> Yes, we should definitely grow plants, but even more so, we need to consume way waaaay less.
Wouldn't it be the best when these two are actually the same? When growing more enables you to consume less? I didn't account for the savings you would do with consuming less in my simple calculation.
A large part of our consumption is not food. You can’t grow iPhones on a tree. You’re not going to consume less iPhones because you planted hundreds of tomato trees. You could argue that you can offset the total lifecycle energy for owning an iPhone (mining, purification, synthesis of raw materials, manufacture, packaging, transportation, recycling), by planting enough plants, but how many plants is that going to take?
I mean, I'm a software engineer by training. Back in university, we had a courses on engineering ethics, environmental responsibility, stuff like that. That's where I learned the concept of lifecycle energy assessment. I know it's a thing, but I never learned how to actually do the assessment (e.g. where to pull figures, the kind of ballpark calculations you do).
It might be interesting to make the methodology of lifecycle energy assessment more accessible to the general populace. I think everybody can benefit from a new perspective.
Wouldn't it be the best when these two are actually the same? When growing more enables you to consume less? I didn't account for the savings you would do with consuming less in my simple calculation.