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27 Apr, 20 tweets, 6 min read
Video gaming has been criticized for its energy demand and carbon emissions, but this criticism is misplaced. Gaming's enviro impact is actually tiny compared to leaving the house and driving to the woods for a nice hike.

My latest for @TheBTI (THREAD)

thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/…
In carbon footprint conversations, what people fixate on--and what they don’t fixate on--says a lot. Not just about how silly the carbon footprint exercise is but also about how people determine environmental virtue/vice. (1)
Lots of recent talk on why personal CO2 footprints are misguided. They distract from bigger challenges of technological and societal change. Footprint policing is also often contradictory + arbitrary in its focus... as the case of video games shows. (2)
Over the past few yrs, academic research and reporting have increasingly investigated growing energy consumption associated with video gaming, with a spike of interest last fall after the publication of a new research study. (3)

link.springer.com/article/10.100…
But is declaring next-gen gaming “an enviro nightmare” once again making a mountain out of a molehill re: climate/enviro impact? How do the emissions from gaming compare against something everyday and normalized like driving to hike in a state park? (4)

wired.com/story/xbox-pla…
I compared the co2 emissions from a 6-hour video gaming marathon using different equipment in different US power grids to the emissions from a moderate round-trip hiking excursion by car (2 hrs driving total). It’s not even close. (5)
A gasoline-powered car emits 10-13 times as much as a gamer within one of America’s dirtiest electricity grids with a decadent cloud gaming setup. If the video gamer plays on California’s renewable-hvy grid with an efficient PC, the car emits ~80-104x more. (6)
Within the same electricity grid, even if the hiker has a Tesla, said hiker still consumes 3.5x more energy and emits that much more CO2 than even the most energy-intensive gaming setup tested. (7)
If you think about it, none of this is remotely surprising. It is flatly obvious that the energy needed to propel a vehicle weighing 1-2 tons at 90 km/hr is inherently far greater than the energy needed to run a gaming computer. (8)
So this brings up an interesting Q. Why is it so appealing to be distracted by the supposed enviro impacts of something like gaming? Why are we so relatively willing to overlook something like hiking that in practice involves much more emissions-intensive driving? (9)
The point of this isn’t to argue hikers are sinful or to spark a climate piety arms race. Rather this exercise highlights:
- sustainability discourse is influenced by cognitive bias.
- co2 footprint focus is silly, easily distracted and often counterproductive bc of biases. (10)
In this case, video gaming already comes with all sorts of negative stereotypes, stigmas, and societal hand-wringing, making gaming a tantalizing target. In contrast, hiking is virtuous, practically the official pasttime of mainstream environmentalism. (11)
To even write the headline “hiking is an environmental nightmare” feels like violating divine law… and yet in a head-to-head emissions comparison with video gaming, hiking (and anything else involving driving) is far more deserving of that label. (12)
People want to believe things they like also happen to be healthy + societally beneficial, while things they don’t like also happen to be harmful + societally negative. The desire for cognitive consistency, together w confirmation bias, are pervasive in enviro debates. (13)
Why do most everyday people vastly overrate the benefits that recycling has for their personal GHG emissions impact? (14)

theatlantic.com/science/archiv…
Why do small, organic farms continue to capture the public imagination as a climate solution when the weight of evidence suggests otherwise? (15)

ourworldindata.org/is-organic-agr…
Why do a majority of young UK citizens polled fail to correctly identify nuclear energy as a clean source of electricity generation? (16)

imeche.org/news/news-arti…
The atmosphere doesn’t care what one’s subjective preferences are, so motivated reasoning can produce obstacles + distractions that inhibit efforts to cut emissions.

Personal co2 footprints are a great example. Agonizing over personal habits is appealing yet meaningless.(17)
The key focus of equitable climate action is working to ensure people everywhere can enjoy a good quality of life in a low-carbon future. That goal can't be productively advanced by fixating on the flawed idea that a good quality of life is sinful. (18)

energyforgrowth.org/blog/to-fight-…
The right goals are large-scale. To power both video gaming and hiking globally on cheap, abundant, accessible clean energy, at which point debates about climate sin and virtue will have become totally irrelevant. (19-END)

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More from @wang_seaver

Seaver Wang Profile picture
10 Apr
I will respectfully disagree with @TricksyRaccoon on the usefulness of this kind of degrowth too.

I do appreciate Meg (and Kendra) spotlighting this aspect of the conversation though since the back + forth over macro-level economic growth tends to suck up all the oxygen (THREAD) ImageImage
I don’t feel it’s generally wise for activists or policymakers to try deciding which industries/products we really need + which are unnecessary.

My reasons fall into five categories (1)
1. Little climate impact
2. Difficulty of implementation, political infeasibility
3. Rebound effect i.e. regulating some products just channels energies into others
4. Access to affordable goods
5. Forest of industries reflects human aspirations as much as corporate greed (2)
Read 27 tweets
Seaver Wang Profile picture
10 Feb
The 100% Renewable Energy Strategy Group makes no sense to me. Net-zero electricity by 2030 is a target many would argue is near-impossible for even the USA, yet the signatories set exactly the same target for, say, Mongolia. Oh, and no nuclear allowed. (THREAD)
Global 2030 net-zero electricity is a target exponentially, ludicrously beyond many current commitments globally. Still using Mongolia as example, renewables generate <10% of total electricity (rest is coal). Mongolia’s 2030 renewables target is 30%. (1)

montsame.mn/en/read/227933
Japan’s targets (which may increase later this yr), are to generate just under 1/4 of power from renewables and just under 1/4 from nuclear by 2030.

China may be considering a 40% renewable power generation target for 2030 (see below from @YanQinyq). (2)

Read 18 tweets
Seaver Wang Profile picture
9 Feb
Three personal, casual thoughts on Taiwan's successful democracy.

1) Just as New Zealand gets wide attention for COVID-19 success while Taiwan hasn't, perhaps western progressives are also looking too much to Europe, NZ and not enough to Taiwan for inspiration.
None should over-generalize the complex, ideologically very diverse Taiwanese political landscape as progressive, but:
- woman-led, high representation of women in legislature
- universal healthcare
- indigenous seats in legislature codified in law
- direct democracy initiatives
2) With Point #1 in mind, perhaps US progressives should be a little more willing to commit to Taiwan's defense should Beijing violently attempt to force reunification.

With the rapid modernization of the Chinese navy, that will require maintaining many US military capabilities.
Read 4 tweets
Seaver Wang Profile picture
2 Jan
Speaking for myself, I regularly read writing from the degrowth side.

When degrowthers get criticized, they claim critics are misrepresenting degrowth.

"That's not degrowth! Degrowth is more planned, just, equitable than that!"

But there's no foundation. The box is hollow. (1)
It's so damn hard to get a straight answer from degrowthers about what real degrowth policies would look like.

What is "excessive" growth or consumption? If it's these planetary boundaries, can I question why it's white European countries that score highest on those metrics? (2)
At the international level, are degrowth measures voluntary, or imposed?

If imposed via carbon border taxes and the like, who does the imposing and how?

If voluntary, what do you do when China laughs you out of the negotiating hall? (3)
Read 11 tweets
Seaver Wang Profile picture
14 Dec 20
Versus New Zealand, Taiwan has experienced less than 1/2 the COVID-19 cases, and less than 1/2 the deaths.

Taiwan also gets less than 1/2 the news coverage, while having 5x the NZ population and 14x the pop density.

Taiwan is also woman-led: President Tsai Ing-Wen, PhD. (1)
This spring, a reporter exclaimed "We had to go all the way to New Zealand to find leaders seemingly doing everything right to keep people safe from the spread of Covid19"

Well okay, if Asian success stories are invisible to you, I guess. (2)

Thanks to swift early action, Taiwan has not had to implement a lockdown since the pandemic began. Taiwan does plan to keep its strict screening and quarantining of travelers in place, however. (3)

bbc.com/news/world-asi…
Read 9 tweets
Seaver Wang Profile picture
11 Nov 20
This 2019 paper, to me, brings up a key under-appreciated climate equity aspect to nuclear phaseouts in Europe.

Even assuming shut-down nuclear is replaced with renewables (it isn’t) this passes enviro, climate, health costs onto other countries. (1)

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Beylot et al. analyze the carbon emissions associated with mining and processing four raw materials (steel, concrete, copper, aluminum) needed for a French power sector transition over the next few decades under a plan where French nuclear is cut to 50% of the overall mix. (2)
Their findings:

“the cradle-to-gate climate change impacts... required as a response to the energy transition, are assessed to amount between 57 and 650 million tonnes of CO2-eq (≥ 95% probability), and most likely between 150 and 375 million tonnes of CO2-eq” (3)
Read 14 tweets

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