's about. This one is about environmentalist and, our individual role in it. If this seems pretty random, it started from a click hole, just like a Google hole or a Duck Duck Go hole.
[00:02:39] Aidan: Okay, thank you for elaborating on that. Wasn't quite sure what a click hole was.
[00:02:43] Evan: I don't know if I'm using that term actually correctly, but basically you just hear something and then you Google it and then you Google something related to that. And then you click on a link from there. And then it's just two hours just learning about those of random subject.
[00:02:57] Aidan: I'm familiar. It's both a great time and a can be a time suck.
[00:03:01] Evan: Because of that. I'm actually pretty well versed on the fino-russian winter war.
[00:03:05] Aidan: An excellent subject.
[00:03:07] Evan: No. So this one kind of starts with a story. So a week or two ago, I was, had to pretty chill work. Yeah at the gym because they're open again. So I've been able to go back. At the gym and then I was like, you know what, I'm going to do a little bit of a cool-down maybe walking a treadmill for like 10 minutes, 15 minutes. See what's up.
[00:03:27] Evan: And the treadmill was playing the news, which I never usually watch, but I was like, I don't want to bother with this, with the controls. I'll just watch it. And I'm all across the news there was that UN report that's like, we're all gonna die. That obviously isn't what it actually said, but it was the media has taken it very drastically. They're, they're very drastic about it, which honestly, I think is maybe a good thing.
[00:04:03] Aidan: Yeah, in terms of sparking action, that's probably a good thing. And it's also just the media's thing.
[00:04:08] Evan: Yeah, exactly. They just want you to click on it. And if it's, like the planet is going to explode, you're like, I'm going to click on that.
[00:04:14] Aidan: Not a bad headline. Maybe that's what we'll name this podcast.
[00:04:17] Evan: If this is worrying anyone the actual report, isn't actually that intense as the news is. It is interesting though. I've, I've checked out. Some of them haven't heard the whole thing cause it's really long. I've looked up more about it. But basically seeing that instantly gave me a stomach ache. And between that and the recent Ontario forest fires. How have you guys in Toronto gotten like smog from it?
[00:04:43] Aidan: Not that I've seen, but I'm going to be honest, I don't go outside every day. So.
[00:04:48] Evan: I guess I should rephrase it. Have you guys gotten more smog from it than your usual Toronto smog?
[00:04:54] Aidan: That is a good point. Not that I've noticed, I've been thinking I should check the air quality more often. Cause I don't really usually do that, but I haven't noticed any visible smog.
[00:05:05] Evan: I am not sure what you, what you do with that information. Maybe like, or a gas mask outside of them.
[00:05:11] Aidan: Or just go outside less often.
[00:05:12] Evan: Side note. I'm drinking to you right now. I hope that's not being picked up in my mic and just grossing everyone out.
[00:05:17] Aidan: I wasn't hearing it that you made some great like tea preparing noises at the beginning.
[00:05:22] Aidan: Lots of clicking and clanking and whatnot.
[00:05:25] Evan: Some new Japanese green tea I bought today. Very delicious. Um, But yeah, here in Ottawa or Kanata, I guess, we had a few days maybe seven in total, five to seven, somewhere where it was like, it was this weird layer of smog. And it was super freaky. And it was, from the forest fires, the air just coming from you know, the Northwest and coming down on us.
[00:05:49] Evan: But those things together. Yeah. That just gave me like an instant stomach ache. And I think with all these environmental issues. there are a few things going on, like obviously changes are being made at like the governmental level, but I think it is causing more and more people, more and more sort of mental freakout.
[00:06:08] Evan: Because we're hearing all these things, but on a personal level, with a problem that big, that's just basically like too much pollution. Most people like don't know what to do. And so that was that was my thinking. I was like, I want to do something, but I have to know what to do.
[00:06:24] Evan: What am I going to go drive up to the Northwest and pour a bucket of water on there? Maybe.
[00:06:28] Evan: So basically what I wanted to do here was find ways that one individual person could actually do something. I find there's a lot of, conflicting information too. Because it's like, oh, if you want to help the planet, you can go vegan.
[00:06:43] Evan: It's oh no, actually grains are destroying forests because of farmland. So you actually got to go paleo or go local. Or like, you should have an electric car. It's oh no, the batteries are super bad. You actually got to take the bus. So yeah, I just thought we could, first sort of go over some facts about Canada. Some of them I found very surprising in my research and then do the little carbon footprint quiz. But this is a more interesting one because it has some more concrete results at the end.
[00:07:15] Aidan: Ooh. That sounds very interesting, actually.
[00:07:18] Evan: Yeah. Basically, I'm just making what I wanted about two weeks ago. It's like what, what is actually going on and what can I do?
[00:07:27] Evan: Am I going to oversell my tea? Oh, wow. You know, It's coming out really slow. So you just keep pouring it into your cup because you think it's going to just like peter out, but then it just keeps going constantly, and you're like, ah.
[00:07:38] Evan: Anyway, so yeah, let's start with some Canada information.
[00:07:42] Aidan: Big prediction. Canada's doing shit with all its mining and whatnot, in terms of the environment and its goals.
[00:07:49] Evan: I'll just say, this this is on visual capitalist.com. I'm not saying this is like an infallible resource, but this data here matches up pretty closely. Like it's not like wildly inconsistent with all the other data I've found. It seems like generally okay. But the specifics might be contested.
[00:08:07] Evan: This is called the race to net zero carbon neutral goals by country. And, I came across this first because. A few months ago, China instituted a carbon cap and trade system nationally, which they'd never had anything like that before. Huge moves for the carbon in the atmosphere being gone. Actually not gone, that would suck. That would be pretty bad.
[00:08:29] Aidan: You need some carpet.
[00:08:30] Evan: Yeah. you need a little bit you need a normal amount. Not too much. Not too little. Otherwise the trees are like borough, but anyway, so that brought me here. And they have all the carbon neutral goals by country.
[00:08:43] Evan: And there's currently one country. Uh, hope you haven't looked. There's currently one country in the world that is pretty much by all accounts, carbon neutral or sorry, carbon negative. They actually absorb more carbon than they transmit. There's a couple of more that claim it. And it's possible, but it seems more dubious.
[00:09:03] Evan: But yeah. Do you know what that country is?
[00:09:06] Aidan: Yeah. Maybe send me the links after, cause I did glance through the article already. Unfortunately. Shout out to Bhutan for having both the best flag in the world and being carbon neutral or achieving their goals.
[00:09:17] Evan: Oh, the dragon?
[00:09:18] Aidan: Yeah. Love Bhutan.
[00:09:20] Evan: Yeah, me too. And they've got cool monasteries. Like what a place.
[00:09:24] Aidan: Yeah. What's not to love about Bhutan.
[00:09:26] Evan: Yeah. Bhutan is currently well, the only country that I've found, like pretty much every source saying is carbon negative. Another one mentioned is Surinam another one I've seen as well as Morocco.
[00:09:37] Aidan: Where is Suriname?
[00:09:39] Evan: It is the north east coast of south America
[00:09:43] Aidan: Ah, okay.
[00:09:44] Evan: And they speak Dutch they're, weirdly.
[00:09:47] Aidan: It's the Americas, man, this shit just happens. I don't know. Colonialism, am I right?
[00:09:52] Evan: So yeah, Butan is the one that I found pretty much every source agree upon is carbon negative. Pretty interestingly, they have super green energy. They have environmental protection laws designating that no less than 60% of their country has to be like undisturbed forest or undisturbed nature.
[00:10:10] Aidan: Oh, okay. That would help.
[00:10:13] Evan: Yeah. And they, they did it very early compared to other countries, basically they just put less of a pressure on modernizing and industrializing and more on sustainability, like earlier than a lot of other countries.
[00:10:24] Evan: And I think, if there's any country to learn from, for this sort of thing, it would be them. Granted it's a lot easier to do these things in a largely homogenous, smaller country than it would be in a, very diverse, larger country, like Canada, or even more so U.S. But there are definitely things that we could learn from them just about like prioritization and balancing business and the economy with the environment.
[00:10:48] Aidan: What even are their exports. I know nothing about them other than monks and the dragon.
[00:10:53] Evan: Well, One thing I know about them is that they have, I believe they have free energy. So they dissuade people from heating or cooling their homes with their own like gas stoves and whatnot. I guess you wouldn't call it with that, but like, or sorry, burning wood themselves. They have free energy. That's what I saw on some sites that I cannot verify.
[00:11:11] Aidan: After three years in the moderately free category Bhutan's economy fell back into the ranks of the mostly unfree this year. The government has a lot of tariffs and other restrictions on trade.
[00:11:21] Evan: The King? The have a King still
[00:11:23] Aidan: Oh, no, they, I transitioned from absolute monarchy to constitutional parliamentary democracy in 2008.
[00:11:31] Evan: Wow.
[00:11:31] Aidan: That's late
[00:11:33] Evan: That's really cool. Actually. What the heck. Places with Kings, I think it's so cool though.
[00:11:38] Aidan: An absolute monarchy until 2008.
[00:11:41] Evan: it's actually wild.
[00:11:42] Aidan: Reading what is this heritage.org article? It says Butan has one of the world's smallest and least developed economies, even late into the 20th century. The landlocked countries, largely agrarian with few roads, electricity and no modern hospitals.
[00:11:56] Evan: That I believe is both like a sort of a cause and an effect of their like, priorities or net carbon negativity, less focused on industrialization. It was ranked the happiest or one of the happiest countries in the world. So that's quite interesting.
[00:12:12] Aidan: But yeah, no. Definitely gets to your point that like, it would be easier for them, but that's also partly just because of their way of thinking or prioritization, as you said.
[00:12:23] Evan: And yeah, being smaller and more homogenous as well, does make things easier for that sort of thing.
[00:12:29] Aidan: It's easier when you have an absolute monarchy.
[00:12:31] Evan: Yeah. That's what I've learned. We need to get a king of Canada. To have absolute power. And then it's David Suzuki is the king surprise,
[00:12:40] Aidan: Anyways off that tangent. Thank you, Bhutan. Let's see, I guess now we know there's only one country with that carbon neutral or even negative status.
[00:12:52] Evan: the, yeah,
[00:12:53] Evan: Carbon negative is a thing that take in more than they expell.
[00:12:56] Aidan: Is that all because of all the trees they're able to take in?
[00:12:59] Evan: They have a lot of forest and yeah, relatively little mining oil and gas industry like that. Um, And not that densely populated. Probably more than Canada. But that's not hard.
[00:13:13] Evan: So once we heard about that, we see if the CO2 emissions of how it's net negative for some countries, well one to three countries, on worldometers.info, Uh, this is another site where the information like the actual numbers, maybe like contested, but the general gist is inline with the rest of the information I've seen. So for total CO2 emissions, do you want to guess which countries do the most total?
[00:13:47] Aidan: The most total CO2 emissions? And this is current? So like last couple of years or?
[00:13:53] Evan: Yeah, it's all a couple of years. Actually, it's 2016 for the total.
[00:13:56] Aidan: Okay. Because top one would have to be China. I know that they've used more concrete in last, like 10 years than the U S did in the whole like 20th century.
[00:14:07] Evan: Wow.
[00:14:08] Aidan: Yeah. Like They are building like mad.
[00:14:10] Evan: And they built the Hoover Dam.
[00:14:11] Aidan: Yeah. China would, I would say hard, like number one there. U S would definitely be up there.
[00:14:18] Evan: U.S. Is number two.
[00:14:19] Aidan: Ah, got them. And then next, India has a lot of people, but not that much, I'll say like industry or I shouldn't say industry what's the other word infrastructure. That's what I'm going for. So I would say they might be lower than like maybe other European countries, even though they're
[00:14:37] Evan: They are number three.
[00:14:39] Aidan: just the EU as a whole.
[00:14:41] Evan: No, No india.
[00:14:41] Aidan: Oh, India is number three. Interesting okay.
[00:14:44] Evan: Relative to the population, they have relatively little infrastructure, but when you're, when you're dealing with a continent's worth of people in one country, you're still going to have fricking load.
[00:14:56] Aidan: Good on them. I mean like that, it's a sign, I guess, a lot of ways of developing and people coming out of extreme poverty. Which is nice. I mean, Hopefully going forwards, we'll figure out ways to have that those not be tied together,
[00:15:08] Evan: That's the main thing. Because when a country's poor, you can't really ask people to like put sustainable uh, growth over like, will your family eat this week?
[00:15:19] Evan: well, We could make a shit ton of money and like, have, the general population, like be much more healthy and well fed. If we like sell all this oil we have. Or we could
[00:15:30] Evan: like put more priority on sustainability. Like you'll never get elected that way. Cause people are like, I want to eat.
[00:15:36] Aidan: I don't know, There's a whole double standard in there too of all the developed countries went through the phase of developing and they put out all sorts of CO2 just in getting to the point or the quality of life we have now, then we're saying to everyone else, it's like, no, no, but you can't do that because you have too many people and if you did that would just mess up the entire planet.
[00:15:56] Evan: Yeah, exactly. Hopefully just more sustainable ways of developing. Well, That's what has to happen.
[00:16:02] Aidan: Yeah, there was a lot of interesting stuff on that in Bill Gates' book. He lays out all of the big categories or he did lay out all the big categories that CO2 comes from and where we are right now on all. Whether we need like new innovations or just new policies or whatnot was a very good read. You'd probably enjoy.
[00:16:20] Evan: Yeah, I'm sure I would actually, and related to like where we are now, for most, or for a lot of north America and almost all of Europe The CO2 emissions actually have already peaked and are on the down now. But again, it's because they're pretty much done developing.
[00:16:35] Aidan: Yeah, we don't have too many more buildings to build. Or like we do, but like it's a small amount.
[00:16:43] Evan: Um, And then when people yeah, have guaranteed food and shelter, then there'll be like, then they might actually choose to do sustainable things or to make sustainable, like environmentally sustainable choices over gain an income because they don't need it as bad.
[00:16:57] Evan: But yeah, I'll just read the top 10.
[00:17:01] Aidan: Wait, I'm going to guess Canada isn't on the top 10.
[00:17:06] Evan: I'm just total emissions. Like not per capita. Just per country?
[00:17:09] Aidan: Per country, yeah, I'm going to say maybe top 20, but not top 10.
[00:17:13] Evan: Canada is top 10.
[00:17:15] Aidan: Oh, no Canada.
[00:17:17] Evan: But yes, it's China with 10 billion CO2 emissions. That's tons for that year. And then us has half that at 5 billion. China has half that at 2.5 billion. Russia has 1.6. So Russia is number four, Japan. Number five, Germany number six, Canada number seven, Iran eight South Korea nine and Indonesia 10.
[00:17:38] Aidan: What was Canada's gross?
[00:17:40] Evan: Yeah, just total was 675 million tons.
[00:17:44] Aidan: Okay. That is actually very in line with per capita, with the U S which I guess makes sense. Very similar lifestyles.
[00:17:51] Evan: Yeah. I initially was like, okay, Canada's got so few people, we can't possibly be in the top 10 like for total emissions, but we totally are. And it's I think like, honestly, Canada and the us are like some of the least sustainable lifestyles kind of out there.
[00:18:09] Evan: One thing, yeah, one thing I really don't like about a lot of Canada, that's kind of unavoidable with just the population density and stuff. Well, It's not unavoidable is that you have there's a lot of pressure to drive everywhere, super car based society.
[00:18:22] Aidan: Yeah, there are pockets where you don't. I don't own a car because I live in Toronto, which is real nice. And I enjoy it. Like I prefer not to drive, so it's cool. But if I'm ever outside of, I'm going to say like maybe Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, you probably need a car.
[00:18:39] Evan: And now that Ottawa has a train.
[00:18:41] Aidan: You've got to train. Is it working now?
[00:18:42] Evan: It's working now? I took it today.
[00:18:45] Aidan: They've got the doors figured out?
[00:18:46] Evan: Maybe I took it today and I was fine. Ottawa, I would say you can get by without a car. I would say Kanata is the farthest you can live and get by without a car. If you live any of the like, Stittsville like anywhere more on the outskirts, you definitely need a car. But uh, even if people live downtown, a lot of people, just because that's what is the norm for us.
[00:19:07] Evan: Even if you can easily get places by train and bus, a lot of people will just drive anyway, because it's just ingrained in us. If you want to go somewhere, you've got to drive. Or even a lot of people if they live like a 15 minutes walk from a grocery store because of we got like the Costco model where you just get a ton of shit, like once a week or once every two weeks you drive two minutes and get there and just load it, load up your minivan and drive back.
[00:19:31] Evan: It's too bad, but I think for stuff like that, it can't really be relied on like for each person to make an individual choice to be like, I'm going to walk, I'm going to take the bus. I think it has to be infrastructure, like increase amount of buses, make buses electric. Instead of giant block of houses, giant block of stores, maybe more like, in a lot of the rest of the world, it's just house have store house has store.
[00:19:54] Aidan: Very walkable community. You can get to every place that you need to go by walk.
[00:19:59] Evan: Walk in public transport centered sort of places. yeah, when I was staying in France, this is just a product of, because it's a very old city. It was, it would be like hugely impractical to drive most places because driving so annoying, like the streets are tiny, you can't park anywhere and you wouldn't ever need to.
[00:20:17] Evan: Cause there's a butcher, a bakery, a grocery store, like a liquor store, like a bar restaurant within like three blocks. It's pretty much anywhere. Or like within, let's say max, like 20 to 30, 30 minutes walk. So I think, I think aiming towards That sort of model would be much more sustainable.
[00:20:38] Evan: Another thing is because we have a very large fossil fuel oil and gas industry still, and a statistic I heard this is not verified, but what I heard was that the U.S. Gets more oil actually from Canada than Saudi Arabia.
[00:20:53] Aidan: That is odd. Yeah. I guess we are much closer, so it'd be cheaper to transport, though, cargo ships are pretty cheap way to transport anything.
[00:21:02] Evan: And we're just a big country. I think honestly, in Canada, and in the us, because we have so much exposure to nature around us. We take it for granted, because we're like, I can drive out camping. Like I did this weekend, two and a half hours in my gas powered car. And just hang out there and make a ton of garbage while I'm there and then throw it away. And then, it takes away the pressure to like actually make more sustainable sort of stuff.
[00:21:27] Evan: So basically why I think that we're so high CO2 in Canada because everybody drives everywhere because there's not as much infrastructure to not. And because of our industry. But now let's go CO2 emissions per capita.
[00:21:43] Aidan: Yeah, I was going to say, our per capita is going to be off the charts. Cause I looked up the like countries by population on Wikipedia. And we're like 37th in terms of total population. And you said we're seventh in terms of total emissions.
[00:21:56] Evan: This is interesting, actually. So obviously, yeah, with China and India are in the top three, obviously they're going to be much lower for per capita because they're playing in the billions. We're not even playing in the a hundred million, so we're not even playing at half a hundred million.
[00:22:14] Aidan: Are we like top
[00:22:15] Evan: We, we are still top 10 per capita. This was actually really interesting. So for CO2 emissions per capita, the number one, this, I guess isn't that surprising Is Qatar. With 37 tons per person per year of CO2 emissions. Uh, And then this one was a bit surprising Montenegro after that.
[00:22:33] Aidan: Is that one of those like micronations
[00:22:36] Evan: Yeah.
[00:22:37] Aidan: is that one of the ones that's all like billionaires with their like yachts and jets?
[00:22:41] Evan: Maybe it's because everybody has Ferrari's that they tried better or I dunno, or everyone has a yachts that are like gas-powered I dunno.
[00:22:49] Aidan: I guess. Yeah.
[00:22:50] Evan: Montenegro, Kuwait. Not that surprising. And then number four is super surprising to me. Like, I to me. Like, I don't understand this at all. Trinidad and Tobago with twenty-five tons per capita. Like them, I don't know if they have a giant oil and gas industry or? All the Arabian peninsula countries to me makes total sense. Cause like huge oil industry. Like you got all the other rich dudes right in their g wagons. Like I get that. It's hot. Everybody's blasting the AC, makes sense. But Montenegro in Trinidad and Tobago, I'm like what? I don't understand.
[00:23:29] Aidan: Apparently it's the wealthiest country pretty much in the Caribbean.
[00:23:34] Evan: Oh well, I have been there. It's lovely.
[00:23:36] Aidan: Yeah. And the fifth largest by GDP in the Americas, at least like their economy, but. Ah, it's the leading Caribbean producer of oil and gas. Its economy is heavily dependent upon these resources, but it also supplies, manufactured goods, notably foods and beverages, as well as cement to the Caribbean region. Oh, that'd be big.
[00:23:57] Evan: Okay, this makes a lot of sense. Cause I was, I was really confused by that one.
[00:24:02] Aidan: Yeah. That's like oil and gas is 40% of their GDP and 80% of export. But only 5% of employment, which is interesting. That might be a lot of foreign contractors or something going on there.
[00:24:14] Evan: There is a decent amount of income inequality. Then, so on number five, the UAE United Arab Emirates makes sense. After that Oman, again makes sense. And then Canada, we're at number seven. At 18.5 tons per person per year CO2 emissions.
[00:24:34] Evan: And honestly, it seems like all of these so far. These are pretty much having been to only one of the other ones from what I've heard are all mainly car based nations and uh, whatnot, but it seems like a lot of it is just mainly to do with an oil and gas industry.
[00:24:53] Aidan: That seems to be a common thread through all of them. Like including Canada, like we're probably, I would guess the least dependent or that would be the smallest, like piece of the pie.
[00:25:03] Evan: I would guess for the least dependent, because I'm not coming from the prairie's here. I'm not coming from Berta.
[00:25:11] Aidan: Yeah, we've got such a large country that like, it really depends on where you are. Like this wikipedia article is saying that logging and energy industries are two of our most important. And we also have a big manufacturing center with automobiles, and aircraft's being really big. And we also have a big like seafood industry as well as just like software and entertainment.
[00:25:35] Evan: We just do everything at a smaller scale than the states, except for actually, except for the naturalism. We do that kind of bigger.
[00:25:43] Aidan: Define naturalism.
[00:25:44] Evan: Like trees, rocks, water. Got a lot of trees and rocks and water here. But then yeah. So rounding out the top 10, I Brunei, Luxenberg and Bahrain. Brunei has a Sultan. That's a cool fact about Brunei.
[00:26:00] Aidan: That's interesting, actually I assumed Luxembourg was all like bankers. Is that just their lifestyle?
[00:26:07] Evan: I assume it's lifestyle. Cause everyone's very well off. So maybe everyone's got a ton of cars and like there's no buses cause everyone's rich. So they'd just drive everywhere.
[00:26:15] Aidan: Okay. Actually, I'm looking at the little, like breakdown of Canada's. I think this is GDP. Yeah. In 2017 and gas and oil is the biggest. I'm going to take a hot guests and say all these little numbers add up to like 25.
[00:26:29] Evan: Okay. That's still, I that's a lot. Luckily, not as high as a lot of other countries above us, but yeah, so Canada is quite high for our CO2 emissions per capita among the rest of the world. We hear in Canada all about like, oh, China's making all these emissions. India is making all this emissions and pollution. We got to remember that for per capita, we're doing way worse than them.
[00:26:54] Evan: Let's scroll down here. I'm scrolling down. I'm trying to find either China or India and. China. Okay. yeah, China's around 41. Interestingly, actually, the us is not in the top 10. I think it's because they don't have much of an oil and gas industry.
[00:27:11] Evan: And India, I'm scrolling. um, Let's keep going. Alright. I've scrolled very far. Past 50 and I've given up,
[00:27:21] Aidan: India is just not on the list in terms of per capita.
[00:27:24] Evan: Very low emissions per capita. That's something to remember. I think that initially I was like, oh no, Canada is so bad, but now I'm like, That's a good thing. If we're such a big player in like total emissions and like emissions, both total emissions and emissions per capita in the world, then you know, that's something actually that we can in some way affect, either through voting or like whatever or their actions just because like we live here.
[00:27:52] Evan: So that's actually quite reassuring that if I just, have, make some change to you know, the emissions and the policies of my country, then that actually will have a pretty large effect on that greater world.
[00:28:02] Aidan: That's actually interesting too. I just noticed that out of the top 10, we are the smallest population.
[00:28:08] Evan: Wait,
[00:28:08] Evan: Wait, Montenegro and Luxembourg?
[00:28:11] Aidan: Sorry. I was looking at the total list. Total CO2 emission.
[00:28:14] Evan: Oh yeah. So I guess, so we have the largest population.
[00:28:18] Aidan: Out of per capita maybe, but we have the smallest out of the total emissions. So meaning that all the countries ahead of us and like behind us for a bit have much larger populations and less like much lower per capita than us. So it's was just emphasizing here, we can really play a role.
[00:28:34] Evan: There's a lot of stuff that we can do, which is actually yeah, reassuring.
[00:28:38] Evan: The last thing I sent You I might've sent you my results by accident, but conservation.org. Again, I don't have any affiliation with this website. It is not gospel. It's just an interesting thing I found, but it, just it was sort of interesting to me. And so what we're going to do is calculate our footprint.
[00:28:59] Aidan: Let's do it. So this is a website that basically you tell them some like demographic and some other things about yourself and like, I guess your activities like your transportation and travel, yada, yada, and then they tell you what your carbon footprint is.
[00:29:14] Evan: Yeah, exactly. So I thought we'd, read that I can see. And then after this something to do as well. We'll get to that after.
[00:29:21] Evan: Have you got the like household transportation and travel thing?
[00:29:24] Aidan: Yes, I do.
[00:29:25] Evan: Okay. Cool.
[00:29:26] Aidan: Okay. I'm here to just got my footprint calculated.
[00:29:30] Evan: Okay. What is yours?
[00:29:32] Aidan: Your footprint is 12.69 tons.
[00:29:36] Evan: Oh, mine's 13.41. So I'm slightly more.
[00:29:40] Aidan: Evan you monster. Why do you hate the environment?
[00:29:43] Evan: it It says it takes 192 trees to offset your annual footprint.
[00:29:48] Aidan: Yeah, mine saying it takes me 181.
[00:29:53] Evan: What I found really interesting was the offset option here. I do not know where that money goes. It says you, you can offset your carbon footprint by like buying It's a, it's a tax deductible donation. I don't know where it goes. So I need to do research on that. See if it's legit or not.
[00:30:10] Evan: But then 192 trees, I found that really interesting. Cause I'm like, I can do that. I can responsible for probably 10 times that this year people who plant trees say they can do more than that in like a day.
[00:30:22] Evan: What I want to do is be responsible somehow either by planting them, myself, or donating to tree planting or otherwise, I want it to be responsible for what at least 192 trees planted this year.
[00:30:34] Aidan: That is a cool goal, yeah, that actually just off sets your carbon footprint.
[00:30:39] Evan: And in the bottom it says some things you can do. Oh, and like where the U.S. average is for like energy consumption or carbon, actually carbon emission. And it looks like the highest is just your house, which I find very interesting.
[00:30:52] Aidan: That is. Yeah. So what is it about here house that changes, because we just said like how size basically a number of people.
[00:31:02] Evan: I think it would be heating and cooling would be a large one as well as lights. And just how much space you have that is not forest.
[00:31:12] Evan: And they have some tips in the bottom like: meatless Mondays, fly direct. I think these are the same for everybody. I don't think that tailored for our results. Cause it says take the bus and improve your fuel economy. When I said I don't drive and I take the bus often. But these are some interesting, interesting things.
[00:31:29] Evan: But yeah, so the, my main takeaway from this is I want to, I want to be responsible for around 200 trees. Like I'd like to plant them myself, ideally. Cause I feel like I could do that in a long weekend, 200 trees. But if not, find some way to be responsible for that.
[00:31:44] Evan: And so I hope everyone uh, checks out some info like that about themselves. Maybe you just gets a scale of like where you live, what's the situation, you know, what can you do? How much are you responsible for yourself? And I hope this helps maybe ease some people's anxieties about the sort of stuff.
[00:32:00] Evan: But yeah. That's my main takeaway there. Maybe we should update later in the year, on what our takeaways from this.
[00:32:07] Aidan: Possibly. Yeah. And how many trees you've planted.
[00:32:11] Evan: And the other main purpose of this listener, I hope it inspires you to get involved where you live and just, get informed to get the information uh, about the sort of stuff as it pertains to you.
[00:32:21] Aidan: That is interesting. Yeah, because as we mentioned, Canada has a big opportunity to step up here. And I think the vast majority of our listenership is Canadian. So.
[00:32:32] Evan: Yeah, and I think also most Canadians think we're actually probably one of the more environmentally friendly countries.
[00:32:40] Aidan: Because you can just be like, look at the U S they're doing terrible. We were obviously doing great.
[00:32:46] Evan: And you'd be looking at many forests we have. Look at all that we can't be that bad.
[00:32:50] Aidan: Yeah. But they're all on fire. They're about to leave.
[00:32:53] Evan: And listener, to get involved and inform yourself.