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This definitely gets said a lot, but I am not sure it's a meaningful thing to say. After all, something like 20% of emissions come from agriculture. If you count that as industrial emissions (surely it is an industry) then it must dwarf personal footprints. But the food you eat surely belongs to your personal footprint as well?

I'm not confident that when people make this comparison, they account for the double counting. After all, most (?) industry does something that's eventually consumed by someone. What proportion of responsibility goes to the industry versus the consumer? Obviously not a well-posed problem.



The rich don't eat 20x food though.


I wonder how much food they purchase and waste though..

For example, it's not hard for me to imagine someone wealthy having strawberries delivered to every house they own, week after week, just in case they decide to visit that house and want strawberries

Maybe that's not very common, but we are talking about a class of people that will take a private jet to another city to get breakfast at their favorite restaurant there


They eat a lot more meat though. And that's much more CO_2 intensive than grains and legumes.


Yes, that is my point (although the other reply is correct - the diets of the rich are generally more carbon-intensive).




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