[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Natalya

I'm a millennial, but I lived for a few years at my aunt's house in Canada where the central heating system is a wood stove. Water (for all uses) came from the gutters funneling into a cistern underground. There is a septic field out back. There is electricity and internet. There is no A/C for the summer.

I never lived anywhere without pipe water in Brazil, even though some people in the countryside still rely on ponds. Extreme cold weather here is not so common, but wood stoves for heating are still quite popular in rural areas and regarded as a cultural feature. Food prepared in a wood stove is also popular even among urban gas-station cowboys

This isn't a bad way to live. I'll admit, adapting to the cold was kinda unpleasant, but I did it and it was fine and I have no problems with it.

My hometown Porto Alegre can be somewhat extremely cold during the winter, but as long as it's not raining cats and dogs it's OK.

We also avoided things there such as paper towels.

Either the cheapest toilet paper or napkins can also serve for the very same purposes of paper towels, presumably with a lower footprint. I only buy paper towels to use at home once in a while, but it's unavoidable to use them on public WCs.

There's a clothes line and a drying rack instead of a dryer. It was fine.

I never had a dryer at home, but am seriously considering getting one because of space saving. Trust me, in my apartment it would be very useful...

Living there I had a lower carbon footprint than I do now back in the USA. There's a difference between that and living in developing world conditions, and it's more than tolerable.

Depending on where in the developing world you would compare, the footprint would be roughly the same.

Modern American culture is incredibly wasteful. People roll their eyes at reusable shopping bags or paper straws, or using hand towels instead of paper napkins, or a vegetarian diet, but why should they? It's not that hard to give up these things.

It's not a strictly-American issue. Reusable shopping bags are not uncommon in Brazil nowadays, but since many people also repurpose disposable shopping bags as garbage bags it's often hard to get rid of the habit. Some markets are now trying to push cardboard boxes as a replacement for disposable plastic bags, because it's easier for them than paying some extra taxes for waste removal or stockpiling old boxes before handing them over for recycling. Paper straws are still not so easy to find here, plus they're frequently of a much lower quality. Using hand towels at home is OK, but in other places it may become undesirable for hygienic reasons. Vegetarian diets might also face some resistence due to cultural aspects, even though sometimes an animal protein source is also perceived as "inferior". At least in Argentina, fish used to be quite a taboo, as it was frequently seen as a protein source for the poorest when the creeks surrounding Buenos Aires and its villas miseria still had some fish stock before pollution decimated it.

In the USA, where I live, right now I will say it's hard to adhere to a vegetarian diet because meat is the most abundant source of protein. When I lived in Canada there was a month where I accidentally ended up going vegetarian because it was so much easier to avoid eating meat. But it's nearly impossible here.

Besides some soybean-based products which are still the most common vegan protein sources, nowadays many vegan steaks have been made out of green pea protein. Presumably it would be cheaper and with a lower footprint to eat the grains instead of turning them into some meat analogue, and it doesn't seem so hard to find canned beans, peas or corn at most grocery stores and supermarkets.

If you go to any kind of restaurant it's unlikely they will have plant-only options, or if they do it won't include protein.

Considering that even in Brazil it's not so uncommon, it does surprise me that it would be so difficult to find vegetarian dishes with protein in the US.

Ocean problems:
F*** yeah let's fix everything. Why do we need to wash tons of fertilizer down the Mississippi each year? It causes algae blooms and kills fish which obviously then hurts coastal fishermen and their ability to make a living. Different farming practices can reduce the need for fertilizer.

Some fish-farming techniques combined with some crops (more frequently rice or lettuce) decrease the amount of Nitrogen-based fertilizers required.

We can also get by without growing so many crops for use as bio fuels. It's probably more carbon efficient to pursue vehicle electrification and general fuel economy gains. Unless of course your vehicle uses 100% biodiesel or something. But like ethanol in the gas... correct me if I'm wrong but that looks like a carbon inefficient process because now you gotta burn more fuel to do the farming of the corn that you're going to convert into ethanol, and you're taking up farmland for that purpose.

I'm into biofuels not only for the economic reasons, but also because it allows adding value to agricultural and butchering leftovers instead of simply leaving them to rot away. When it comes to ethanol, sugarcane-based has a higher energy output, but corn-based is not so negligible at all when we consider the ethanol to be more of a byproduct. The high-protein distillation grain also has a better digestibility and leads to a higher weight gain for beef cattle.

Buildings can be constructed with roofs that reflect more light back into space. This also helps you on your power bill in the summer. Sounds like a win-win to me. Put solar panels over top of parking spaces. USPS did that for their massive LA package facility. Why do all the big box stores have completely closed off roofs? You could have skylights up there to reduce the need for electric lighting during daylight hours. I did go to a grocery store with skylights in California once, why don't they do that everywhere? It's probably way cheaper to setup than solar panels would be if you want to complain about solar installation cost and complexity.

Had a skylight in the kitchen not been so useful for me, I'd have fitted some solar panels instead.

Roads ought to be made from concrete like the US Interstate system. That would reflect more light back into space than asphalt. At the same time the concrete roads have to be redone wayyy less frequently.

That's a good point. I'm sure having to detour from fewer potholes or avoiding to slam the brakes so often would increase fuel efficiency.