Green substitutions: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Truth

For decades we’ve been encouraged to adopt green alternatives as a way to do our bit for environmental causes. Some of these substitutes are fantastic. For instance, swapping bar shampoos for liquid ones reduces plastic and results in less carbon emissions. What's not to love? But some substitutes are downright bad. A stand out example is the case of biodegradable plastics which are offered as a green alternative for packaging, water bottles, and grocery store bags. Unfortunately, biodegradable plastics degrade into micro plastics which cause health problems to the many creatures, including humans, that ingest them. And then there’s the ugly part of green substitutions. Swapping out for greener products will not avert ecological crises but rather aids in the perpetuation of the root problem - massive material consumption. The ugly truth is that we need to drastically reduce how much stuff we buy.

The need for the global wealthy, including most Americans and Europeans, to reduce consumption has long been recognized by the environmental movement. The old slogan - Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle - has been around for more than 50 years. While “reduce” is the first and most critical of these tenants, society pays most attention to the last one - “recycle”. And it is great that recycling has ramped up in recent decades, but it has not made much of a dent in the ever growing extraction of raw materials from the earth. Human made materials now outweigh all living matter on the planet. Our global material footprint, how much raw material we extracted from the earth, has grown from 43 billion tons, in 1990, to 92 billion in 2017, an increase of 70%. While population has contributed to this growth, our individual footprints have grown, on average, by about 40%, largely due to an increase in the footprints of the middle classes. And of course, we hope the middle class will continue to grow. But without a change in consumption patterns, a larger middle class will increase global consumption. The increase in material extraction serves as a proxy for the increase in production, distribution, use, and disposal of worldly goods which together are driving all the environmental crises we are facing. Clearly, we need to drastically reduce this consumption if we hope to avoid catastrophes.

But telling the public to buy less stuff has never been popular. For one thing, reduced consumption flies in the face of the economic paradigm of “growth is good”. While the concept of green growth is often touted as a get of jail free card, it is not. Green growth relies on increased consumption that may slow natural destruction, relative to business as usual, but still contributes to the destruction of nature. More recently, the concept of a circular economy, in which products are completely recycled, has been gaining traction as a solution to our environmental woes. While a circular economy would indeed reduce our need for more material extraction, it wouldn’t reduce the impacts of the manufacturing, transport, and use phases of products. The only thing that will substantially reduce our destruction of nature is a substantial reduction in the amount of goods and energy we demand.

The message of “less stuff” is also counter to several social norms. Advertisements and society bolster the idea that we “deserve” a new phone or a vacation that requires air travel. I have to confess that the concept that “we deserve some luxury item” greatly rankles me. I am not against treats or luxury in small measure, but I believe that people living, or not yet born, on the frontlines of ecological disasters deserve our restraint more than we deserve another treat. Sociologists may temper my irritation and point out that amassing resources and defending them from competitors is an age old behavior that made sense when we were living in caves. Having more stuff probably made us more appealing as mates and granted us status in our tribes. But these behaviors are now driving us to ecological collapse. Sociologists refer to our continued drive to amass crap as maladaptive and the root disease driving the climate and biodiversity crisis. They warn that the underlying sickness of maladaptive behaviors must be addressed alongside the symptoms of the climate and biodiversity crises or we risk other catastrophes.

I think each of us understands that our consumerism has negative consequences, but another aspect of human nature is a reticence to change. Green substitutes are presented as solving this dilemma with no behavior change needed to “save the planet”, just a product swap. Yet any manufactured product uses natural resources. At best, green products harm the environment less than standard products, but they still harm the biosphere. Oddly enough, advertisers haven’t opted for the more accurate slogan “harm the environment less”. Sarcasm aside, green substitutions obscure the impactful changes we can make.

The reticence to tell the public to reduced consumption is starting to dissolve, and not just from preachy bloggers. The first line of a 2019 United Nations report, 1.5 Degree Lifestyles, states “…. changes in consumption patterns and dominant lifestyles are a critical and integral part of the solutions package to addressing climate change.” The call to individual action has been extensive enough that some are push backing back with sentiments like: “Governments and manufacturers should fix the ecological problems”, “Consumer scapegoating is unproductive and inaccurate”, and “Consumers should focus on political action”. While there are kernels of truth to those points (big actors must change, shaming is never useful, and yes political action is important) it is also true that individuals’ consumption behaviors are a part of the solution. For instance, even though we know a low meat diet harms the environment less, nobody would be comfortable with a governmental ban on meat sales and the livestock industry isn’t going to voluntarily wind down. People’s actions need to lead this change.

Bolstering the importance of our individual choices in financial and political settings, research shows that the most effective way to prompt large scale behavioral changes is through the actions of small groups of people commitment to the cause. Social prompting turns out to be key. One study found that if 25% of a population were committed to changing a social convention, diffusion of the changed behavior spread explosively through the rest of the population. That’s a pretty high bar, and it means each of us is crucial for building up the ranks of eco-conscious consumers.

With all the above as a caveat to say substitutions aren’t the only answer, there are some excellent swaps we can make. To keep global warming below 1.5 degrees C, each person needs to emit just 2.5 tons of carbon a year, by 2030. That is how much carbon is emitted by the average American’s diet. Granted our food’s emissions will shrink as lower carbon travel and farming develop, but not enough to meet our 2030 targets and still leave some carbon budget for travel, utilities, medical care, electronics, and clothing. A no beef diet, on average, emits 1.9 tons of carbon a year, whereas a vegetarian and a vegan diet lead to emissions of 1.7 and 1.5 tons.

Reducing our consumption of livestock would have an even larger positive impact on biodiversity. Raising animals for human consumption drives over 77% of the loss of wild areas, which is the number one threat to biodiversity. Biodiversity encompasses both a variety of species and the sheer number of wild animals. The number of wild animals has shrunk by about 70% in the past 50 years, with humanity weighing ten times as much as wild mammals. As for species diversity, an estimated 41% of amphibians are at risk of extinction, as are 39% of sharks and rays, 36% of reef forming corals, 34% of conifers, 21% of reptiles, 16% of dragonflies and damselflies, and 13% of birds. If those facts are not sobering and disturbing, read them again. Yet a solution is right in front of us. According to an in-depth UN study, if all Americans swapped beef for beans, we would free up 42% of US cropland for ecosystem restoration - that’s nearly 1/4 of the US’ land area. That would make a pretty dramatic impact on the biodiversity in North America. Beans for beef (or really any veggie meal for beef) is perhaps the most impactful swap we can make. Note that substitute meats have smaller eco-impacts than real meat, but not as low as meals based on unprocessed vegetables and grains.

I know that I bring up reducing meat consumption in many of my newsletters, but it is an essential change as it dominates almost all environmental concerns. However, listing the negative impacts of the meat industry, as I’ve just done, is unlikely to change anyone’s behavior. Instead, we are most likely to change behaviors when we emphasize the positives. So allow me to reframe: reducing our meat consumption has health benefits and could free up to 1/4 of US’ land area for national parks, new towns, and regenerative forestry!

Another area where swaps are effective is the energy sector. All sane governments are aiming to swap out fossil fuels for zero-emission energy sources. Yet there are occasional headlines that the green energy transition is impossible. What’s the truth behind these claims? Recently, an article, entitled “The Idea of Green Growth is Flawed”, argued that to replace all the electricity production in the UK with solar power would require the entire landmass of the UK. But like many other green-is-bad stories, the headline misled. The UK, a country known for its grey skies, is not aiming to green their grid with solar power. Rather they are concentrating on wind power, of which they have plenty. It’s almost as if the scientists and planners knew what they were doing. In fact, the UK produced 27% of the electricity from wind in 2022, and a full 48% of their electricity from zero-emissions sources. Part of this was swapping out coal powered electricity which comprised 43% of their electricity production in 2012 but just 1.5% last year. That’s pretty impressive.

The article “The Idea of Green Growth is Flawed” is just one example of misleading headlines and it can be a bit confusing to unpick the reality between the “Renewables are a gateway to Nirvana” and the “Long live the fossil fuel” messages. Helpfully, the UN produced a meta analysis of various environmental and human-health impacts of 7 kinds of energy production. This study included full life cycle analyses of energy production from building the plants, through energy production, all the way to decommissioning and disposing of the energy infrastructure. There is a large range of impact for any given kind of power, but here, I’ll compare the lowest impact value for each power source. The UN report found that relative to coal, natural gas produces 54% as much carbon per unit of energy produced. Hydro, nuclear and PV solar panels (rooftop solar typically) produce less than 1% of the carbon that coal produces, and wind and concentrated solar farms less than 2%. We can play the same game for land used, relative to coal again, and indeed concentrated solar uses 2.5 times as much land as coal, PV and hydro use about the same amount of land as coal, while natural gas (10% of coal’s), wind (7%), and nuclear (3%) have the smallest land usage. In terms of scarce materials (again, relative to coal), PV solar is the worst at 2.8 times coal, concentrated solar needs almost as much at 2.3 times, wind needs 1.7 times, but hydro, nuclear and natural gas need less than coal — only 62%, 52%, and 28% respectively. This analysis illustrates that renewable energies will help to solve the carbon problem for sure but have their own negative impacts.

One of the biggest problems with large scale renewables is the need for scarce materials, which are expensive to mine and can cause devastating environmental and health hazards near the mines. Furthermore, the processing of rare earths, used in renewables and electric car batteries, is dominated by just one country, China. There are concerns that this could lead to political instabilities. As an aside, this is an example of how focusing on just the “symptom” of climate change, while ignoring the underlying behavioral disease, could lead to disaster. But back to the energy question. When looked at across all the impacts, including human health measures, I was surprised to find a very clear winner: nuclear power. This is a hard pill to swallow. But given the fix we are in now, nuclear power may have to be an important part of the solution.

One thing is clear about energy sources. They all have an environmental cost. While decarbonizing our electricity grid and our travel is essential to avoid warming beyond 1.5 degrees C, it is not enough. But we would be foolish to solve the carbon problem by creating a biodiversity crisis, or ramping up geopolitical tensions, or passing on a hazardous waste nightmare to future generations. The conclusion: we need to use less energy. And the same “less is wise” message is true across all sectors of the economy including food, transport, running our homes, clothing, and electronics.

As a young kid in the 1970s, I was very concerned about the energy crisis. I would go to great lengths to save even the smallest amount of energy. When I didn’t want to get up to turn out lights, a picture always sprung to mind of a future hospital where there wasn’t enough energy for lights. That always made me get moving. I know the sociologists say I should try to emphasize the many positives of reduced consumption - well being, resiliency, concentrating on relationships and experiences - but I can’t help but imagine surgeons operating in the dark.