I inadvertently ended up living near farms, because I wanted more space and could live farther from city center once I started telecommuting, because no more commuting. In places where we’ve most recently lived, we’ve been able to buy direct from farmers.
Unrelatedly, I went vegan for six months for health reasons. Started developing TMJ (jaw issue), because I was eating so many raw vegetables to get full. 
@Silversitters, we took a very similar train journey in Switzerland/Italy earlier this month. Unquestionably a pretty part of the world. Switzerland has some lovely train rides. Though we did not consider them to be cheap, indeed higher cost than most European flights that we take!
The reason air travel ‘only’ contributes 2-3% of global emissions is because the vast majority of the world population doesn’t fly, not because flying is not impactful. A return flight from London to LA is the equivalent of about 1/3 of the average British person’s annual emissions.
Although I would say in response that a very large chunk (basically the majority) of global carbon emissions are not very directly tied to our personal consumption patterns.
For example, steel and cement both contribute about 8% of global carbon emissions (16% in total). We nearly all live in buildings and use infrastructure, that may contain steel or cement however our influence on its use is usually very indirect.
Land based transport, e.g. trucks, is about 10% of carbon emissions. Again, our impact is quite indirect - we all shop, go to supermarkets, etc, but we often don’t tend to directly influence how it arrives to the shop.
Etcetera. Just to say that to really curb carbon emissions, we should take a very good, close look at certain industries & companies and their Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions (~100 companies responsible for about 70% of emissions).
However that’s what our governments have a very hard time doing… it’s easier to ask consumers to reduce their footprint than to be decisive in our policies and regulations when it comes to curbing emissions as we fear the market will ‘bite back’, since the corporate lobby is very strong…
We will absolutely never meaningfully curb global carbon though if we rely only on consumers to do so. We need meaningful industrial policy…
I used to worry myself into a frazzle about this. Until, persuing my environmental interests, I came across this neat representation:
At the end of the day, always vote with your money. Any of us cutting back on things to be green is a drop in the bucket when compared to mega corporations that literally pollute more in one minute than any one of us could in one lifetime.
Thank you all for your messages. More food for thought…!
