Originally Posted by
cooker
I say the complete opposite. The best way for humans to minimize pollution is to live in clusters dense enough to support public transit. That also means dense enough to walk or bike to everything you need. Some people may live off the grid in a low impact manner in rural areas but that cannot be scaled up to accommodate billions of people, so for those who aren't self-sufficient survivalists, the best way to lower their impact is by occupying a lot less land.
Maybe, but you need more resources supported from more land outside of your area. You create heat islands, undisputed by obsrevation. You build structures if steel, concrete, glass and plastic rather than natural material. You change the weather patterns as they have in Chicago. You trap your own polution and need assistance to dispose of your waste.
As you stated earlier with mass transit you must force high energy consuming buses to operate at times when they are least efficient by choice to provide services for those who might not be able to transport themselves. All of those are choices to raise the carbon footprint for social reasons rather than lower them by individual effort.
You cannot or will mot use the most efficient, or green, building materials because you need the group to approve the retrofit and a committee to approve the budget.
In effect you can only be as carbon free as the city will let you.
That is the collective “you”. Not the personal you.