Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle: Why Individual Climate Action Matters More than Ever

By Lloyd Alter

Stop thinking about efficiency and start thinking about sufficiency
Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle reveals the carbon cost of everything we do, identifying where we can make big reductions, while not sweating the small stuff.
The international scientific consensus is that we have less than a decade to drastically slash our collective carbon emissions to keep global heating to 1.5 degrees and avert catastrophe. This means that many of us have to cut our individual carbon footprints by over 80% to 2.5 tonnes per person per year by 2030. But where to start?
Drawing on Lloyd Alter's journey to track his daily carbon emissions and live the 1.5 degree lifestyle, coverage includes:

- What it looks like to live a rich and truly green life
- From take-out food, to bikes and cars, to your internet usage – finding the big wins, ignoring the trivial, and spotting marketing ploys
- The invisible embodied carbon baked into everything we own and why electric cars aren't the answer
- How to start thinking about sufficiency rather than efficiency
- The roles of individuals versus governments and corporations.
Grounded in meticulous research and yet accessible to all, Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle is a journey toward a life of quality over quantity, and sufficiency over efficiency, as we race to save our only home from catastrophic heating.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781771423533

Lloyd Alter

Lloyd Alter is a writer, public speaker, architect, inventor, and Adjunct Professor of Sustainable Design at Toronto Metropolitan University. He has published many thousands of articles on diverse platforms such as TreeHugger, Planet Green, and The Guardian. Lloyd is the author of Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

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Cover: Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle: why individual climate action matters more than ever by Lloyd Alter

Praise for Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle

For years I’ve relied on Lloyd Alter’s no-nonsense insight in Treehugger, including his direct, and to-the-point reflections on the elements of a better urban life. In his new, equally clear book, he’s done it again with an immensely practical set of insights and rules to live by. With wisdom gleaned during the pandemic-year, Lloyd joins Paul Hawken as a master of the carbon drawdown roadmap.

— Chuck Wolfe, Seeing Better Cities Group, author, Sustaining a City’s Culture and Character

This joyful adventure in 1.5 degree living shows that a focus on sufficiency can unlock a happier, healthier sustainable way of life. Efficiency has dominated precisely because it perpetuates the status quo but Lloyd´s story shines a light on why we must transform our vision of a good life as well as practical tips for how to do it.

— Kate Power, development director, Hot or Cool Institute

In the race against climate change some lifestyle changes make a big difference and some are negligible. Lloyd Alter’s on-point analysis helps us sort out the differences. Consumers must reduce demand for climate-cooking goods and services, but policy changes are equally needed to remove institutional barriers to sustainable ways of life. Alter shows us that we need to re-learn what it is that we really need for prosperity, and unlearn the unquenchable thirst for more, which the infinite growth economy has worked so hard to instill.

— Bart Hawkins Kreps, writer, editor

Lloyd Alter’s writing is always fresh, incisive, and thoughtful and, in this timely and clearly written call to action, he tells us exactly what we as citizens of the world must do in our everyday lives to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions before it’s too late. Reflecting Alter’s background as an architect and real estate developer, this book is at once idealistic and pragmatic, and the lifestyle issues it addresses — based on the author’s own experience — could not be more urgent. Governments and businesses cannot solve this problem without actions by each of us as individuals, and Alter tells us how.

— F. Kaid Benfield, Senior Counsel, PlaceMakers LLC

The toughest question for the next two decades is how to pull back from the brink. Part of the answer has to do with government policy and low-carbon technologies. But the path to net zero has to be about more than just consenting to new rules. It must also be about figuring out how we can reduce carbon through our choices: where we live, what we eat, how we move around, and so on.

— John Lorinc, writer, journalist

With fact-based research and tales of personal experience, Lloyd will reach many new audiences with this book. I, for one, embrace a return to the concept of sufficiency with regard to transportation, food, and more. For all who’ve been preaching climate action, or skirting it, I implore you to read this book and own up to all the ways you could try harder, and then get louder about sharing the overall life benefits you gain.

— Andrea Learned, climate leadership strategist, founder, #Bikes4Climate

Lloyd Alter has created a highly engaging, intelligent, and thoughtful manual for living the 1.5-degree lifestyle. There is plenty of myth-busting, supported by quality, in-depth research which goes far beyond the usual well-worn clichés and mantras. He humanises and crystallizes the choices and trade-offs we have to make to keep within 1.5°C global warming, so it is sufficient with enough to go around for everyone.

— Rosalind Readhead, English climate activist

Living the

1.5 Degree

Lifestyle

Why Individual Climate Action Matters More than Ever

— Lloyd Alter —

Copyright © 2021 by Lloyd Alter.

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Diane McIntosh.

Cover image: ©iStock.

Printed in Canada. First printing September, 2021.

This book is intended to be educational and informative. It is not intended to serve as a guide. The author and publisher disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss or risk that may be associated with the application of any of the contents of this book.

Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below. To order directly from the publishers, please call toll-free (North America) 1-800-567-6772, or order online at www.newsociety.com.

Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:

New Society Publishers

P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada

[phone]

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Title: Living the 1.5 degree lifestyle : why individual

climate action matters more than ever / Lloyd Alter.

Other titles: Living the one point five degree lifestyle

Names: Alter, Lloyd, author.

Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210194626 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210194820 | ISBN 9780865719644 (softcover) | ISBN 9781550927573 (PDF) | ISBN 9781771423533 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Sustainable living. | LCSH: Environmental protection—Citizen participation. | LCSH: Climate change mitigation—Citizen participation.

Classification: LCC GE196 .A48 2021 | DDC 640.28/6—dc23

New Society Publishers’ mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision.

Contents

Acknowledgments

The 1.5-Degree Lifestyle: Introduction

1. What’s the 1.5-Degree Lifestyle?

2. Equity, Fairness, and the 2.5-Tonne Budget

3. Why Individual Actions Matter

4. Energy, Efficiency, and Sufficiency

5. What We Eat

6. How We Live

7. How We Move

8. Why We Buy

9. Conclusion: In Pursuit of Sufficiency

Notes

Index

About the Author

About New Society Publishers

DEDICATION

To my wife, Kelly, who put up with all of this, and to kids, Emma, who rides a bike all winter, and Claire, who never learned to drive. I evidently had some small influence.

Acknowledgments

First, I have to acknowledge Rosalind Readhead in London, who did this before me and turned me on to the idea. But then I have to go back to Graham Hill, who started Treehugger and gave me a ten-buck-a-post gig writing 15 years ago. That eventually led to a working full-time with a succession of really smart people, including Meaghan O’Neill, Ken Rother, Emily Murphy, Molly Fergus, and Melissa Breyer who put up with me and edited me. Then there were people who inspired and influenced me, including Steve Mouzon, Kaid Benfield, Alex Steffen, and Kris de Decker. But perhaps the most important event was learning about Passivhaus and all the people in the Passivhaus community that I have become friends with and learned so much from, including Wolfgang Feist, Monte Paulsen, Mike Eliason, Bronwyn Barry, Elrond Burrell, Ken Levenson, and so many I have missed here. Also pivotal was teaching at the Ryerson School of Interior Design; Chair Lois Weinthal and a dozen classes of students who taught me more than I ever taught them. Finally, there are the people who got me to this stage with this book, including lawyer Willa Marcus and editors Rob West and Judith Brand.

The 1.5-Degree Lifestyle: Introduction

I used to have a monster carbon footprint. At the end of the last century, I was in my second career (my first was as an architect) as a successful real estate developer in Toronto, building award-winning condominiums. I drove my classic Porsche 914 the couple of blocks between office and jobsite; I drove my daughters to school and down to the lake every morning in the rowing season; then on winter weekends, we drove up to the private ski club where all the rich developers hung out. Every weekend in summer, I drove the family up to our summer cottage in Muskoka. Throw in a few flights every year, and I was probably emitting about 30 tonnes of CO2 per year in the process, or what could be called a 30-tonne lifestyle.

Then, suddenly, I wasn’t a developer anymore; after a falling-out with partners, I had almost nothing but a substantial financial loss and probably a nervous breakdown. However, I had learned a great deal from the experience; I was convinced that the way we build had to change, that it was too slow and too expensive and used too much material and energy. I went to the biggest prefabricated housing manufacturer in the province and convinced him to let me design and sell small, modern, green housing units. He agreed, I set up an office, started doing all the home shows, and waited for the phone to ring, when I wasn’t driving my Subaru all over the province. While waiting, I built a website to educate people about prefab and green building, updating it every day as I would find articles of interest — essentially a blog before there were blogs.

I spent a lot of time waiting for that phone to ring; there wasn’t much interest in Ontario in small modern green prefab. However, in the United States, there was huge interest in my website, which was soon recognized as one of the most important resources on prefab in the time before blog platforms appeared in about 2004. One of the first that I started following was a website called Treehugger, which was then a guide to green and gorgeous. I started sending them tips, stuff that I couldn’t use on my own business-related site. Soon I was writing for them as well for $10 a post, and not long after that was offered a full-time position. I concluded that I was a better writer than I was a prefab salesman and have been doing it ever since.

There were other changes; the Chair of the Ryerson School of Interior Design saw me speak on a panel and asked me to apply for an open position teaching sustainable design. The more I read, the more I taught, and the more I wrote, the more concerned I became about the issues of sustainability. My carbon footprint was dropping because I couldn’t afford that developer lifestyle anymore, but also because I was becoming increasingly concerned about the issues. Having built out of both concrete and wood, I became an early proponent of the concept of embodied carbon, which almost nobody took seriously 10 years ago. (Actually, they still don’t.) My carbon footprint might have been even lower had not my early focus on wood, embodied carbon, and an efficient building concept called Passive House put me on the international lecture circuit stretching from Seattle to Munich, or my press-related trips to China and Spain.

Much changed with the Paris Agreement in 2015, with its limits on carbon emissions. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we have to cut the quantity of greenhouse gases we emit roughly in half by 2030, and almost to zero by 2050, if we want to keep the rise in global average temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid catastrophic consequences of global warming. To put this in perspective, the COVID-19 lockdown, with its massive reductions in transportation and industry, reduced emissions by about 7%. We have to continue doing that every year, another 7% to 8% reduction, to stay under 1.5 degrees.

But where do these greenhouse gas emissions come from? Who is responsible? Who has to fix it? How can we fix it? Suddenly the measuring of all the carbon that we are all putting into the air is of critical importance, and someone has to fix it or be blamed for it.

Everyone has heard the statement that 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions, that corporations emit the carbon and governments should regulate the carbon away. They should fix the problem by delivering clean electricity instead of burning fossil fuels, or by running our pickup trucks on electricity. The latest is to put hydrogen in our furnaces instead of gas, so that we can all keep living the way we do until we have to maybe start thinking about this in 2030.

The problem with this is that those 100 companies don’t directly produce much CO2; they sell fossil fuels that are burned for energy, which releases CO2. It’s their customers, you and me, who turn their product into emissions. We buy what they are selling, directly or indirectly, whether out of choice or out of necessity.

Most of the world’s nations signed on to the Paris Agreement, promising to reduce their carbon emissions, but so far nobody has done very much. It’s hard when you have economies based on digging up fossil fuels and then manufacturing stuff that runs on them, emitting carbon at every step of the way. It’s harder when everyone wants more stuff, and the jobs all depend on us buying it. So, the only strategy anyone can think of is to produce more carbon-efficient stuff, to build electric cars instead of gasoline-powered, to burn natural gas instead of coal, to make more wind turbines and solar panels, and to dream of nuclear reactors, carbon capture and storage, and hydrogen.

This was actually working, to a degree: pre-pandemic, the rate of increase in carbon emissions was slightly less than the growth of the world’s economies. But even with all that greening going on, carbon emissions were still increasing by 1.3% on average, while the global economy expanded by about 3%.¹ And in 2019, global greenhouse gas emissions from all sources still reached a record high of 52.4 gigatonnes of CO2e. (The e stands for equivalents — other gases like methane or fluorocarbon refrigerants, some of which have many thousands of times the global warming potential of CO2.) When the economy booms, so do emissions.

The world loves growth, and nobody wants to see an economic seizure like we had during the pandemic happen again. Governments have been pouring vast sums into cranking up the economic engines, encouraging us to buy more stuff and more services, while almost completely ignoring the fact that to keep under a temperature rise of 1.5 degrees, we have to reduce our carbon emissions budget to 25 gigatonnes of CO2e by 2030, less than half of what we emitted in 2019.

Norman Mailer wrote, There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same. Growth is the law of life, and the engine of growth runs on fossil fuels.

If we have any chance of getting close to the carbon budget for 2030, we have to change the way we think about growth. We have to stop thinking about production, the making of what everyone is selling, and start thinking about consumption, what we are buying. We have to stop thinking about efficiency, making something slightly better, and start thinking about sufficiency: what do we really need?

The premise of this book, and the research it is based on, is that we are all collectively responsible for reducing our carbon emissions to keep under that 1.5-degree ceiling. We have that carbon budget set in Paris, and if you divide it by the number of people on Earth, we have a personal carbon allocation or budget target of lifestyle emissions, those emissions that we can control, of about 2.5 tonnes per person, per year by 2030. Getting by on this is what we are calling the 1.5-degree lifestyle.

But what is living on 2.5 tonnes of carbon actually like? How do you measure it? How much does individual consumption matter? These are some of the questions that this book will try to answer.

We will try and look at the carbon cost of everything that we do in our lives to help people make choices about what makes sense, what’s worth trying to change, and what isn’t. It’s a model that not only can influence our personal lives but also can guide policy, from urban planning to agriculture.

For many people, lifestyle carbon emissions are baked into the way we live and very hard to change without concomitant societal and environmental changes; our developed Western world seems almost designed to emit carbon. We are also creatures of habits that are difficult to shake. However, many habits changed in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was perhaps not the best time to