Yves here. A rare bit of cheery climate change news. Housing is an understudied and not surprisingly not-trivial contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. It turns out there’s low hanging fruit in terms of pretty easy fixes to existing stocks.
By Maxim Chupilkin, Associate Economist at the Office of the Chief Economist European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD); Zsoka Koczan, Lead Economist European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD); and Ireko Zamilov, PhD candidate in Finance London Business School. Originally published at VoxEU
Housing is a major component of energy consumption, yet residential emissions have typically received less policy attention than emissions from industry or transportation. This column combines the results of a household survey administered across a large sample of emerging markets with cross-country data on residential emissions. It shows how relatively low-cost, technologically straightforward improvements, such as installing (smart) meters and double-glazed windows, can help significantly reduce residential emissions, even taking the existing housing stock as given.
Housing and the associated heating, water and sewerage infrastructure carry a substantial environmental footprint. Yet, they tend to receive much less attention than energy use and associated emissions in industry and transportation. Moreover, these housing services currently occupy a sizable portion of households’ disposable income as demonstrated in the results of the fourth wave of the Life in Transition Survey (a household survey administered across a large sample of emerging markets in Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and North Africa) which showed that respondents in these economies spend an average of 22% of their household income on utilities, up from 17% in 2016. This is significantly more than in Germany, and the figures for poorer households are higher still.
The residential sector accounts, on average, for 26% of total emissions and 29% of total energy use in these emerging markets, compared with 22% of total emissions and 26% of total energy use in advanced European comparators (Figure 1). In some economies, the residential sector is the single largest contributor to total emissions, surpassing industry, transport and other services. This is the case, for instance, in Azerbaijan, Kosovo, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova and Serbia.
In some cases, such as in economies in central Europe, residential emissions remain high even as industry is becoming greener—partly reflecting the upgrading of technology and decarbonisation policies focused on the manufacturing sector. In contrast, economies in eastern Europe and the Caucasus have industrial sectors which pollute more than their residential sectors. In some economies (particularly Kazakhstan and the Western Balkans), industrial and residential emissions are both high.
Figure 1 Residential sector energy use in emerging markets
Source: IEA and authors’ calculations.
Note: The data in this chart are estimates based on IEA surveys of statistical agencies and relate to 2021 or the latest available year. Residential energy use and emissions are broken down into “appliances” and “heating”. “Appliances” includes cooking, cooling and lighting; “heating” refers to all heating, including hot water (such as gas boilers). Data represent population weighted averages based on 27 emerging markets and 15 advanced European economies.
Energy Use Versus Emissions
Differences in residential energy use explain only 22% of total cross-country variation in residential emissions per capita. For instance, residential emissions per capita in Kazakhstan are around 2.5 times the level seen in Estonia, despite Kazakhstan’s residential sector using only 4% more energy per capita. Similarly, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland and Serbia emit about twice as much as Slovenia and the Slovak Republic while using similar amounts of energy.
Motivated by this, the following regression analysis looks at the role of various factors and their relative importance in explaining differences in residential emissions per capita (see Chupilkin et al. 2023). The left-hand panel in Figure 2 focuses on key variables available for a larger sample of countries; the right-hand panel presents more detailed analysis based on a small sample of 20 economies, using information on building characteristics and metering derived from the Life in Transition Survey. This survey included a new module on housing, where respondents were asked, for instance, if their windows were double-glazed or if their heating and water were metered, using smart or regular meters.
Economies with high emissions for a given level of energy use tend to be more dependent on coal for their energy. In contrast, economies where renewables account for a large proportion of energy generation (such as Albania, which gets almost all of its energy from hydroelectric power, or Lithuania, where wind and solar power play a significant role) have relatively low emissions for the same level of energy use. On average, differences in the prevalence of various fossil fuels in countries’ fuel mixes can explain around 25% of total cross-country variation in heating-related emissions per capita, and over 40% for emissions caused by the operation of domestic appliances (such as refrigerators and air conditioning units). Higher income per capita and larger dwellings per capita significantly increase demand for heating, accounting for close to 20% of total variation in emissions. Likewise, colder and longer winters can also explain some of the cross-country variation in heating-related emissions (see also Cascarano and Natoli 2023 and Levinson 2013 on the effects of climate on energy demand and housing preferences).
Incentives to use energy efficiently, captured here as the use of metering and fossil fuel energy subsidies, explain 5% of total variation in heating-related emissions and 15% of emissions from appliances (see also Davis and Boomhower 2019, Fabrizio et al. 2013, Puller et al. 2022 and Tawk et al. 2022 on the importance of incentives for energy efficiency). Across countries, a doubling of fossil fuel subsidies (as a percentage of GDP) is associated with a 40% increase in heating-related emissions per capita. Smart meters that record consumption at a high frequency, can help residents to save costs by providing them with real-time information about energy use and by automatically sending meter readings to the energy supplier.
Older buildings are, on average, associated with much more emissions from heating. Building age and the percentage of buildings with double-glazed windows explain around a third of total variation in emissions from heating and a tenth of total variation in emissions from appliances.
Figure 2 Cross-country variation in residential emissions
Source: IEA, Life in Transition Survey IV and authors’ calculations.
Note: Data relate to 2021 or the latest available year. “Heating” refers to all heating, including hot water; “appliances” includes cooking, cooling and lighting. Shapley decomposition based on a linear model regressing the logarithm of residential emissions per capita on various explanatory variables. “Fuel mix” comprises the share of coal and the share of oil and gas in total energy production. GDP per capita is measured at market exchange rates. In the case of heating, the “average temperature” variable is the sum of all downward deviations in average monthly temperatures from 15°C across all months; in the case of appliances, it is the sum of all downward deviations in average monthly temperatures from 15°C across all months plus the sum of all upward deviations in average monthly temperatures from 21°C. “Dwelling size” is measured as the logarithm of square metres per capita. “Metering” is the average share of metered heating (in percentage terms) plus the average share of smart meters (so smart meters are counted twice). “Energy subsidies” is calculated as the inverse hyperbolic sine transformation of the fossil fuel subsidy as a percentage of GDP, based on data from the IMF and the IEA. “Insulation” is the percentage of buildings with at least some double-glazed windows plus the percentage of buildings with all windows double-glazed (so again, fully double-glazed buildings are counted twice).
Policy Implications
The significant environmental footprint of housing is, to a large extent, shaped by countries’ use of coal and other fossil fuels for the generation of electricity. While greening the electricity mix can thus reduce the emissions associated with appliances, decarbonising heating in cold climates presents unique technological and policy challenges. Nevertheless, differences in average temperatures explain only 15% of total variation in heating-related emissions per capita across economies.
Historically, building codes have been the primary policy for residential energy efficiency (Puller et al. 2022). However, while these regulations have their merits, the influence of building codes is relatively limited as they typically only apply to new construction. Our analysis suggests that relatively low-cost, technologically straightforward improvements, such as installing meters for water and heating, upgrading conventional meters to smart meters and installing double-glazed windows, can help to significantly reduce residential emissions, taking the existing housing stock as given.
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See the “Clean Heat” bill that VT has been trying to pass for the last 3 years.
1. Get everyone to install heat pumps at $6000/unit
2. Realize heat pumps don’t operate below 15f with any kind of efficiency. Still need oil or wood.
3. Heating oil prices doubled in the meantime. Whoops.
Im all for clean heat but there isn’t a solution with proper energy density in truly cold places.
Is VT significantly colder than Norway? It has the highest heat pumps per capita in Europe and doesn’t really seem to have any problems with heating
Meanwhile other states and the federal government are working to deny new construction and remodels natural gas for cooking, heating and hot water.
Want to add a room for your parents to move in? Have to go all electric, new power line, panel, subpanel, heat pump etc. Can’t afford it? Tough shit.
https://www.latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2023-02-09/california-declared-war-on-natural-gas-now-the-fight-is-going-national-boiling-point
Kamala’s “holiday” card shows her and billionaire corporate lawyer husband cooking over a gas stove. F*ing hypocrisy.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_pl7OXW4AAp2ff?format=jpg&name=large
Interesting, but at odds with what I thought I understood regarding building science.
A window is like a hole in the wall…. even the best, most super efficient double or triple glazed window is still like a hole compared to the heat retention potential of the wall around it. So if you have single glazed windows in a poorly insulated wall then you should always insulate the wall first. Only after that does it make sense to pay the expense of upgrading windows, which will never make as large of a difference.
And air sealing is even more important than insulation – get out your caulk gun.
I am curious why this analysis focused on double glazing and smart meters….. and left out what seems to be these more fundamental energy retrofits.
Of course sealing the building really well, builds up environmental pollutants inside (a signature of a modern economy – plastics and plasticizers), leading to sick building syndrome. I wonder how much more energy a sick population uses.
The solution to that problem is a heat-exchanging ventilator. The heat in the exiting air is transferred to the incoming air as the interior air exits the building.
The machine is simple: a fan to push interior air out, and another fan to pull exterior air in, plus some aluminum fins that touch both the incoming and exiting air currents. Aluminum is a good conductor of heat.
Here is a bunch of images for ” heat exchanging ventilator”. Each one has an URL for url diving.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrFQZQzfGJlHokQflJXNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?p=heat+exchanging+ventilator+image&fr=sfp
And here is a bunch of images for ” air to air heat exchanger”, which I think is very similar to “heat exchanging ventilator”. But some of the images will be different.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=Awrhdu2IfGJlPJAQrExXNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?p=air+to+air+heat+exchanger+image&fr=sfp
Because there’s no money in undertaking a labor-intensive process like sealing and insulating? The solutions HAVE to be things where a connected manufacturer can make a large profit, enough to pay lobbying fees.
I spent MUCH more insulating my house than I’ll ever recapture in saved energy costs. It’s now warm and healthy in winter as opposed to drafty and cold. A tax credit for all that insulating would have been nice, and would have bought more carbon removal than shutting down my gas furnace. The IRA gives a 30% tax credit for insulation up to a maximum of $4000 spent. Ridiculous.
Depends on where you live (country that is).
Eligible retrofits: Natural Resources Canada.
I agree with you that it is debatable regarding whether we should focus on windows vs walls for the most cost effective energy savings. I imagine it depends on the situation. I think adding insulation to a wall is more complicated than replacing windows, though, because you have to redo one face of the wall, and that can get particularly tricky when the roof overhang cannot accommodate a fatter wall. Whereas a new window just gets slotted in the spot where the old window went.
The thing with insulation is that every time you double the thickness you halve the energy loss. Which means you get less and less bang for the buck as you increase the quantity. It is much easier to double the insulation value of a single pane window because it is so thin to begin with.
More importantly, because windows have such low r values compared to walls, a larger amount of the conductive heat loss occurs through them per square foot compared to walls. For instance one square foot of single pane window will lose 56 btus per hour when it is 40 degrees F colder outside. [https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/heat-loss-transmission-d_748.html]. Whereas for a double glazed window it might be more like 11 BTUs per hour. And for a square foot of wall with r-30 it would be more like 1.3 BTUs per hour. So every square foot of single pane window replaced with double pane window saves you the equivalent of what you would save by increasing the insulation in about 26 square feet of wall from r-15 to r-30. And that is assuming the walls were that poorly insulated in the first place.
This year I learned that there is such a thing as a “Passive House”.
・Passive Houses allow for space heating and cooling related energy savings of up to 90% compared with typical building stock and over 75% compared to average new builds. Passive Houses use less than 1.5 l of oil or 1.5 m3 of gas to heat one square meter of living space for a year – substantially less than common “low-energy” buildings. Vast energy savings have been demonstrated in warm climates where typical buildings also require active cooling.
・Passive Houses make efficient use of the sun, internal heat sources and heat recovery, rendering conventional heating systems unnecessary throughout even the coldest of winters. During warmer months, Passive Houses make use of passive cooling techniques such as strategic shading to keep comfortably cool.
・Passive Houses are praised for the high level of comfort they offer. Internal surface temperatures vary little from indoor air temperatures, even in the face of extreme outdoor temperatures. Special windows and a building envelope consisting of a highly insulated roof and floor slab as well as highly insulated exterior walls keep the desired warmth in the house – or undesirable heat out.
https://passivehouse.com/02_informations/01_whatisapassivehouse/01_whatisapassivehouse.htm
It was born from the idea of building houses that do not need energy because of the experience of the oil crisis.
It is not so well known now, but I think it will become more popular in the future.
That is an important point that. Passive house designs can make a huge difference in both heating and cooling a house simply through better design and selection of building materials. You don’t need to power it up or get “smart” anythings but just let good building design do most of the heavy lifting.
Ian McHarg wrote a book decades ago: Design With Nature. That influenced many in architecture, landscape and related fields. On a very practical level, I look for a house that has some solar gain potential. Basking in the sun, perhaps with a good book, is a timeless joy.
Worth re-reading McHarg.
Yes. Ian McHarg has provided a seminal introduction to environmental design principles. There were many others who led the way in passive design in architecture: Steve Baer, Paulo Soleri, and David Wright. I worked with Baer and Wright in the 70’s. Here’s a 1990 passive solar design of my own:
http://www.land2plan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/PV-House.pdf
Washington state is taking a similar “one size fits all” approach to their energy efficiency and climate goals.
Why don’t you post about the huge impact of animal agriculture on climate change? I haven’t seen one article about it since I started following you. On the other hand, I’ve seen a lot of images of the animals we are murdering for taste pleasure or out of indifference and greed, to take over their natural habitat. I don’t know what all those images are supposed to mean, if you’re not advocating for their rights.
Going vegan is the biggest impact we can make as individuals; animal agriculture contributes more to the climate crisis (more by deforestation than by emissions) than all of transportation combined. I would think anyone who truly cares about the climate catastrophe would be shouting this from the rooftops every chance they get. So who cares about how we heat homes, something that is trivial in comparison to the atrocities we inflict on trillions of sentient beings every year?
Animal agriculture is not the problem. It’s industrial agriculture that causes the woes you’ve described.
Look up regenerative agriculture and silvopasture. Animals are capable of profound sequestration with the right management.
Thank you for pointing this out. Animals have no voice in their plight, and the destruction and misery we humans impose on them is horrendous, and largely unnecessary.
Most of the grain and soybeans (the majority of cultivated acreage) here in the U.S. goes to produce beef, pork and chicken. Gradually changing your diet to eat less meat is another major contribution to the biosphere that each of us can achieve.
Every point you made is accurate IMHO.
You are absolutely correct. Mass adoption of a vegan diet would absolutely be the best thing any of us can do to mitigate the massive negative impact on the “natural” world that results from the mere existence of specie homo sapien.
Mass restriction of meat-eating to meat from carbon-capturing animals on pasture/range/silvopasture would do even more than just mass veganism.
Banning CAFO meat ( including aqua-CAFO farmed salmon ) would solve the ” meat emits skycarbon” problem.
Thank you for pointing this out. Much of the third world has pretty much been priced out of meat. I would add a worldwide two child policy might make some sense for the future although it would take quite some time for its effect to show up. This article by Murtaugh et. al. from the Univ of Oregon has generated quite a bit of opposition. Here is the abstract:” Much attention has been paid to the ways that people’s home energy use, travel, food choices and other routine activities affect their emissions of carbon dioxide and, ultimately, their contributions to global warming. However, the reproductive choices of an individual are rarely incorporated into calculations of his personal impact on the environment. Here we estimate the extra emissions of fossil carbon dioxide that an average individual causes when he or she chooses to have children. The summed emissions of a person’s descendants, weighted by their relatedness to him, may far exceed the lifetime emissions produced by the original parent. Under current conditions in the United States, for example, each child adds about 9441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average female, which is 5.7 times her lifetime emissions. A person’s reproductive choices must be considered along with his day-today activities when assessing his ultimate impact on the global environment.
I agree that anyone who reads this and sees the conclusions as sensible should not have children.
Smart meters have nothing to do with energy efficiency or conservation and is all about another means of surveillance. The effort they have gone to to present them as a tool to promote energy conservation is another example of the absolute obsession the security state has with achieving a complete panopticon.
And besides, haven’t we learned not to listen to economist on, well, anything?
Electric industry worker here. Smart meters would enable retail prices to track wholesale prices during the day; the idea is that people would then time their appliance use to use cheap power (at night) which in turn would change the demand curve from a rough sinusoid (low at night, high in the day) to something flatter. This would then reduce the need for gas “peaker” plants that run only when demand is at its highest.
In practice of course there are complications. But your description is not accurate.
So we have smart meters where I live and they wanted to move everyone to time of use charging saying exactly what you just did. However, the best time of use is entirely predictable and they’ve encouraged (and educated) us to do it for years. For example, using all appliances before noon so that all capacity during the afternoon can be used for Air conditioning in the summer.
A year after the smart meters were installed, when they wanted us to go to time of use billing, they did an analysis of each household’s prior annual usage to show how your total annual bill would change. Mine was literally on about $5 difference per year because I was already doing all the proper time of use things. I jumped thru the hoops to stay on the old billing option just because, but most people didn’t and their bills did go up. Smart Meters seem like a super expensive solution.
Edison also pushes the option to have a shut off switch installed on your AC that they control. They give you a small discount on your bill if you sign up. I declined.
And, smart meters will allow daily competitive bidding to purchase electricity.
Your billionaire neighbor up the street is willing to pay $5 a kilowatt hour in a brownout, or, at any time when the “climate emergency” really hits, accordin gto the experts. He gets the electricity as his remotely controlled meter stays on and yours is shut off because you are only willing to pay $4 a kilowatt hour.
The technology exists and is in place. All that’s missing is the Newsom appointed PUC’s acquiescience…undoubtedly to lower carbon emissions, no?
Get a thermal imaging attachment for your smart phone. They cost around $160. Take a picture of your house on a cold day, and see where the heat’s leaking out.
Leaks show up brightly on the picture.
Thermal transfer formula is: (Delta-T * area) / R-value.
Delta-T is the difference in temperature from inside-to-out. That is what provides the motive power or incentive for heat to leave one place and go to another.
Area is just square footage of the building envelope.
R-value is the resistance to heat flow that a given material imposes on the heat flow. Higher R-value is better, of course. Different materials offer different R-values.
Note that you have a lot of control over the Delta-T, and lowering that delta is just as effective as adding insulation.
Once you know where the leaks are, you can apply resources (caulk, new windows, more insulation in the walls, etc.) to plug the leaks.
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Heat flows into your cooler house in the summer, and out of your hotter house in the winter. Both flows are expensive.
There are many ways to crack this nut. Trees that shade your house, exterior paint color, curtains or honeycomb shades on the windows, caulking air leaks, more efficient furnace or air conditioner, zone controllers (just manage the temp of the room you’re actually in)… many options.
Transportation and HVAC are the main contributors to CO2 load from the U.S.
When you’re trying to optimize a situation, the first place to look is “where the potential for change actually is”. Fix the big stuff first, then worry about the next-smaller obstacle.
This is one major area that we individuals have full control of the situation – things can change bigly without any top-down policy support.
I disagree. Industrial power production from fossil fuels is #1, transportation follows. You could argue that HVAC is closely linked with #1, but 85-95% burn efficiency for a nat gas furnace at home is pretty good. All the above suggestions about improvements are very valid.
Depending on where smart meters are installed in a residence they can pose a not trivial RF emissions risk. In my residence a smart meter was installed literally 4 feet from where I lay my head down to sleep. I asked the utility to remove it and replace it with a conventional electric meter.
Looking at solutions for the housing stock is akin to improving indor ventilation to prevent spread of airborne diseases. Ain’t gon’a happen…
I had a look at the actual report. HOUSES, HOMESAND HEATING (download page).
The authors seem to have done quite a bit of data mining. The seem to have produced some simple descriptions of findings, usually presented in almost unreadable stacked bar charts and several of their assertions seem unsupported. For example they make this statement:
Proper metering of water and heating, as well as cost-reflective
pricing of gas and electricity, will strengthen incentives to use
energy efficiently.
I suspect this is likely true but I don’t see anything in my quick skim of the report that actually provides evidence.
And, as a quibble, more likely a VoxEU problem than the authors, the VoxEU text reads, “The left-hand panel in Figure 2…”. There is no Figure 2 in the report. All plots are labelled Chart XX.
And come to think of it why is the “US” suddenly appearing in one plot, Chart 4.15, as a comparator?
I imagine that some or most of my objections are simply due to severe space constraints and style demands placed on the authors for it looks like they have pulled together some very interesting material. They probably need a 1 or 2 hundred page monograph to do it justice.
Geothermal deserves a mention, especially for new construction.
Geothermal is like heat pumps but heat is exchanged with the ground not air. It means the coefficient of performance (the heat you can move divided by the energy needed to move it) doesn’t fall off a cliff on very cold days – it stays around 4 as opposed to heat pumps (to air) that stop working.
It requires digging deep holes (100 plus meters) or long trenches and can be susceptible to poor engineering, eg, too small pipes that increase energy needed to pump the refrigerant.
But for new construction it should be strongly considered – for large buildings, multiple buildings and district heating.
In the Nordics (at least in Sweden) what you describe is referred to as a ground source heat-pump. Here is a link to a UK site describing it:
https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/advice/ground-source-heat-pumps/
The recently linked to article from The Guardian about heatpumps in the Nordics probably included ground source heat pumps in the statistics for the uptake of heat pumps.
I believe that many who talk about how bad heat pumps are might be referring to air to air heat pumps.
https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/advice/air-to-air-heat-pumps/
https://www.theecoexperts.co.uk/heat-pumps/air-to-air-heat-pumps
Definitely not suited for all climates but cheap to buy and no more difficult to install than an AC.
A few points.
Consume more to save the planet is a capitalists wet dream, not an enviromentalists. Building your trust-fund-baby-bucket-list, energy efficient home is energy intensive to the point that it mitigates any lifetime energy savings by alot. Much like buying a Tesla over a second-hand pre-existing car.
They want to charge you more for less and convince you to invest in wealth/virtue signalling, nothing more.
Efficient homes are built to last and have thermal mass. Most modern builds are tinderboxes built of woodchips, glue and fiberglass all coated in petroleum products. The frame is skinny and wood is crap, they barely last a lifetime even with constant renovation. 10 year for a standard roof 40 for a modern metal roof. Wow. I grew up in a victorian row house with a slate roof. The roof is now 130 years old. Hermetically sealed houses are terribly unhealthy and cracking a window is practically the same energy cost as using a ductless ERV. Don’t even get me started on ductwork.
A heat pump’s lifespan is ten years. A ductless retrofit of a typical 1500sqft home is 20g plus and covers your homes exterior in refrigerant lines unless you want to start tearing into drywall. Mitsubishi’s biggest ducted furnace is 42kbtu, so good luck trying to utilize that pre-existing ductwork in your 2000sqft home. Start saving another 10g to replace your system in ten years guys, and another 10 for your solar panels. Your Tesla will need a new battery, but you may aswell get the new model? Got to keep up with the godesses’.
Dont get me started on leaked refrigerant and shoddy disposal practices, health and environmental issues abound. These systems should be tested over a number of days to be leak free, in practice contractors think of leaky systems as job security.
In the real world, the guys who build your dream home in 110degree heat go home to non-conditioned rentals while PMC shitheads have the stat set to 69 in summer and 75 in winter. The useless 2000sqft they inhabit usually solo or as a couple is cleaned and landscaped by a large family, for below minimum wage. These servants live 2 to a room in a 700sqft rental in the shitty side of town, owned by the same guys they clean for. If you really want to help, go move in to your rental and give your home up to people who could use the space. Try paying ‘the help’ (your slaves) as much as you get for whatever less menial, less demeaning, tasks your shill ass makes bank on, such as these studies. I wonder how easy it is to get funding studying the enviromental impact of corporations being made to operate in a legal framework that denied them ‘externalities’.
The focus on aggregate energy costs of typical homeowners, is much the same as focusing on consumers recycling plastics. It is a sleight of hand putting onus on the average joe when we already heard yesterday that the 1percent use more energy than the bottom 66percent. My energy usage is not the problem. Those with the 2000sqft passive home by the nature reserve and the Tesla and the vaycays to CostaRica, should feel some guilt. In my experience these people feel they are green gods and godesses (lots of women adding the word godess to their formal name around here) walking amongst dirty, subhuman rednecks with their gas stoves and V8 trucks. Sorry, but you can’t haul the lumber for your dream home on a Tesla and a Rivian costs a little more than what you are paying.
And if you think you are doing your bit by being vegan, you’re not. If you are home cooking veggies or meat sourced at your local farmers market, then well done for being able to afford to live in a bubble that was created just for you. Most vegans are buying pre-made, PFA boxed takeaway meals from your favorite local restaurant, soon to be national chain. Or even worse from an online daily meal delivery conglomerate. They eat heavily processed products from huge producers that employ terrible, though technically organic, farming practices.
If you can convince a single billionare to euthanize himself, you could cover a decade of energy costs for a third world nation or a years worth of monster truck rallies. Sadly the biggest prerequisite to becoming a billionaire is a willingness to sacrifice everyone and everything for your financial gain.
I for one would never advocate for violently removing the monied class from their pedestal, simply because they would violently remove me from their society if I did so. It does make one think tho.