Political Discussions
What Makes Europe Greener than the U.S.?
Posted by timethief • 10/03/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: america, environment, europe, green energy, Green Living, greenhouse gas emmissions
The average American produces three times the amount of CO2 emissions as a person in France. A U.S. journalist now living in Europe explains how she learned to love her clothesline and sweating in summer.
Europe, particularly northern Europe, is more environmentally conscious than the United States, despite Americans’ sincere and passionate resolution to be green. Per capita CO2 emissions in the U.S. were 19.78 tons according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, which used 2006 data, compared to 9.6 tons in the U.K., 8.05 tons in Italy, and 6.6 tons in France.
The author suggests: "Part of the problem is that the U.S. has had the good fortune of developing as an expansive, rich country, with plenty of extra space and cheap energy. Yes, we Americans love our national parks. But we live in a country with big houses. Big cars. Big commutes. Central Air. Big fridges and separate freezers. Clothes dryers. Disposable razors.
That culture — more than Americans’ callousness about the planet — has led to a lifestyle that generates the highest per capita emissions in the world by far."
Read the full article e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2193
Discussion question
I think the author has made a good point re: the bigger is better mentality as apposed to the small is beautiful mindset.
Why do you think Americans have made so little headway on this issue that so many feel so strongly about?
User Comments
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Because we do not have publicly funded campaigns and we need a supermajority in the Senate.
[somebody needs to close that bold type in the OP]-
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On the flip side though, America as land also absorbs more CO2 then any other country except Canada and Russia through its forests and green areas and that needs to be taken in to account in impact statements (net emissions, as supposed to total emissions.) While Europe may be greener then America (or even Canada) I still stand by my conviction that instead of emulating Europe with its many economic weaknesses, America could be greener then even Europe by switching over to modern sources of electric energy like Nuclear and Wind and developing electric vehicles and other innovations.
This would cost less money then expanding public transit et cetera (Nuclear, due to private money backing it, is essentially free could even be taxed - Wind Power requires some subsidy but is certainly cheaper then even one subway) and could potentially remove the 40% of greenhouse emissions related to Coal (35% burning, 5% transportation) plus whatever percentage of emissions are related to Gas and Oil. What's more, if done with Nuclear the lower cost of electricity would be a major boon to electrified cars, trains, even propeller aircraft. Nuclear energy can also be used for shipping if a better regulatory structure is set up, and our diesel guzzling merchant fleets could ship more cargo cheaper as nuclear core vessels.
I believe the solution is not emulating Europe - which is on it's way out against birth rates that are too low, unemployment that is too high, and debt obligations that, when totalled completely including social security and expansion of welfare, are even worse then Americas - but putting forward innovation, what America does best, to creating our own, better green society where the ethic is not "fulfill your quota" but "bring back even more then you use."-
Have you got any evidence to support your first assertion? At the rate we have gone through our forests, it seems more than a little counterintuitive.
I also don't understand why you are trying to paint Europe as not worthy of learning from in your second paragraph, when the kinds of energy you want to promote in your first paragraph are being promoted in Europe. Maybe it's because you have lost sight of the energy question in some of your comments in the second paragraph. -
@C&M: My first assertion is based off the fact that, with such tremendous amounts of open land, America does still have a lot of forest, while Europe has had very little forest since the Middle Ages. You especially see this when you've lived out West as I have. Further, whatever forest we lose due to suburbanization pales in comparison to the amount we have generally gained by cotton being less profitable then timber and many cotton fields in the South being replaced by tree farms. This is now, unfortunately becoming less common due to (surprise) ethanol.
The problem is not that some people want us to learn from Europe but that some people (like TT as I learned in previous threads) want us to BE Europe. Also, you're painting Europe with a very broad brush as many European countries are still very hostile (like Sweden) to Nuclear Power.
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As clioandme says. Also the US has grown used to cheap energy prices as for a long time energy has been effectively subsidised in the US.
The market value of a barrel of oil does not reflect it's true cost in the same way as the market value of tobacco does not reflect it's true cost.
A gallon of petrol in the US retails for about $2-3 where in the UK it is nearer $10. The difference is all tax but the UK retail price is closer to the real cost of burning petrol than that of the US.
The UK and the EU has been gradually ramping up the price of energy over the last 10- 20 years. Unfortunately for the US they have subsidised the price of energy and face increasing the price over a far shorter time scale. Providing they have the political will to do so which in the end is what it all boils down to. The EU has the political will whereas, to date, the US has not.-
One thing that gives me pause is some of the FDP rhetoric in Germany now that it is on its way to helping form the new German government. Did you notice last week how nuclear stock went up and solar went down because of the FDP's favored policies? On the other hand, I do expect Merkel and the CDU to hold the line on what some CDU politicians call the FDP's "market radicalism."
By the way, the term "market radicalism" is new to me, but apt. It reflects the reality among many American politicians too, although it makes more rhetorical sense in the German context, because for some sixty years they have talked about a "social market economy," the notion that capitalism is crucial but cannot be allowed to undermine democracy by hurting the socially weak, thereby creating potentially destabilizing social unrest. -
The U.S. could go much greener very quickly without increased government spending. If we reduce taxes on capital expenditures and/or income taxes and replaced with taxes on oil, coal and virgin wood market forces would quickly encourage investment to move away from oil, coal and deforestation. Net taxes should remain the same or, even better, lower. -
With nuclear power, energy could become cheaper. This also pays for the power plants.
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"The average American produces three times the amount of CO2 emissions as a person in France"
Because the average American is three times as large?-
80% of France's electricity is generated by nuclear power. They have their energy requirements/ carbon emissions all sewn up and are going to make a fortune selling carbon credits and "green" energy to other countries.
Polybore loves nuclear power. -
Jeremy loves nuclear power too. Best of all, we could nuclearize this country without spending a dime of government money. We could even collect taxes on it and (like in Japan) use the waste to generate more nuclear fuel and use the stuff that can't be reused in the reactor inside heat conducting shielding to boil and thus desalinate sea water, giving us fresh water, and salt, not to mention any marine minerals extracted in the purification of the salt like Phosphates and Vanadium for aircraft production.
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What does France do with its waste
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They do the recycling but they don't do the boiling seawater thing yet, probably because they already have enough water.
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xmarks A combination of reprocessing and deep geological storage.
www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0411.shtml -
Thanks Poly
JJ: I'm generally in favor of nuclear (half my family works in the industry). Before the U.S. explores significant expansion of nuclear, we need to have a firm process for handling and storing waste. -
xmarks it is true that dealing with the waste is an important consideration. However there are some little known and maybe surprising facts regarding nuclear waste that are worth bearing in mind and put things into perspective.
The nuclear industry is very conscious of the PR problem it has, particularly if anything goes wrong and the environment is contaminated either from a plant or a waste storage site. Because of this they are very careful and closely monitored.
On the other hand and perhaps surprisingly it has been estimated that a coal fired power station produces 100 times the radioactive pollution of a nuclear plant of a similar size. This is because of the natural occurrence of radioactive elements in the coal. They also occur in oil.
Then of course there are the tens of thousands of deaths every year caused by poor air quality due to fossil fuel pollution.
It is kind of weird that Nuclear has this dangerous image while the real killers and radioactive polluters get away with it. -
poly. I'm not comparing nuclear to coal. I'm comparing to wind, solar, etc. In the U.S., we have issues where no one wants to have the nuclear waste in their back yard, although they are willing to have a nuclear plant there. This causes use to ship some of the waste literally a thousand miles to find a home for the next 10,000 years or so.
Careful is nice. Train crash with nuclear waste on board within a couple hundred miles of my home, not so nice. Again. I'm not saying that these are considerations that kill nuclear to me. They are considerations that I would like to see a solid plan on before we build another couple dozen plants. -
@xmarks: The problem xmarks is if you do not expand the industry, congress has insufficient motive to create a decent process for handling and disposing of waste, and will thus continue to stifle it to selfishly promote their own constitutency. My policy would be to tell California that in exchange for a federal bailout they must build a gigantic nuclear waste disposal facility in Kern County and hold all of America's nuclear waste. If they do not, their state must declare bankruptcy, all state assets will be sold, and they will have to begin from scratch, possibly with Marshall law as they will no longer have police departments, schools, or colleges.
Thankfully, we already have one reprocessing plant (Savannah River site) and with two more, one in the Northeast (maybe Indiana, Michigan or Iowa) and one out west (maybe Wyoming or California again) we could probably handle all the waste we produce.
EDIT: As for train crash with nuclear waste, may I suggest to you the mercury carried in to the air every day by coal power plants and the many gas pipeline explosions that happen with natural gas. There are things you could do to keep the waste safe even in the case of a train wreck. -
Sorry xmarks polybore's post was more a train of thought arising from your post rather than any sort of disagreement with you. Should have made that clear at the time.
The nuclear/ coal comparison was all polybore's in an attempt to contextualise nuclear waste and was not meant to imply it is not a serious problem. -
why bother with state at all in CA. They can just complete Reagan's market utopia
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jj: I'm not comparing nuclear to coal or natural gas.
As for the safty of a nuclear train, consider the "many gas pipeline explosions that happen with natural gas". Even vitrified waste in a train wreck would effectively be a dirty bomb. -
@xmarks: Nuclear waste is small enough in quantity that you could create large crumple and hard layer sandwich cylinders that would carry small amounts of nuclear waste with extremely large amounts of protection around it. See, the amount of nuclear waste from a reactor is very small, so you could conceivably surround it in ton upon ton of protecting layer, whereas that's kind of impractical with pipelines.
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People advocate nuclear power as if Chernobyl and Three Mile Island had never happened. Even if you can explain a host of new safety measures, is there assurance that one accident wouldn't have far-reaching consequences? (Of course, we've also seen what oil can do with the Exxon Valdez.)
There also seems to be no reference to the fraught problem of storing nuclear waste. Last I heard, the US has come up with no viable long-term solution yet.-
The problem of "storing nuclear waste" can be resolved easily. The problem clio is that congressional Dems know that they can publicly look in support of nuclear power while actually being against it by stopping every proposal to actually store nuclear waste and then saying nuclear power is contingent on such proposals. Wins them lots of votes while losing them none. Perhaps the best argument against democracy is "Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for such it was with the false prophets and your fathers." (Jesus)
As for "Chernobyl," far more radiation is leaked in to the air yearly by coal power then was leaked in to the air once by Chernobyl and why do these people seem to forget what happened with the "Death Fogs" in London and Pennsylvania in the previous century due to coal? Or how about all the hideous chemicals required to produce the semiconductors in your computer, including sands that burn superhot and invisibly, which are often far more dangerous then nuclear waste?
"Three Mile Island" was successfully contained, with no casualties, no radiation released. The only cost to it was one nuclear reactor, still shut down to this day, which is a pretty small cost for a one-in-a-lifetime.
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