Household carbon inequality in the U.S.

Feng, Kuishuang; Hubacek, Klaus; Song, Kigook

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.123994

Cited by 85 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Consequently, long run has larger impact transport-carbon emission rather than short run. Former studies (e.g., Song 2021 ; Poi et al 2021 ; Feng et al 2021 ; Zhang and Zhang 2021 ) also confirm our findings that income inequality negatively associated with carbon emissions. However, their research concentrates merely on total carbon dioxide emissions rather than specific sector.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 89%

Effect of economic development, income inequality, transportation, and environmental expenditures on transport emissions: evidence from OECD countries

Hussain

Khan

Shaheen

2022

Environ Sci Pollut Res

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Environmental quality has been pondered as an essential aspect of sustainable development across the global economies. Several factors such as economic development, income inequality, transportation, and environmental expenditures drastically influence environmental quality. More specifically, the transport sector is a major contributor to carbon emissions which deteriorate the environmental quality. Therefore, this study investigates whether economic development, transportation, environmental expenditures, and income inequality affect transport-carbon emissions for the OECD countries. Furthermore, panel time-series data period from 2000 to 2020 and cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag method are used for transport-oriented environmental examination. Results demonstrate that transportation upsurges transport-carbon emission level by 46.45% on average. Moreover, the joint effect of economic development and environmental taxes significantly reduces transport-carbon emissions by 14.70%. Findings further suggest that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between economic development and transport emission. Besides, income inequality, environmental expenditures, and green transportation are negatively associated with the coefficient of transport-carbon emissions. More interestingly, income inequality is negatively correlated with transport-carbon emissions across the sample countries. Furthermore, the joint effect of income inequality and economic development increases the emission level released by the transport sector. Thus, this research recommends some policies: countries should control traffic movements and increase environmental expenditures, and produce green transport vehicles to tackle environmental issues.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 89%

Effect of economic development, income inequality, transportation, and environmental expenditures on transport emissions: evidence from OECD countries

Hussain

Khan

Shaheen

2022

Environ Sci Pollut Res

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“…As measured by the ratio of personal income to the US poverty threshold, more wealthy individuals tend to have larger environmental footprints (figure 6(a)). Although moderately lower dietary environmental footprints are observed among those with very high wealth, the GHG footprint of non-food consumption in this cohort tends to be disproportionally larger than the rest of the population [30][31][32]. Dietary environmental footprints also vary by household size.…”

Section: Socio-demographic Profiles Of Us Dietary Footprintsmentioning

confidence: 77%

Differentiated responsibilities of US citizens in the country’s sustainable dietary transition

Taherzadeh

Kanemoto

2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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If widely adopted, the `Planetary Health Diet’ (PHD), proposed by the EAT-Lancet Commission, would help to meet ambitious sustainability goals currently jeopardised by excessive and resource-intensive food demand. To date, convergence of nations to the PHD has been assessed using average food consumption patterns, overlooking the influence of different consumers within this context. Using self-reported dietary intake data from a snapshot survey of the US we reveal the differentiated responsibilities of US citizens within the country's adoption of the PHD, otherwise hidden by use of country-average dietary intake data. We show how such a granular understanding of food consumption patterns is critical to identify levers in the sustainable food transition of nations. By combining 7,418 individual food intake reports a representative cross-section of the United States with commodity-level impact data we estimate the overshoot of US dietary patterns in relation to the PHD and their impacts across the climate, water and land system. Within this study, overshoot refers to the extent of excess consumption, in individual food groups and overall, above the recommendations of the PHD. The net environmental impacts of PHD adoption across the US population is quantified based on realistic dietary shifts. We estimate that US overshoot of the PHD is responsible for 70% of US food-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, over 60% of the burden created by US food intake exceeding the PHD could be eliminated by just 10% of the US population following the PHD. Although we estimate PHD adoption will more than half the US' food-related GHG emissions and land footprint, we find it may have unintended consequences on water demand due to increased tree nut consumption. Across almost all food categories, we show that the diets of the top tier of food consumers in the US create, and must bridge, the PHD gap. As such, actions by these consumers will be of major consequences to the speed and direction of the country's sustainable dietary transition. To avoid environmental trade-offs, dietary policies must be scrutinised across multiple sustainability criteria.

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“…From a life cycle perspective, the environmental effects of household consumptions along the entire supply chain should be taken into account when measuring the environmental inequality of households. In this study, household carbon footprints, which could be used to measure inequality among households and frequently used in the literature to measure environmental inequality, − was deployed to reveal the inequality of household consumption.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing Carbon Footprint Inequality of Household Consumption in Rural Areas: Analysis from Five Representative Provinces in China

Sun

Chen

et al. 2021

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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Household consumption carbon footprint and inequality reductions are vital for a sustainable society, especially for rural areas. This study, focusing on rural China, one of the fastest growing economies with a massive population, explored the carbon footprint and inequality of household consumption using the latest micro household survey data of 2018 linked to environmental extended input–-output analysis. The results show that in 2018 in rural China, the average household carbon footprint is 2.46 tons CO2-eq per capita, which is around one-third of China’s average footprint, indicating the large potential for further growth. Housing (45.32%), transportation (20.45%), and food (19.62%) are the dominant contributors to the carbon footprint. Meanwhile, great inequality, with a Gini coefficient of 0.488, among rural households is observed, which is largely due to differences in type of house built or purchased (explaining 24.44% of the variation), heating (18.10%), car purchase (12.44%), and petrol consumption (12.44%). Provinces, average education, and nonfarm income are among the important factors influencing the inequality. In the process of urbanization and rural revitalization, there is a high possibility that the household carbon footprint continues to increase, maintaining high levels of inequality. The current energy transition toward less carbon-intensive fuels in rural China is likely to dampen the growth rates of carbon footprints and potentially decrease inequality. Carbon intensity decrease could significantly reduce carbon footprints, but increase inequality. More comprehensive measures to reduce carbon footprint and inequality are needed, including transitioning to clean energy, poverty alleviation, reduction of income inequality, and better health care coverage.

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Household carbon inequality in the U.S.

Cited by 85 publications

References 48 publications

Effect of economic development, income inequality, transportation, and environmental expenditures on transport emissions: evidence from OECD countries

Effect of economic development, income inequality, transportation, and environmental expenditures on transport emissions: evidence from OECD countries

Differentiated responsibilities of US citizens in the country’s sustainable dietary transition

Reducing Carbon Footprint Inequality of Household Consumption in Rural Areas: Analysis from Five Representative Provinces in China

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