If you are an environmentally-minded person, it can be really difficult to compare which actions are going to have the greatest effect on the planet if you're going by the public awareness campaigns. Is it recycling? Going vegan? Using metal straws? Turns out that not taking ONE Transatlantic flight actually saves more than all of those things combined. And not flying isn't even number one or number two on the chart. The answer: not having kids. But you don't see many public awareness campaigns pushing THAT, do you? For this conversation, we sat down with Elijah Innes-Wimsatt, who has the fascinating job of quantifying the carbon emissions of various companies. We talk about personal actions you can take, but also about how voting actually matters way more than you think it does, and about how the average environmentalist of today looks very different from the environmentalist of 20 years ago.

Links:

A comparison (with a very helpful bar chart in Figure 1) of the carbon emissions saved by adopting different green actions, such as going vegan or living car free: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541

Zooming in on the food conversation, here is a Fast Company article that delves into the carbon footprint of different protein sources: https://www.fastcompany.com/90461008/this-graph-will-show-you-the-carbon-footprint-of-your-protein

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.