NE2019 P9: Education Against Overconsumption
NEXT EARTH: TEACHING CLIMATE CHANGE ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES
A NEARLY CARBON-NEUTRAL CONFERENCE
Panel 9: Education Against Overconsumption
“Vegan Studies: Modeling Adaptive and Sustainable Pathways Forward”
Jessica Holmes (Department of English, University of Washington)
“Counterpoising Consumerism: The Seven Rs to Salvage our Society”
Ryan Alaniz (Associate Professor of Sociology, Cal Poly State University)
“Transformative Education for Climate Action: A Focus on Degrowth”
Laurent Cilia (University of Colorado)
“Why Should We Reduce Our Own Emissions?”
Howard Nye (Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta, Canada)
@Howard, thanks very much for your talk. The main line of argument seems convincing, and seems like a real contribution, both theoretically and in practice.
I have one question about details and one about your conclusion.
About the details: the way you describe expected consequences is limited to direct reduction in emissions. But there are all kinds of other effects of the same action, including effects on other people who see us e.g. deciding to vote, or deciding not to fly, either through personal interaction or through public media, like the widely disseminated and widely used statistics about voting numbers. I like (and like to teach) Jonathan Glover’s classic discussion of side effects and “spirals” in “It Makes No Difference Whether or Not I Do It”. Given these “side effects” of e.g. not flying, it seems like the numbers in your calculations of expected consequences can’t be correct. The actual consequences are usually bigger. That seems worth mentioning, as a technicality but also as a reminder that our actual impact is even bigger, sometimes much bigger, than the direct effect on reductions in emissions. Do you have any objection to expanding the expected consequences analysis of travel decisions in this way?
Second, I wonder how ambitious your conclusion should be. I’m convinced about your more modest conclusion on slide 44, that the expected consequences approach can surmount Gesang’s challenge. But at the bottom of the slide, you also conclude that the expected consequences approach “provides a fully adequate account” of our moral reasons to not fly, etc. Have you said anything to warrant this conclusion? Why rule out that approaches that appeal to character virtues, duties of respect, or non-consequence-centered principles have anything important to add? This conclusion seems loyal to the consequences approach, to the point of limiting efforts to combat climate change. Why not conclude, more modestly, that the consequence approach can provide powerful moral reasons, but allow that there can also be other powerful reasons that don’t focus on consequences?
Thanks again for an interesting and convincing talk.
– Eugene Chislenko
Hi Eugene, Thanks so much for the feedback! First, in response to your first point about side-effects and spirals, no; I certainly don’t have any objections to expanding the expected consequences approach to incorporate them I agree with and welcome the conclusion that, given these effects, what I mostly discuss in the body of my talk are a lower-bound of the expected efficacy of our acts for the case in which they have no such effects. In the full paper I have a footnote in which I discuss some of the secondary effects of voting on vote totals that do things beyond directly determining the winner and loser of a given election. I would certainly like to explore these kinds of secondary / role-modelling effects of travelling decisions. Do you have any idea of where one might find evidence of what these effects look like? That said I do think that it is important to (i) establish the lower bound of the expected consequences of our acts in the absence of these secondary effects, and (ii) stress that these effects are present in the context of acts within our personal lives (like individual travel decisions) every bit as much as they are in the context of acts within our political lives. I think that i is important because (a) some acts may have few expected secondary effects (perhaps e.g. energy consumption that goes on in one’s own home, or a purchasing decision at an automatic scanner with no one else looking on), and (b) these lower bound estimates / estimates of primary effects will presumably form the foundation for a more inclusive calculation that takes into account the secondary effects. I think that ii is important because some (like SInnott-Armstrong and a colleague in a very recent paper) claim without any evidence that acts in the context of political life can have ripple effects but that acts in the context of one’s personal life cannot. I suppose it is conceivable that the expected consequences are greater in the political context, but I know of no reason to think this. Again, it would be very nice to have more evidence about the expected consequences of secondary effects in both cases.
Second, in response to your point about my claim that my account provides a “fully adequate account” I think that I largely agree that this suggests more than I can correctly claim to have established in my talk. What I think I was primarily going for was a claim that I have shown how the account successfully explains why we have powerful reasons to avoid contributing to harmful outcomes in collective action cases in the context of both political and personal life, how it provides a very plausible and helpful way to determine the strength of these reasons, and how it can overcome the central challenge provided by Gesang. That said in the full paper I do give a brief argument against a “hybrid” approach to our moral reasons in collective action cases that accepts the expected consequences approach as part of but not the entire explanation. The main problem that might generalize to the potential other accounts you raise is that if the moral case against contributing to harmful outcomes includes both expected-consequence-based reasons and another kind of reasons, it actually threatens to over-generate reasons against contributing to harmful outcomes – e.g. it might not allow such things as driving someone to the hospital to save her life even in cases where the expected harms of these emissions are a great deal less less than the expected harm to her of our not driving her to the hospital. This is because the expected-consequence based reasons would seem all else held equal to combine in an additive way with these other reasons. It is of course conceivable that they do not combine in an additive way, but the burden of proof would presumably be on the proponent of the hybrid account to explain why the strengths of the two different kinds of reasons does not combine additively and to offer an inherently plausible account of the alternative way in which they are supposed to combine. But because I did not even suggest this sort of argument in this shorter talk, I certainly agree that I cannot claim to have made a case in this talk against the hybrid approach – and I’m grateful to you for bringing this to my attention, and indicating how I should not in this way overstate my conclusion. Thanks again! Howard
Thanks to all for this thoughtful and generative panel!
@Dr. Alaniz
I really enjoyed your talk for its validation of individual action and the benefits of it. And I think your points about values/actions and personal empowerment align nicely with Laurent’s discussion about the commodification of happiness. But I do wonder how you situate these 7 R’s within larger systems and structures–particularly given the time crunch we’re facing (the IPCC report gives us 12…now closer to 11 years to change course). I agree individual actions are vital to change, but how do we translate these actions into systematic and structural change when our governments, infrastructure and business models are so behind? I think Dr. Nye’s talk on risk and benefit assessment provides some useful framing regarding both practical and moral impact, but I would love to hear your thoughts!
And a slight side note, but on you final point: Is it really a “reciprocal relationship” if the chicken isn’t willingly giving you eggs? (especially given that it’s much more taxing for her body to produce eggs than it is for you to provide care for her…)
@Dr. Holmes
Thank you for watching. You make some excellent points. I absolutely agree that the looming deadline presented by the recent IPCC report should have us all deeply concerned. I have had the honor of working with the United Nations University and the White House on policy issues and us who are privileged have a duty to work at international and national levels.
Yet, many of my relatives still do not believe climate change is real (e.g. “The earth has always warmed and cooled; this is no different”). My talk is directed toward these global north consumers who need to start somewhere. There is a long leap between recycling and lowering car emissions; but the leap is even farther if you don’t even believe recycling is important in the first place. If we can obtain even the tacit support (as opposed to the vehement opposition) of deniers, we will be able to accomplish significantly more than trying to impose “odious” legislation.
I look forward to watching Dr. Nye’s presentation.
And to your philosophical question about my potentially reciprocal relationship with my chickens–I honestly had not critically examined it until now. Thank you. My initial thought is that we sustain each other. She could not live without my support (feed, water, shelter, healthcare) and I receive a gift from her. While laying eggs I imagine is very taxing, it is a natural process and a chicken will lay anywhere from 2-6 a week. She cannot not lay eggs. If I did not collect the eggs, they would rot and likely cause other problems (disease, attract mice, create an unsanitary environment, etc.). I do not demand she lay eggs and her eggs are infertile (without a rooster) and therefore have no clear benefit to her if she keeps it. I also support older chickens which have stopped laying until they naturally pass on. I could not have chickens but then there would be no relationship. Do you have any thoughts on how I could make the relationship better or more reciprocal? Thank you again for your questions.
Thanks for this thoughtful reply! I think your point about tacit support being more productive than vehement opposition (and perhaps being a stepping stone toward less tacit support one day!) is exactly right. There’s a lot of talk about individual vs. collective/structural change in environmental circles. Of course we need both, but I’ve heard many environmentalists whose work I love and deeply admire minimize the value of individual changes. While we’re not going to meet the IPCC deadline one reusable water bottle or one vegan meal at a time, these choices work to normalize more sustainable practices and (perhaps even more importantly I’d argue) they empower individuals. Feeling hopeless and/or helpless will only worsen the problem, and at the end of the day collective changes are just the accumulation of many individual changes and voices. I really appreciated the way your talk foregrounded personal empowerment through relatively small (but achievable) steps.
As for the chicken…. I don’t mean to critique your practices at all (clearly couldn’t help myself though!). I’m very thankful to those like you who provide care and comfort to animals of all kinds, and you taking her eggs is an act worlds apart from the how the majority of egg production works. But to answer your question–from a practical standpoint: I don’t know your specific chickens or the context, so I don’t know what options you have. I know many sanctuaries actually feed eggs back to the hens (often they’ll cook and mash them, including the shells) to help restore the calcium and nutrients lost during egg laying (especially if it’s a hen that’s originally been bred to lay more than the natural 10-20 eggs per year). But I suppose my questioning of the term “reciprocal” was more ideological–in light of my own talk–considering what it might look like to live in a world where we don’t see animal products as “for us”–where we see a full cow’s udder as nourishment for her baby (not as milk for us), an unfertilized chicken egg as a chicken period (not food for us) or honeycomb as the home in which bees store their (regurgitated) food for the winter (not a means by which to extract food for us). When considering sustainability issues, I also think it’s important to remember that however “humanely” small or backyard farmers may treat their animals, when these practices are replicated across populations, there’s simply not enough land and the demand becomes so high that production practices can’t possibly be humane.
In any case, much respect & appreciation for your work!
Hi Jessica, I really enjoyed learning from your talk about vegan studies. One thing that resonated with me in particular is your idea that veganism is so generative because it involves identity shift. I’ve been thinking a bit about connotations of the term “vegan” as opposed to other quasi-synonyms like “plant-based.” I worry that people who might be receptive to eating less animal products can be alienated by the sometimes polarizing discourse of veganism or its associations with liberal elitism. One question that I wanted to ask you is: what strategies would you suggest for teaching and communicating veganism to audiences who are not already supportive of social justice movements?
Thanks for your comment! I think this brings up a really good point. I struggle with how to “market” courses like this per se (or even units within a course). A course labelled anything including “vegan” is not going to attract the majority of students (the label, as you say, is polarizing) and moreover this type of title seemingly overlooks the kind of intersectionality the content opens up. But a course labelled “plant-based” to me suggests a nutritional or diet-focused approach (versus one that includes and/or foregrounds ethics…as in actually shifting the consciousness to recategorize animals and the environment). One approach with which I’ve had moderate success is contextualizing veganism within/alongside other social justice movements and also in terms of “human-nonhuman relations.” Even if the audience isn’t necessarily supportive of social justice movements, as you say, they are more likely to do so over the course of a semester when they’re able to practice making connections across issues. It’s easy to dismiss veganism when presented as an isolated issue. But when thoughtfully placed in dialogue and alignment with other social movements such as environmentalism, racial justice, economic injustice, and human rights, the conversation (while absolutely still polarizing at times) tends to open up and become much more complex.
All that said, I think by constantly trying to conceal or walk/talk around the term “vegan,” we perhaps to a disservice to its very value. After all, what differentiates a vegan lifestyle from a “plant-based” one is the ethical foundation…the re-seeing and re-categorizing of animal bodies (not just trying to kill/eat less of them). This is what a vegan studies course seeks to explore. It seems to me a course on “plant-based” issues would amount to more of a traditional (or less radical) conversation about health/sustainability/etc. It might discuss the value of “meatless Mondays” and such, but it wouldn’t seek to reconceptualize animals entirely.
I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this! It’s a really tricky but important question. Vegan studies courses would be great, but not if no students (or only vegan students) sign up for them.
Thanks so much for your insightful response! This idea of contextualizing veganism within intersecting interventions and of embracing its ethical core is really useful.
Thanks Jessica for a wonderful presentation. I love the idea of vegan studies although I agree there are challenges in labeling such a course. My approach has been to make this a core argument of a course about sustainability. I endorse Pellow’s “critical environmental justice” framework which encompasses ecological sustainability and social justice. By building on intersectionality, Pellow shows that concerns for the environment are inseparable from concerns for social justice. I, therefore, address the need to move away from animal production and consumption from an environmental and a justice perspective.
To start to tackle the ethical concerns of animal production and consumption, I have been approaching the topics of social norms, social constructionism, and the randomness and arbitrariness of culture through the lens of nonhuman animals. I found that students can easily relate to the social construction of other animals. Melanie Joy’s work comes very handy here to understand ideology (carnism) and beliefs, how they work, were they come from, in a non-threatening way to the students (by opposition to discussing race or gender for instance, which I do later of course). While students get to understand foundational sociological concepts, they also get one step closer to being sensitive to the random and violent cultural/historical fate of other animal species.
Thanks for your thoughts, Laurent! I think this is really valuable and I absolutely agree that by foregrounding and building upon the intersectionality across various social justice issues, we can find much more common ground among students and people! Like you, I’ve had more success including vegans studies in sustainability/climate change courses (as one important component), although I am curious about other approaches. Next week I’ll be attending Laura Wright’s vegan studies workshop at ASLE–I hope to learn much more there!
@Dr. Holmes
Thank you for your illuminating talk. I have never envisioned how a Vegan Studies program could provide entree into other issues of violence, consumption, -isms, and exploitation. I think you make a compelling case for Vegan Studies.
You mention about halfway through the talk that taking a vegan approach must include developing a new identity. You also discuss transformation and a re-imagination of our society (hope this is an OK paraphrase). These are ambitious and bold statements. While I see significant value in a vegan studies program, I wonder how you would change an identity of someone who’s livelihoods (ranchers), identities (hunters), and cultures (dispersed throughout the world) are based on the consumption (exploitation) of animals.
The university where I teach, Cal Poly, is an agriculture and engineering school (sometimes called Cow Poly for the smell in the morning). How might you imagine obtaining the support of poultry (chicken) and dairy (cows) departments especially given the current political climate? I ask because I think this is the crux of the climate crisis; how do we imagine and then create a world that is in sharp contrast to the one we know and that many benefit from? How do we empower change for those who will lose privilege, power, prestige, and property from that change? These are questions I often ask myself and my students. Thank you again.
Yes, this is super important. Environmentalism and certainly veganism fall short when they are presented as exclusive. This is purely anecdotal, but in my classes that include critical studies of animal agriculture, the most generative and moving student responses are often from students from farming families, communities or backgrounds. Maybe it’s because those students have had more contact with farmed animals or maybe it’s because it’s such a radically different perspective that they’ve never considered. But I think in a classroom setting, creating (to the degree it’s possible) an inclusive, open-minded environment is absolutely vital. My agenda as an instructor (even in a vegan studies context) must never be to turn students vegan, but rather to present various ideas and information, cultivate thoughtful/critical/evidence-based research and reading practices, and let students ask each other and themselves questions. We have to embrace counterarguments and complexities such as those you bring up here, and sometimes we don’t arrive at a clean or easy answer.
Structurally speaking, I think part of the task of transitioning to a more plant-based food industry MUST include support for farmers and farming communities. That means financially and in terms of training, not just ideologically. There are an increasing number of examples of farmers who have transitioned over to producing plant-based products or have even turned their farms into successful sanctuaries. But depending on where you live, your financial situation, the type of land you live on, these aren’t always options for farmers. I see many parallels to the coal industry–politicians often present it as a choice between “getting our good, hard-working coal workers back to work” OR pursuing green energy. This shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be the case. We can do both.
Oftentimes farmers and slaughterhouse workers especially get demonized. People watch documentaries like Dominion and Earthlings, and they’re angry at the people carrying out acts of violence toward animals. But the reality is that most of the workers in US slaughterhouses are underpaid, at high risk of physical and mental injury, often undocumented…like the animals, they are being exploited for their labour and bodies.
Your point about the privilege, power, prestige and property at stake is a huge argument for why vegan studies (and veganism in general) needs to be partnered with other social justice movements that seek to create more equitable standards of living–for working people like farmers, for black and hispanic communities who (at least in the US) often bear the burden of farming waste disposal, for indigenous communities such as those in Brazil who are stripped of their land and home due to agribusiness in the Amazon, for slaughterhouse workers….the list goes on…
Does anyone have experience teaching about degrowth?I believe this is the elephant in the room and I have not yet come across a presentation addressing the topic.
All kinds of interventions framed within the current economic growth model, be they individual or collective/institutional are, according to lots of sociologists, set to fail at actually addressing the very cause of lots of issues they intend to address. Climate change is a direct consequence of increasing emission due to the ever-growing cycle of consumption-production. How can we, educators, and our students, initiate the ideological revolution necessary to move away from a “growth/capitalist” mindset? I’d love to hear from everybody on those questions. Being aware that we are responsible is certainly necessary but we also need to create new ways of living. Providing low-hanging solutions is key to encourage, empower, and maintain a sense of agency. I agree with all the panelists on this and I pursue this direction by bringing voluntary simplicity into the conversation.Yet, how do we go from there to fostering a new political economy? Individual approaches may actually reproduce the status quo rather than challenge it.
Laurent,
Thank you for your presentation. I especially appreciate the connection between simplicity and happiness/materialism and unhappiness.
I am in complete agreement that we really need a new political economy. Yet, how do we make this a reality? Voluntary simplicity (see Merkel “Radical Simplicity”) is an excellent strategy, but again the challenge is in the implementation.
Recently I have been investigating the use of storytelling (exemplified by your narrative of Thomas) as well as “Awe.” Storytelling, like Mohammad, Jesus, Abraham, and the Buddha have shown us, works as a way to shape people’s perspectives. Stories are layered and impact people in unique ways. Additionally, a moment of awe (see Pollan “How to Change Your Mind”) provides a liminal space for people to question the status quo. I also assign to students a review of the ecological footprint along with the slavery footprint and a food miles assignment. I believe these activities do create a moment of awe or “Wow, I had no idea,” which enables them to question the current system a little bit. Perhaps as teachers we need to create more of these moments for students, who will then, hopefully, provide others with the same opportunity of awe.
I would be interested to hear your thoughts.
Dear Ryan,
studies coming from education show that we need that Eureka moment followed by some real-world action. It is the combination of knowledge and action that seems to leave lasting memories and foster behavioral changes. As a grad student I’ve not been able to work on the engagement part but as an elementary school teacher it was at the center of my teaching.
As for the Awe moment stories can be powerful, I agree. Games are also very effective as they give the students an opportunity to be actors, to experience, to do (even just pretending), which is a more complete learning experience than just being a listener. Noa Cykman has a great presentation in panel 1 in which she describes many games she’s played in the classroom. Always going back to my roots, I also find that elementary education manuals, textbooks, and websites do a better job focusing on bodily experiences. It’s as if we limited games to elementary school and forgot that grownups learn and feel the same ways. Here is a textbook I used in elementary school and find interesting https://www.facingthefuture.org/
Thanks for sharing Merkel’s website. I’ll definitely look into it.
Best,
@Dr. Nye,
Thank you for your talk. Much of your argument reminds me of disaster studies research investigating tipping points.
How do you imagine your articulated discussion affecting change given the current political climate, which seems to rely more on emotion, bias, and whim than logic?
Does this work?
Sorry; I was experiencing technical difficulties. Thanks very much for your question! Exactly what role reasoning like this – or indeed any reasoning about the climate crisis and what to do about it – plays in practical discussions is not a straightforward issue. I suppose that I would say two things. First, some folks are sincerely influenced by causal-impotence arguments not to take action within either the personal or political sphere to reduce their emissions or those of others. To the extent that my argument can convince them that the causal-impotence argument is mistaken – as much in the personal as in the political sphere – this should convince them that they should act in both spheres to reduce their emissions. While weakness of the will, or failing to do what one thinks one should, is surely a pervasive phenomenon, it is not complete, so becoming sincerely convinced that one’s acts in both the political and personal sphere have a good enough chance of making a big enough difference to make them important to perform can have some pretty direct influence on what one does (it certainly has in my life). Second, some folks (especially those who have ascended the levels of climate-change-denial from holding that there is no warming to holding that there is warming but it isn’t anthropogenic to holding that there is anthropogenic warming but it isn’t bad to holding that there is harmful anthropogenic warming but there is nothing to be done about it) are clearly engaged in motivated reasoning about these issues. But motivated biases in reasoning are only so powerful – we also have countervailing tendencies to believe unpleasant things on the basis of evidence and reasoning when that evidence and reasoning is sufficiently clear and vivid. By making the case against the causal-impotence argument against doing anything sufficiently clear and vivid, I think that this kind of argument can tend, often over time and by working together with other life-experiences that plant seeds of thinking differently, to counteract the process of motivated cognition and get folks who really want to cling to the idea that their acts can’t make a difference to eventually come to accept that they can make enough of a difference to make them really important to perform.
@ Jessica Holmes. Thank you for your lovely presentation. However, I am curious about the attitudes of vegans towards carnivores. How do they depict such animals whose diet is based on meats? Vegan studies should also focus on them somehow. Cats and dogs also eat meat products. How are the vegans’ attitudes towards pets? A study on this issue should be significant.
I’m not sure I totally understand this question. Are you asking if non-human animals should be vegan? Veganism is a way of living that seeks to avoid exploitation of and cruelty toward animals to the extent that it’s possible and practical. It would be neither practical nor possible for carnivorous non-human animals not to consume meat. As far as cats and dogs go, most cats require meat to live. Dogs are omnivores and many thrive on a vegan diet. Anecdotally, my dog eats a plant-based diet–not because I have any moral objection to dogs consuming meat but because a) she thrives on it, b) I don’t know of a way to ethically procure meat for her, c) the pet food industry produces a massive carbon footprint, and d) the pet food industry is frighteningly unregulated, meaning most mainstream pet food brands that include meat contain carcinogenic toxins, contaminants, and filler ingredients that contain little to no nutrition (and even remnants of euthanasia have been found in some brands, likely due to our animals rendering process and uses). As far as vegans’ attitudes toward pets, most (all?) vegans are opposed to breeding and selling pets for profit (and buying such pets) but are proponents of rescue and shelter organizations. We have domesticated and bred these animals, so now we must take care of those that exist.
I was just curious about how vegans were feeding their pets and if there were interesting studies on this issue. Thank you for your answer: it is clear.
Hi Jessica Holmes, Thanks very much for your talk! I’m certainly strongly in favour of whatever most effectively promotes discussions of veganism and the decisive ethical and ecological case in favour of veganism. My main concern about what you said is simply about what you want to do administratively with a vegan studies curriculum. You speak at 14:42 about the content not just being an object of study for “animal studies, food studies, and environmental studies departments.” But even pretty big universities like mine with a total enrollment of nearly 40,000 students don’t even have any such things as an animal studies department, a food studies department, or an environmental studies department. (We do have an interdisciplinary environmental studies BA, and we have a faculty of Agriculture, Life, and Environmental Sciences, but we have no such things as full departments within the faculty of arts answering to those descriptions). As such, it sounds completely unrealistic to introduce an even more specialized department of vegan studies. As a philosopher specializing in ethics I teach about veganism in such classes as my contemporary ethical issues class and my humans and other animals (animal ethics and animal minds) class, and my other colleagues in the philosophy department also teach about it in our environmental ethics class. There are also some folks in the women’s and gender studies department who teach about veganism in such classes as feminism and food and critical animal studies. I think that my humans and other animals class and the WGS classes in feminism and food and critical animal studies are already pushing the boundaries of being almost too specialized. I could see a rationale for a single class on veganism that combined material on things like animal ethics, the environment, and health. I suppose that there could in principle be a degree program (like our environmental studies BA) in vegan studies that involves students taking further courses on ethics, environmental science, and health and nutrition science. But because we have a great deal of difficulty maintaining enrollments for even our more general environmental studies BA, I find it hard to imagine that one could maintain enough enrollments to justify having a BA program in something as narrow as vegan studies. Interested students could of course pursue a degree that studied ethics, environmental science, and health science with the aim of in effect pursuing vegan studies, and perhaps write a combined honors thesis on vegan studies drawing on these various areas. But I cannot imagine how there would be a sufficient number of such students to justify the administrative load involved in having a dedicated degree program for this (again, we can barely do it with our environmental studies BA program).
Hi Laurent Cilia, I certainly appreciate your advocacy of voluntary simplicity, which I think is a lot like the kinds of acts in the context of one’s personal life that I was arguing we should undertake in my talk. What was less clear to me from your talk was why green growth is impossible and why we should actually aim for de-growth. Real GDP is of course just the inflation-adjusted measure of all goods and services within an economy. But this value can include both (i) goods and services that actually reduce our net ecological footprints (such as the large array of solar panels that I paid workers to install on my house, which in less than one year has reduced my and my neighbors’ carbon emissions by over 8.3 tonnes C02 equivalent), and (ii) goods and services that have very little carbon footprint, such as the programs and apps and such that we use on our computers and phones and such to create enormous economic efficiencies. Perhaps there is an extensive empirical literature on this, but I am not aware of it. If there is might you be able to direct me to the most important sources or reviews of it? Thanks!