How should we live on a planet where the rate of extreme weather events seem to be increasing, and humanity is the cause? 

“We’re not doing well in terms of global temperatures at all. We’re on a dangerous trajectory. We are not going to keep below the 1.5°C on average limit, that seems really clear.  We’re actually over 1.5°C in terms of individual years already, but the target was stated in terms of multi-year averages. It’s clear, with the inertia and the climate system, that we’re going to exceed that. It also seems quite clear that we’re going to exceed the 2.0°C limit the way things are going. We just don’t have the kind of policy action that we need internationally,” explained Dr Kai Chan, a professor in the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at University of British Columbia, Lead Editor of the new British Ecological Society journal ‘People and Nature‘ and co-founder of CoSphere for a community of small planet heroes. 

“That all said, I personally am concerned more broadly than just with climate. I’m an ecological scientist, and we think about a wide range of different stressors to the natural world, including to the benefits that we receive from that natural world.”

“In that context, we’re also doing poorly. We’re not taking the kind of action that we need on the land use change that undermines ecosystems, threatened species, as well as crucial processes like water purification and flood mitigation, drought control. Unfortunately, these are hard times to be on the planet Earth.”

Some suggest we need to curtail our personal carbon footprints. 

According to Statistica, the average Canadian emitted 15.22 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022. That’s more than three times the global average.

A number of people on Cortes Island, and some other rural communities, have carbon footprints that are closer to those of the developing world. We have few electronic devices, do not use our cars often and our principal heating source is a heat pump. 

Lacking any other data, I (the author) used the carbon calculator at climate hero.org and calculated my personal carbon footprint. The answer was 3.4 metric tons. There are most likely people in rural areas like Cortes whose footprint is less than half of this.* 

Yet I am also going on a trip abroad this year. This will add another 7.25 metric tons** to my tally, which I am going to divide by 10 as I have not flown since 2015 and do not expect to take another flight in the near future. That would bring my personal carbon footprint to a bit more than 4.12 metric tons, which is still less than the global average of 4.66 metric tones and far below that of most of my fellow Canadians.

Kai Chan: “It’s an amazing effort and what you’re doing is showing how far we can go as individuals. It also reveals that we can’t go all the way to a sustainable society through those individual level efforts. I live in Vancouver because I am employed at the University of British Columbia, it’s not feasible for me to do all of the things that you’re doing, and I’m not the only one.” 

“What we try to do is to pivot the conversation so that those folks who can’t emulate that at this point in their lives can still feel like they’re contributing meaningfully towards making this planet a more sustainable place.”

He also pointed out that we really can’t measure our carbon footprint without taking into account the contribution of the society around us. 

A recent transportation study from the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) came to a similar conclusion. The #1 source of emissions for cars travelling from Cortes Island to Vancouver is the diesel powered ferries that carry them from Whaletown to Heriot Bay, and then across the Salish Sea. The ferry’s emissions have a much greater impact than a gas powered pick-up truck, a fuel efficient gas car or an electric vehicle with close to zero emissions.

Kai Chan: “If we’re measuring our contribution to sustainability through the ecological footprint calculator, then we’re all deeply unsustainable because we just can’t help but consume more resources. I say ‘can’t help’ because here in a North American context, even if you consumed almost nothing as an individual, the collective consumption that goes towards the various systems like the health system and the policing system and the administrative systems has such a burden that it would be impossible for us not to overshoot as an individual.”

“For within Canada, we have already used up more than our year’s share of renewable resources – if they were equally distributed around the world. That’s incredibly troubling. Canada and the U.S. are basically in the same basket in that calculation. We’re among the worst nations in the world in terms of how far we exceed what would be sustainable.”

“The  ecological footprint calculator accounts for the way that  our ecosystems provide food, fuel and fibre, as well as also locking up carbon dioxide. It considers that to be a renewable process, that we are emitting carbon dioxide by breathing but also, of course, through fossil fuels. The planet has systems that suck up that carbon dioxide and sequester it. So the ecological footprint calculator is based on those various processes, the provision of the food fibre and fuel and the locking away of carbon dioxide.” 

“It doesn’t include a whole bunch of other non-renewable processes. It doesn’t include the use of minerals, for example. It also doesn’t include the methane cycle, which is an important part of the climate problem, because there’s no real kind of ecological process by which the ecosystems  are sequestering that methane. So it’s not really renewable. It’s upon us  to contain those emissions of methane.”

Chin returned to the question of air travel.

“Lots of folks think about flying through the context of an individual footprint calculator. There’s no real way that we could fly and still stay within our ecological footprint. If you stick by the assumptions of the calculator,  then it would be effectively true that you basically can’t fly because you’re already over your limit just by the collective use of resources that go into our institutions.”

“I’ve  founded this initiative called CoSphere for a community of small planet heroes. What we try to do  is to pivot  away from thinking about it as an individual ecological footprint kind of problem. We need wholesale system change because it’s impossible for us to be sustainable individually. Our responsibility as an individual is to change those systems, to make it easier for anyone in this context to be more sustainable.”

“It doesn’t make sense for us to have  a guideline that will curtail our opportunity to actually change the systems that are responsible for that unsustainability.”

“As a professor, over the last almost 19 years,  I can trace where  the messages that I have been putting out to the world, and what has enabled them to get traction.  In many cases, my international travel has actually been a really important part of that.  I was a coordinating lead author for the global assessment of IPBES, which is the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.  I had a responsibility for the Pathways and Solutions chapter, I was the lead on the  chapter that put out the idea that transformative change is necessary. The nations that make up the platform endorsed that and put out a press release, almost five years ago, that transformative change was necessary.”

“Arguably, the real world impact of that has not changed.” 

“Regardless of how you look at it, my personal impact has been tied to international travel.  If I didn’t ever travel, I wouldn’t have had the kinds of impacts that I have had on at least the discourse, although perhaps not yet the kind of concrete policy that will affect that transformative change.” 

“In a nutshell, my argument would be, absolutely question whether a flight is necessary, whether it is actually a crucial part of your life, and whether it’s crucial to your impact as somebody who’s trying to change this world for the better. If it is, maybe it’s still worth traveling, and if it’s not maybe it’s worth reconsidering.”

Chan put this issue in a broader context.

“Don’t sweat so much over if you can’t afford a really high efficiency,  lightweight electric vehicle,  and you can’t get your greenhouse gas emissions down to zero or near zero. Do the best that you can in that context, and then you work on changing the policies, changing the laws, and changing the norms and institutions in ways that enable anybody and everybody to participate much more fully in a sustainable economy.  That’s going to require hard changes.”

Cortes Currents: One of the problems when we look at societal change is we seem to struggle a lot and don’t get far. Society does seem to be changing, but it’s so slow. 

Kai Chan: “Yes, societal change is hard and at the moment It’s not even clear that we’re moving in the right direction.  Many nations are getting more polarized and the more polarized that we get, the more difficult it will be to address collective challenges like the climate crisis.” 

“On the other hand, there are millions of folks who care deeply and who are working hard every day, doing both tangible material things and then also the more intangible cultural things  to make this world a better place.”  

“All is not lost, we have time. We still have well functioning institutions in this country. It’s just that we need to work on overcoming that polarization and getting on the same page about  this  really important global problem that we all face together.”   

You have been reading the first half of an interview with Kai Chan of CoSphere. In part 2 he talks about carbon offsets. 

Cortes Currents was directed to Dr Chan while seeking answers, about about carbon impact calculations and air flights, through the media relations desk at UBC.

He also described his organization. 

“At CoSphere, we believe that there’s a really important role for science to help mediate those debates and the kind of argument that continues to happen between NGOs and the private sector and governments. What is likely to be helpful? What are the unintended consequences that might result from this policy or that policy?  And to really direct people’s attention actions and interventions to be the most important in terms of changing those systems.  We have a podcast actually, that is launching on Friday, called Small Planet Heroes, and it’s going to be available on all the major platforms, starting with our pilot and a first episode with Kai Scott.” 

Top image credit: Airport Photo by Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash

Footnotes: 

• *I drive a small gas car, do not grow my own food and do not use carbon offsets. There are people on Cortes and elsewhere, who do better in these areas.
• **29 hours multiplied by ¼ tonne CO2 equivalent per passenger per hour flying equals a little more than 7.25 metric tones.- the formula for aviation emissions was obatined at Carbon Independent.

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