10 tonnes lifestyle
What is the 10 tonnes lifestyle and why are we talking about it? Can you reach the goal of emitting only 10 tonnes of CO2 per year? How would that look like in practice? In this article, I try to answer these questions. Special thanks for the spreadsheet-magic goes to Dorothy Gál.
How much is your personal CO2 emission?
A question that only a few people can answer, most of whom I talk to can’t even estimate the scale. Even my amazing climate-fighter vegan friends get embarrassed, some of them don’t know if we talk about grams, kilograms, or tonnes, especially not how much of those.
So let me help: we speak of thousands of kilograms or tonnes.
If you live in Western Europe or the United States or Canada, your personal footprint is probably way above 10 tonnes. If you live in less developed countries but like to travel, use a car to commute, you could easily go above 20 or 30.
If you live in a developing country, don’t own a car, and don’t travel by plane, it could be much less even if you eat burgers with coke every day.
Why should you care?
If we keep going as we do now, the average temperature of the Earth will increase 4,1 degrees by the end of this century. That would mean New York, Venice, and the Netherlands are underwater and most of the areas between the Northern and Southern Tropics won’t be livable for humans anymore.
The better life quality you have, the higher your emissions are. To mitigate the climate crisis, we all have to think about what we can sacrifice from our own comfort for the future. If Earth is in danger, soon you and your family will be in danger too. To prevent this, we all have to take steps now. Together.
Before you start down on the slippery slope and begin to blame overpopulation, please note that the carbon emissions of the average American today is equivalent to those of around four Chinese, 20 Indians, 40 Nigerians, or 250 Ethiopians. The contrasts are striking.
Let’s look at the root causes because if you want to decrease your emission, firstly you have to understand what creates it.
Understanding your emissions
In order to optimize, you need to understand your emissions first. The easy part is how you move. There are plenty of carbon calculators* and offset programs giving you estimations on your driving, flying, and public transport usage. This is where most of your emission comes from. If you are mostly biking and using public transport, then you can focus on the food you eat. Meat and dairies have a higher footprint than veggies and food. If you are a vegan who mostly bikes, then the area where you can change could be your household.
What’s a 10-tonnes lifestyle?
In his book ‘How bad are the bananas’, Mike Berners Lee came up with the idea of living a 10-tonnes lifestyle. Keep in mind though, that in order to reach the Paris climate agreement goals and limit the temperature change to 1,5 degrees, we would all need to go below 3 tonnes. This would also mean a life improvement for those living in poverty. I heard about someone who is experimenting with 1 tonne, and that’s super impressive, but also plenty to sacrifice. So why 10? For most of us living a good life in modern societies, 10 tonnes is a goal with a significant decrease and a realistic one to reach first. Take your first step, go below 10, and stay there. If it works, you can set lower goals until you reach 2.7 tonnes.
What’s is in 10 tonnes?
Besides being equal to ten thousand kilograms, let’s look at some of the ways in which you can use up your quota in a year. We calculated 3 example scenarios for different lifestyles. The scenarios are focusing on the most impactful areas and exclude several things like buying clothes or other items (urging you to be minimalist here ;) ). Whether you are a traveller, a driver or a meat lover, here is some help on how to stay under 10 tonnes. It’s possible — aim for this first, 3 tonnes can wait until you nail this.
As a traveller, the biggest chunk of your footprint is flights. You can make it up by commuting with public transport or bicycle if possible, avoiding meat and animal products and only using plastic bottles in case of emergency. I’ve met so many people on the road who are travelling intensely but claim they make it up by being vegan. These people served as the inspiration to calculate this scenario. This also shows that people who are on the road constantly would need to sacrifice more than animal products to even out their carbon footprint.
If you are a meat lover and still like to drive too, you could decrease your travelling to just a few short trips. The calculation shows that an average European can easily fit into 10 tonnes even if they eat meat, so if you are ready to participate in the climate-game, you should aim for lower than 10! But look at all the food! You can do a decent keto diet this way, and even get a coke every now and then.
It may be your work or your family that requires you driving. Whatever the case, you can drive an average car 1,500 km and eat animal protein 6 days of the week and still fit into 10 tonnes.
Keep in mind if you fail to reach your goals, you can still spend some money to offset your footprint. But the first thing is to understand your impact, and just as you budget with money, calculate with CO2 emissions too when you make decisions.
Calculate yours!
Can you guess your carbon footprint? Do you think you are over or under 10 tonnes? There are plenty of calculators a quick Google search away, but help me test the prototype of the one that we are building! Click here to find out your score and let us know in the comments!
*My favourite calculator for flights is www.atmosfair.de and that’s also where I offset. Recently www.rome2rio.com added CO2 numbers to their trip calculations, so before I decide to spend some days on trains or take a quick flight, I usually use them to see which has the smaller impact.
