Thread by @homemadeguitars

My friend Jim sent me this reply to me recent tweet of anguish.
He's right. Well, I don't know we "need" me, but otherwise he's right.
And this matters. We are not powerless.

Americans are the number one source of excess carbon. We are a major source of ecosystem destruction for economic growth.
Yes, China emits more carbon.
If we quit buying shit from them they wouldn't.
They emit it making our stuff. Lots of it goes into solar panels.
US = pivot man

3. The thing we have immediately available to us, to each of us individually, is speed.
I know it's counterintuitive, but slowing down significantly reduces energy consumption. Energy conversion for consumption emits carbon.

4. It is a fact that if every American who is concerned with climate change, no matter the rest is their viewpoint, could significantly reduce their personal emissions by never going over the speed limit anywhere ever for any reason.
If they'd go five under it would help more.

5. Don't tell me people won't.
I'm talking to you personally. Will you?
We're destroying our planet based on what we think other people will do.
Will you, personally, slow down?
Will you pass the word?
Show you care about the climate. Slow down, in full public view.

6. Every single climate concerned person in the world who drives a motor vehicle: slow down.
Make it obvious.
Say to the world, "I believe science tells me facts. I believe the facts of energy efficiency as surely as I believe the fact that the climate is changing."

7. My personal driving policy is as follows:
🚙I never go above the posted speed limit, not one mile per hour.
🚙Where reasonable I go 5 under or slower. On a multi lane divided road I go 5 under. Where passing is easy and safe I go five under.

8. 🚙On 2 lane rural blacktop during drive times, morning or evening, I go the speed limit. I feel commuters have a right to expect that. I will not speed for them. No "5 over."

9. 🚙If I am near my objective and the speed limit increases, I do not accelerate to match it. I Will be decelerating soon, accelerating to get there a few tenths of a second sooner is a pure waste of energy.
-
None of these policies cost me any meaningful amount of time.

10. If every climate aware driver in America would do this, and get bumper stickers that said, Slow for the Climate, it would result in a modest, but real, immediate reduction in emissions.
Fuck the government.
🚙Any chance I have I just poke-ass along at 30 or 35 on country road

11. Cars are about a quarter, give or take, of the carbon.
Making new ones takes a whole bunch of carbon, even if they're electric.
The slower you go the longer your car will last. This is another fact, has to do with energy and friction and squares of things, but - fast is wear.

12. One of the primary sources of microplastics in the atmosphere and our bodies is tire dust.
The slower you go, the less dust per mile wears off your tires.
This is, like, grade school and high school science class stuff. This isn't complex, but it's factual.

13. I drove over a million service miles as a commercial telephone man, working for mom-and-pop shops, driving my own truck, getting paid miles. I was *serious* about minimizing my costs. My trucks went 300,000 miles or I considered them failures. I lived close to the edge.

14. If we wanted to, we could slow down another five every year, and bring the country to a massive reduction in energy.
Without their permission, never mind their help.
But that's later. Maybe we never get there.
But now - Slow Down for Climate
Will you do it?
Start today.

15. It takes ten gallons of gasoline energy in the ground to put one gallon in your tank. The other 9 gallons is spent fracking and piping and drilling and trucking. We don't even count the cost in wars.

16. So if you slow down enough to save one gallon of gasoline, that's ten in the ground for another day.
These are real numbers. We live in a largely empirical world.
There is no other plan on offer, anywhere in the world, that gives you personally the power to effect policy.

17. If not you, who?
If not now, when?
Nobody else is going to do anything.
--Jeff