Understanding Local Impacts on Climate Change

By Jared Goldman

Source: USDN Sustainable Consumption Toolkit

As we are well aware, climate change as a result of human greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has led to increased natural disasters, worse air quality, and more uninhabitable ecosystems. The individual causes of such diverse crises are difficult to pinpoint since they originate from so many sources.  Consumption is a key driver of GHG emissions, but is often overlooked in climate action planning. According to the EPA, the largest sectors contributing to global greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation, energy, and industry, but these broad categories offer an incomplete picture of a city’s carbon footprint. For most cities, most emissions come from consumption, not from direct emissions from transportation, energy or industry. Consumption-based emissions are the GHG emissions associated with producing, transporting, using, and disposing of products and services in the region. These include emissions generated outside city borders to produce goods and services used within the city. These upstream emissions can be significant — often proportionate to or more than emissions generated within the city itself.

In order to address the challenges of tackling global emissions, we must address all their sources. Many cities, states, and countries are using Consumption-Based Emissions Inventories to determine exactly which types of consumption that could be reduced to be most impactful in climate change mitigation.

What is a Consumption-Based Emissions Inventory? 

Consumption Based Emissions Inventories (CBEIs) are in-depth reports of the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the consumption of all people in a geographic location.  This means calculating all the GHG emissions associated with producing, transporting, using, and disposing of products and services in the region. For most cities a consumption-based inventory is likely to be substantially higher than a typical, sector-based greenhouse gas emissions inventory because most of a city’s GHG emissions come from consumption, not from direct emissions. Therefore, CBEIs provide more relevant information about the true impact that a region has on climate change and can provide citizens, policymakers, and businesses with targeted ideas for climate action planning. 

Local Sustainability Efforts

In the City of Durham’s Sustainability Roadmap, the City identifies several different focus areas for leading the city to a greener future. The city plans to “amend existing economic plans and strategies to focus market demands for green jobs, technology, products, and services” and “establish a climate change advisory group to identify and implement [greenhouse gas] reduction strategies.” Both of these approaches rely on data-driven insight into the sources of GHG emissions in order to create meaningful solutions. Therefore, a Consumption-Based Emissions Inventory for the City of Durham is necessary to identify and address current greenhouse gas emissions. Without this information, policy makers will be blind to the ways that Durham contributes to climate change, preventing them from making impactful decisions.

 Conclusion

Climate change has impacted everyone in the world. It is simple to generalize the causes of climate change to high GHG-emitting sectors but that is not the whole picture. Understanding that consumption is the driver of these GHG-emitting sectors is the first step in taking action at the local level, because we can change consumption at a local level. Through CBEIs, local stakeholders can effectively identify and tackle the actual sources of greenhouse gasses from city residents.  If many cities and states apply this targeted approach to emission reduction, the cumulative effect would be unprecedented.

We cannot wait for the rest of the world to take action before we do so in the Triangle. The plans for sustainable reform laid out Durham and other Triangle cities provide a beacon of hope for the future of the Triangle. While exciting, these plans must be supported by targeted policies resulting from complete information on the state of greenhouse gas contributions that a Consumption-Based Emissions Inventory provides.