This is the framework behind The Carbon Victory Garden in the Anthropocene posted recently. The article was written during a very smokey summer in the Pacific Northwest due to massive fires in Eastern Washington, Oregon, California and British Columbia. Our friends in Australia are living in this situation right now.
This last summer of 2018, the cascading effects of climate change were very visible in the Pacific Northwest. The summer fires were on a mass scale, in a faraway place, impacting a local community. This was one of those outlier climate events, lasting for an unspecified time, that may just become part of the norm.
Fires from British Columbia, Eastern Washington, and California brought a very visible smoke to the Puget Sound Region. The air quality was designated as unhealthy, solar panel electric production was reduced during this time. Yet, we in the Puget Sound Region had a fraction of the effects of some locations in British Columbia, where daylight was reduced to dusk and air quality was at the extreme levels
Like many citizens I am concerned about climate change, this incident was an indicator that brought climate change very front and center. I have kids and am concerned about their future as well as future generations. I wonder whether our civilization has the wherewithal to do something about climate change while strategically building in resilience to our communities. In my lifetime (I am 54) what was originally "environmentalism" is now a cause of reducing carbon emissions, with the magnitude of the challenge, environmentalism seems like a quaint subset.
The 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment states that Climate change has created new risks and exacerbated existing vulnerabilities in communities across the United States. This situation, presents unprecedented challenges to human health and safety, quality of life, and the rate of economic growth.
I have drawn my own conclusions from a variety of sources and study. Numerous influencers apply a patchwork of environmental concepts to the general public, spreading the word about the issues of climate change. The climate influencers call to action has often been framed as a call to action in the broad sense, a call for civic activism and not always an inward-looking call to action to take personal responsibility to baseline, improve and record one's own impact.
Perhaps I am missing something or I am just being a bit naive, I seem to have a want for that climate influencer to ask something of me (or perhaps demand), to do something quantifiable about reducing -my own impact- on climate change. What has been missing is a "to do" list that I can follow it to reduce my environmental impact and carbon footprint.
As with many issues of the day, it seems to take a crisis to drive action whether it is war or a natural disaster. Thus, by looking into the past at the World War I and II Victory Garden Movement then enhancing this movement concept with modern sustainability frameworks, there is a path to offer an easy to understand "to do" list for carbon reduction for the average citizen or organization (club, business, city, state country).
This carbon reduction framework can work not only as a patriotic duty on a national level but as a humanistic duty as a citizen of the earth. A framework of baselining current use, then creating goals for efficiency and reduction of carbon emissions.
Anthropogenic causes of climate change are real, the scientific reality that CO2 emissions brought on by numerous carbon-based emission sources and the lack of a coherent plan to manage these emissions pose a threat to planet Earth through increased atmospheric and oceanic temperatures.
NOAA: Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
A recent Linkedin article by Bill Gates; My plan for fighting climate change, discusses potential investments in technologies or methodologies to reduce carbon emissions in five sectors, described as the “grand challenges” that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) documented as the economic sectors that produce greenhouse gas emissions.
The IPCC 2014 report (PDF 50 MB) has estimated emissions by economic sector as well as offers different mitigation “pathways” to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Gates, a big-picture thinker, looks towards grand solutions focused on entrepreneurial corporate technological innovation to mitigating climate change from the “lab to market, at scale” a method that is difficult for governments to execute. Gates plan is to create a privately managed fund for cutting edge research and development based on a framework of the five “grand challenges”. The idea is to cut bureaucracy and have flexibility in funding and operations.
With the magnitude of challenges to reduce carbon emissions, multiple levels of framework based methodologies are needed to make a difference. UN-based initiatives involve worldwide and country-level emissions.
Gates mentions how each economic sector above relates to a core part of a consumer’s life including food, clothes, housing and the products that are consumed. With the worldwide growth of the middle class, individual carbon footprints increase along with each sector and the related energy needs and emissions. Gates suggests the need for breakthroughs in how these goods are grown or made, transportation and how a home or car is powered.
A few summary paragraphs from IPCC 2014 show both human influence in carbon emissions as well as the monumental scale of carbon emissions.
About half of cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions between 1750 and 2010 have occurred in the last 40 years (high confidence). In 1970, cumulative CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion, cement production and flaring since 1750 were 420±35 GtCO2; in 2010, that cumulative total had tripled to 1300±110 GtCO2. Cumulative CO2 emissions from Forestry and Other Land Use (FOLU) since 1750 increased from 490±180 GtCO2 in 1970 to 680±300 GtCO2 in 2010. [5.2]
Annual anthropogenic GHG emissions have increased by 10 GtCO2eq between 2000 and 2010, with this increase directly coming from energy supply (47%), industry (30%), transport (11%) and buildings (3%) sectors (medium confidence). Accounting for indirect emissions raises the contributions of the buildings and industry sectors (high confidence). Since 2000, GHG emissions have been growing in all sectors, except AFOLU. Of the 49 (±4.5) GtCO2eq emissions in 2010, 35% (17 GtCO2eq) of GHG emissions were released in the energy supply sector,
Globally, economic and population growth continue to be the most important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion. The contribution of population growth between 2000 and 2010 remained roughly identical to the previous three decades, while the contribution of economic growth has risen sharply (high confidence). Between 2000 and 2010, both drivers outpaced emission reductions from improvements in energy intensity (Figure SPM.3). Increased use of coal relative to other energy sources has reversed the long-standing trend of gradual decarbonization of the world’s energy supply. [1.3, 5.3, 7.2, 14.3, TS.2.2]
Without additional efforts to reduce GHG emissions beyond those in place today, emissions growth is expected to persist driven by growth in global population and economic activities. Baseline scenarios, those without additional mitigation, result in global mean surface temperature increases in 2100 from 3.7°C to 4.8°C compared to pre-industrial levels (range based on median climate response; the range is 2.5°C to 7.8°C when including climate uncertainty, see Table SPM.1) (high confidence). The emission scenarios collected for this assessment represent full radiative forcing including GHGs, tropospheric ozone, aerosols and albedo change. Baseline scenarios (scenarios without explicit additional efforts to constrain emissions) exceed 450 parts per million (ppm) CO2eq by 2030 and reach CO2eq concentration levels between 750 and more than 1300 ppm CO2eq by 2100.
( Page 25-26 Climate Change 2014 Mitigation of Climate Change )
The current worldwide framework for carbon reductions has its origins in the Kyoto Protocol, the 1992 United Nations Convention on Climate Change. The Kyoto Protocol involves pledges by individual countries to collectively reduce carbon emissions.
The Kyoto Protocol applies to the reductions of the following greenhouse gas, with its related Global Warming Potential (GWP) of each gas, a multiple of CO2, based on the different properties of a greenhouse gas and how much heat energy is trapped over a 100 year time period, in the atmosphere, per the mass of the gas. This methodology allows for the designation of a value of “CO2e”, with “e” designated as “equivalent.”
This situation is monumentally complex and difficult to find consensus on methods of mitigating further damage or ways to adapt through resilience. Yet, humankind has faced numerous challenges throughout time and typically faced the challenges through strategy and cooperative human engagement.
Civic and corporate entities tackle climate change through sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) frameworks based on the global initiatives and carbon accounting methodologies, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol is a common method of accounting for carbon emissions.
Corporate sustainability frameworks are structured around organizational principles and the bigger picture of creating efficiencies that not only lower emissions but create more cost-effective, safer and environmentally sound processes. The complexity of the framework is dependent on the size of the organization as well as the "buy-in" of the participating members of the organization.
Yet, how can smaller organizations participate and potentially drive demand (for a green economy) to the corporations that produce and market carbon-intensive products as well as driving demand for civic institutions from a neighborhood to a town, city county and state work within a carbon reduction framework?
To date, the top-down approach such as a worldwide effort with the Kyoto Protocol, to The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) to corporate and civic level initiatives have left smaller organizations and households to participate in their own ways whether it is driving an electric car that may or may not be powered by a green energy mix or the purchase of certified products that promote a green lifestyle.
The consumer has created a scattershot of practices from recycling or driving an electric car to lower their footprint. While this is well-intentioned, there may not be any baselining of carbon-reducing practices that can be measured and improved upon over time following a specific framework.
With the USDA Organic Certification, a method of agriculture has been marketed as a green lifestyle choice attained through the purchase of certain certified products, leaving the consumer to think that they are helping the environment. “I only buy organic” is a common refrain of the modern-day consumer. The consumer aligns with a method of agriculture through their purchases, though that is only part of the carbon reduction puzzle.
Yet, it is hard to know whether buying an organic head of lettuce from the local food cooperative is grown locally or trucked from far away. Though due to the scale of an organic lettuce operation in a faraway place this method may have a lower per-unit carbon footprint than the locally purchased head of lettuce trucked in by a panel van to a distributor that supplies the local food coop. Understanding the emissions in the supply chain is a difficult concept that can work in either direction despite the agricultural method, organic or traditional that is employed.
Looking back in recent history, from an American perspective, the country as a whole seems to engage through shared adversity whether it is a natural disaster or a war. The collective idea that we as citizens are all in this together, leads to a collective effort towards a purpose or a goal. During these events, efficiencies through sustainable practices are realized, whether they are intended or not.
The Victory Garden movement is a good example of a collective effort on a national scale to plant gardens on a community level not only to conserve fuels and the labor force needed within the agricultural supply-chain but to create community well-being from the hard work, sense of accomplishment and nutrition available from a local food source.
In 1917, Charles Lathrop Pack one of the five wealthiest Americans prior to World War I, whose family’s timber empire was later diversified into real estate investments and philanthropy, organized the US National War Garden Commission in 1917, with the goal of putting idle land into agricultural production.
This approach engaged the citizenry, three million garden plots were planted in 1917 growing to five million in 1918, primarily to support the war effort so that local communities could feed themselves with the larger agricultural production supporting the allies in the war effort. Concurrently in Canada, the motto “a garden in every home” brought expert gardeners into schools and promoted gardening and home-based chicken coops for egg production.
By localizing food production, a portion of the fuel and labor resources that would typically be used for large scale agricultural production and transportation could be repurposed due to the savings for the war effort.
In the early 20th-century local food production was in part influenced to the work of George Washington Carver, who was born into slavery and had a lifelong passion for the natural world. Carver's passion for botany led to a college education and later as a professor at the Tuskegee Institute. His early work was based on techniques of diversifying crops for poor farmers beyond the common cash crops of the day. Carter promoted crop rotation as well as soil conservation. Carver published Natures garden for Victory and Peace a detailed pamphlet describing numerous nutritional and medicinal uses for common plants.
With World War II, the victory garden movement was revitalized through necessity in Britain with food rationing and as a patriotic duty to support the war effort in the United States. In 1943 Eleanor Roosevelt planted a victory garden on the white house lawn while up to 18 million victory gardens were planted nationwide, 12 million in the cities and 6 million in rural areas.
Victory Garden Film USDA 1942 with modern restoration and notation.
Many gardeners followed the framework of Victory Gardens for Every Family by the New York-based National Victory Gardens Institute. This easy to understand pamphlet along with other publications aimed at home, workplace and civic gardens provided a framework of common understanding to a methodology to participate on an individual level towards a larger goal in supporting the war effort.
The typical household of the WWWI and WWII era had a larger average of occupants, the gardens at the time were larger than today's standard garden. The ubiquity of made from scratch cooking and home canning as well as other preservation techniques dealt with the surplus home production. Many of the gardens during WWII were using organic methods since the marketing of synthetic fertilizers reached the mainstream after the war. Synthetic fertilizers were primarily used in larger agricultural methods, primarily corn.
Mechanization and a global supply chain have shifted household food acquisition from the yard to the supermarket, delivery and the high carbon footprint ready to cook meal subscription. By localizing food production with the primary goal of national fuel savings in WWI and WWII can now be repurposed towards the goal of reducing carbon emissions in the supply chain of a modern food delivery system.
In WWI and WWII, citizens responded to the threat of war following a national campaign with a defined framework. Local ingenuity refined the processes that have since been handed down through generations of gardeners. Today's threat is climate change and the immediate need for mitigating future warming of the planet beyond 2 degrees Celsius.
The Gardens of Victory / Office of Civilian Defense
The Victory Garden campaign engaged 51% of US Households during WWII. With potential social media engagement, there is the potential to reach a similar civic engagement rate by extending a Victory Garden response to a global threat, climate change.
https://garden.org/special/pdf/2014-NGA-Garden-to-Table.pdf
Comparing the participation in gardening through these three eras, two of which were world wars and the third era perhaps a larger battle for the survival of the planet. Participation in 1943 seemed to be the height of the American gardening movement with ⅓ of national vegetable production originating in a victory garden. The Victory Garden movement is an excellent example of a purposeful civic campaign that yielded results by engaging numerous sectors of the society in a common cause.
Today's threat is climate change and the immediate need for mitigating future warming of the planet beyond 2 degrees Celsius. The Victory Garden campaign engaged 51% of US Households during WWII. With potential social media engagement, there is the potential to reach a similar civic engagement rate by extending a Victory Garden response to a global threat, climate change.
Can you imagine if this type of a coordinated federal, state, local effort was put into a modern-day campaign to reduce carbon emissions?
By approaching a challenge with the three aspects of sustainability in mind, each process within a system has the potential for increased efficiency that leads to the harmonization of true sustainability. In the case of carbon emissions, these efficiencies can be quantified with the economic efficiency of cost savings, social efficiencies of increased stakeholder involvement and environmental efficiencies of cleaner air, land, and water.
The term “sustainability” came into modern parlance through the 1987 United Nations Brundtland report (PDF), “Our Common Future.” which discussed environmental and developmental issues as one issue, associating business with development.
"Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
Sustainable development was framed as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable development involves the transformation of an economy by increasing productive potential while society ensures equitable opportunities.
Three aspects of sustainability are typically considered
Within each sustainability aspect processes are identified, examined and benchmarked for efficiency. Each aspect is distinct but not isolated, each aspect is managed for the long term. The sustainability story of a home, organization or business is embedded within its activities.
Economic Aspect: How does the economic aspect affect a process or system?
Social Aspect: How does the social aspect affect a system or process?
Environmental Aspect: How does the environmental aspect affect a system or process?
By borrowing from the Victory Garden movement as well as a corporate sustainability framework, there are potential opportunities to fine-tune a methodology that could be easily understood and replicated in a broad nationwide (and worldwide) method similar to the Victory Garden movement. While it is always a good idea to continually record and monitor this continual improvement, even if a portion of a projected 167 million US Citizens active participation substantial carbon reduction is possible.
The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) was formed to communicate sustainability performance to investors. Many industries have their own specific disclosure topics with their SASB frameworks. The Alcoholic Beverages industry disclosure topics(pdf) align well with a small organization or household participation in carbon reduction.
This corporate sustainability framework, while not specifically aimed at carbon reduction, it does have components of reducing carbon emissions. Energy and water are necessary modern-day household components, responsibility can be transposed to a variety of social themes, packaging relates to households upstream purchases while impacts can be modified into a downstream topic in the household. Depending on the size and complexity of an organization, a variety of detailed baseline documentation and continued reporting can be incorporated within each of the disclosure topics.
With a few modifications to the SASB framework above, a household or small organization has numerous opportunities to reduce their footprint by baselining current usage or resources or methods then over time continually improving on the baseline. A simplified household and small organization carbon reduction framework address the following:
This is a framework, an outline, something easy to remember and to be used as a guide.
Each organization can add detail within each step of the framework. Carbon emission reductions are realized when there is a net reduction in emissions that are measured per the use of the resource, thus it is a good idea to create a baseline first, then set attainable goals. If you cannot measure a reduction how do you know that you have reduced anything?
Framework adaptation: George H Thomas
By calculating an individual, household or organization baseline emissions, a starting point is created to improve on. By setting a yearly or multi-year goal, real efficiencies can be created that in turn reduce the annual carbon footprint of the participant. The three major types of emissions, Scope 1, 2, and 3 can easily be calculated through online calculators or by applying some additional research for more exact metrics.
Energy has a footprint, whether it is a direct emission out of a tailpipe, a smokestack or indirectly through the purchase of electricity from a utility or the indirect emissions from a trip on a plane. By calculating a current footprint then setting a goal for reduction is the first step. Even modest reductions can add up over time and in many respects, these goals create opportunities for efficiencies and cost savings, similar to a corporate sustainability model.
The average driver in the United States drives 13,476 miles annually at 23.3 mpg. Each driver can account for an average of 5.07 mT Scope 1 CO2e emitted from the tailpipe of their automobile.
A 5% reduction can be rounded to 675 miles or a monthly savings of 56 miles, a goal that can easily be realized through combining errands or taking the bus. By riding a bike, taking public transportation or rideshare, the Scope 1 direct emissions normally attributed to the mileage and gas efficiency of driving, are now accounted for as Scope 3, indirect emissions.
One method to reduce Scope 1 direct emissions from a car is to purchase an electric car. An electric car's "emissions" are accounted for Scope 2, indirect emissions.
Driving an electric vehicle in Washington using eGrid emission factors for WECC Northwest at 3 miles per kWh (Tesla).
In the home, if you use 10,000 kWh annually (US Avg) a 5% reduction of 42 kWh monthly can be realized through efficiencies, whether it is a thermostat on an electric baseboard heater, or a combination of LED light bulbs, powering down a computer and shutting off unnecessary lighting. The United States Department of Energy offers numerous tips and strategies to reduce home energy use. Yes, there is a financial investment involved, though many utilities offer rebates and efficiency programs to assist. With electricity use shifting into the realm of transportation, home electric demand will most likely increase.
Utility-based Scope 2 energy emissions are classified by the energy mix within an eGrid region (see eGRID map at top). Each region has a different energy mix including renewables, hydro, coal, gas, nuclear and coal for utility-scale power generation.
An investment in Solar PV can reduce or eliminate Scope 2 emissions within a household or an organization while supplementing the addition of an electric car. Solar PV directly impacts both the economic and environmental aspects of an organization based on numerous factors including the sighting of the installation, weather, climate, latitude, temperature and the overall installation including the quality of the panels.
Some new homes include Solar PV, thus deferring costs over the mortgage period. Batteries and energy management software will take efficiency to a new level within the next few years. The localization of electric production offers a resilient method for preparedness within the changing climate. Further community efforts of community solar and microgrids with battery backup can reduce some impacts.
This savings in energy use from the utility serves the economic aspects of sustainability with annual cost savings over the life of the solar system as well as serving the environmental aspect of sustainability by using less utility energy and its associated Scope 2 carbon emissions.
In many areas of the United States, clean water is taken for granted. You turn on the faucet and out comes the water, and why drink the tap water when you can have bottled water! This is an all too common occurrence and in this example, a safe resource that is available to many homes is not always the first choice.
Water has been rebranded as a beverage, complete with a supply chain of extraction, packaging, transport, then finally consumption by the consumer then recycled or in some cases waste and the environmental issue of micro-plastic degradation in our waterways and oceans. The simple act of filling a reusable water container can impact reductions in three of the five Sustainability Framework for Carbon Reduction steps, water, supply chain upstream by eliminating the need for the packaged water and the supply chain downstream the waste associated with plastic packaging.
Social responsibility is not always associated with some type of quantifiable metric. Living by the golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” or in modern parlance "do something good" is a good place to start.
Social responsibility can take the form of volunteering, philanthropy, engaging in a cause or simply "walking the talk" and living a purposeful life than engaging with others to promote socially responsible purposes.
Social responsibility involves stakeholder engagement, a stakeholder is an individual or concerned group, they are powerful people and not so powerful people. They address their concerns in numerous ways. Successful projects engage the stakeholders.
A business positions itself within a community from a sustainability perspective with its "license to operate" which is proactive and involves a network of individuals and groups. A focus on communication and community engagement builds broader public support that results in action and a broader broadcast of goodwill that promotes awareness of social legitimacy, credibility, and trust.
An effective strategy to reduce solid waste on the supply chain downstream is to "pre-cycle" or think about the components or processes of a consumer product or other purchase, before the purchase. Plastic, paper, styrofoam, glass and food are components of the upstream supply chain, both packaging and product involve components or processes that have a carbon footprint.
Do you drink organic wine? while organic agriculture is an excellent mostly low carbon method of growing things, have you considered the carbon footprint of the wine bottle?
The supply chain downstream is the "waste" in a household or an organization. There are numerous methods to both quantify the footprint as well as simpler methods of using a mindset within a daily routine.
Pre-cycle by purchasing smartly packaged goods, purposely recycling the packages from the goods you smartly purchased, reuse or donate any surplus goods and composting food waste through a municipal "clean green" bin, backyard compost or worm-bin whose nutrient-rich compost can be used in your victory garden.
Averaging emissions on a national scale is a moving target, though these averages do provide reference points.
Household averages within this article, using conservative estimates emissions related to US household average energy use.
The Union of Concerned Scientists in 2015, have estimated the US per capita carbon emissions related to fossil fuels as 15.53 MT per capita. The US EPA has estimated overall carbon emissions, including all CO2 equivalents as 6.5 billion MT CO2e or 20.18 MT per capita (every man, woman, and child). These cumulative per capita averages most likely include emissions beyond the boundary of a home, including many of the emitters mentioned as grand challenges.
This example chart assumes annual US carbon emissions of 6.5 billion mT (EPA,2015) with a participation of 66 million households in a Victory Garden scale effort to follow a sustainable carbon reduction framework, the same participation rate as the WWII Victory Garden movement.
While combining the Scope emissions is not a common practice (Net estimates, bottom 3 rows), they are included in this chart for a comparison of the potential emission savings scenarios using 2% and 5% household reductions. Emissions savings can be attained through conservation and efficiency, eventually, technology will reduce the overall reliance and inefficiencies with carbon-based fuels, offering overall reduced emissions from transportation and the energy mix associated with generating electricity.
As this reliance of carbon-based fuels for cars reduces, the Scope 1 emissions which are direct, become Scope 2 emissions that are indirect and at the whim of the energy mix of the utility. This example chart using eGrid data provides insight into the geographical variability of Scope 2 emissions. What stands out clearly is that Washington State has a 52% reliance on Hydro-electric power generation, while Colorado has a 70% reliance on coal.
National regulation, market economics, and consumer demand are the drivers that will change the energy mix provided by electric utilities. This risk-averse industry by necessity will have to assume more risk in creating innovation to reduce their emissions.
We should all really be listening to the youth, this young woman has a command of the climate crisis topic and she will face this issue head-on long after the "adults" are gone.
Fifteen-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N. plenary in Katowice, Poland, condemning global inaction in the face of catastrophic climate change.
Tools to Measure Emissions and Create Efficiencies
Creating a baseline is a starting point, depending on how much detail and effort one puts into this carbon reduction effort, visualizing a footprint is the first step to creating a mindset for necessary change.
Greenhouse Gas Protocol Take a corporate approach to your home emissions.
Carbon Footprint Calculator a comprehensive guide to a variety of carbon emissions measuring tools.
Nature Conservancy Carbon Calculator This website will give you a starting point, though a more detailed analysis with Greenhouse Gas Protocol methodologies will zero in on exact metrics.
Energy Star Portfolio Manager Create efficiencies within your home or office.
Landscape Water Conservation USDOE guide to reducing water use on landscape applications.
Puget Sound Energy calculators for ownership, energy usage and carbon footprint of owning an electric car.
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