Hi Lloyd. Thanks for sharing your thoughts in response to my article!
My thoughts:
Reason 1: I do believe might want to track it and check in on it more often, but every day?
I don't think that what Hotorcool says is relevant on this - whilst tracking personal emissions might have increasing relevance to say under 1.5C, that has no bearing on whether people will actually do it.
The fact is with some research you realise what the big levers and contributors to your footprint are, and you then decide whether to change those things. You don't need an app tracking all your actions to know that cutting out meat (especially red meat), not flying, getting a heat pump will make a huge impact on your emissions.
Reason 2: I think your examples actually only further illustrate my point. There is no feedback loop - no result you can identify with for using a daily carbon tracker besides knowing you are contributing less to the problem.
With MyFitnessPal you hopefully lose weight and you see that on the scales and how your body looks.
With Quicken you could know ho much money you had. That has tangible value to you.
Reason 4: I don't deny we should try this. But as you noted the accuracy is not very high at the moment and getting a true picture of it requires a lot of data input and even then might not be accurate.
What you really want to know is not necessarily I reduced 'x tons' but that I did the right things that had a large impact.
Reason 5: All those data points are easily found by a google search. Why download an app for that?
Reason 6: I wrote this aiming it at people who want to do this as a business or at least a sustainable non-profit. If people are building this without that aim in mind then all the power to them in their success! :)
Hi Lloyd. Thanks for sharing your thoughts in response to my article!
My thoughts:
Reason 1: I do believe might want to track it and check in on it more often, but every day?
I don't think that what Hotorcool says is relevant on this - whilst tracking personal emissions might have increasing relevance to say under 1.5C, that has no bearing on whether people will actually do it.
The fact is with some research you realise what the big levers and contributors to your footprint are, and you then decide whether to change those things. You don't need an app tracking all your actions to know that cutting out meat (especially red meat), not flying, getting a heat pump will make a huge impact on your emissions.
Reason 2: I think your examples actually only further illustrate my point. There is no feedback loop - no result you can identify with for using a daily carbon tracker besides knowing you are contributing less to the problem.
With MyFitnessPal you hopefully lose weight and you see that on the scales and how your body looks.
With Quicken you could know ho much money you had. That has tangible value to you.
Reason 4: I don't deny we should try this. But as you noted the accuracy is not very high at the moment and getting a true picture of it requires a lot of data input and even then might not be accurate.
What you really want to know is not necessarily I reduced 'x tons' but that I did the right things that had a large impact.
Reason 5: All those data points are easily found by a google search. Why download an app for that?
Reason 6: I wrote this aiming it at people who want to do this as a business or at least a sustainable non-profit. If people are building this without that aim in mind then all the power to them in their success! :)
All the best in your journey on this!