Originally Posted by tommac

What would be the most efficient way to reduce our environmental footprint?

The criteria would be: the amount of change / the difficulty (cost financial and otherwise ) of the change

Originally Posted by Neverfly

Of course, this does nothing to alleviate the Earths own environmental footprint, or every other animals foot, claw, paw and leg prints.

Originally Posted by tommac

What would be the most efficient way to reduce our environmental footprint?

The criteria would be: the amount of change / the difficulty (cost financial and otherwise ) of the change

Originally Posted by Damburger

The two simplest significant cuts you can make are car use and eating meat. Become a vegetarian cyclist and your carbon footprint will be slashed dramatically.

Originally Posted by Ferg

This has other benefits too, because it reduces demand for both meat and fossil fuels. Then all your neighbors in the global village will like you, because you have made it cheaper for them to consume more and increase their carbon footprints.

Originally Posted by geonuc

Reduce the population. I don't know how to calculate the denominator in your ratio for that, but the numerator would be huge.

Originally Posted by Ferg

If you want an efficient method, give people financial incentives to reduce their footprint by taxing environmental damage, then get out of the way and let them figure out the best way to do it. Use the money raised to repair the damage, or to reduce other taxes. Adjust the tax up or down to control the level of the reduction you want.

If you want to make sure the costs are enormous and the benefits tiny (or possibly negative), have the central planners at this board decide how to do it.

Originally Posted by Ferg

If you want an efficient method, give people financial incentives to reduce their footprint by taxing environmental damage, then get out of the way and let them figure out the best way to do it. Use the money raised to repair the damage, or to reduce other taxes. Adjust the tax up or down to control the level of the reduction you want.

If you want to make sure the costs are enormous and the benefits tiny (or possibly negative), have the central planners at this board decide how to do it.

Originally Posted by Damburger

The two simplest significant cuts you can make are car use and eating meat. Become a vegetarian cyclist and your carbon footprint will be slashed dramatically.

Originally Posted by tommac

What is the deal with eating meat?

Originally Posted by tommac

Also what needs to be done with china. they are now number one at greenhouse gas production.

Originally Posted by NEOWatcher

Without diving too deep. Simply, there is another level of the food chain, and each level involves processing and shipping of food. That uses energy.
There's a lot more to it... but that's enough to know it does add something.

Again; complicated. Number one in quantity? Number one in per capita? Number one in GDP?

I think if you scour the threads on energy and global warming, that you will see some very good suggestions. At the same time you will see some of the trade-offs (and ear steam) with each one of those suggestions.

Unfortunately, getting into whether or not they should be followed through has the potential for getting political.

Originally Posted by tommac

I thought of that but you need to be careful to get the ones that polute the most maybe use the 80:20 rule get rid of the top 20% of the poluters in the world.

Originally Posted by Larry Jacks

I keep hearing people talk about the need to reduce the population but I don't hear anyone volunteering to off themselves. No, they expect "the others" to make that sacriface.