Any question answered...

to what extent they can claim to live "sustainably"

Both you and the people jumping into these fashionable band wagons are asking for simple answers to complex questions.
The simplest answer for anybody who really wants a minimal ecological footprint is suicide. Next in line for people without the courage of their convictions is to be so poor that they can't afford to consume any more than the bare minimum required for survival. Economic activity is a pretty good proxy for environmental damage - the more you spend, the more wreckage you leave in your wake.
Once you go past that, most people enter into self-serving calculations to show that their particular middle class posturing is better than somebody else's. These calculations are always based on guesswork, wrong assumptions, and deliberately ignoring inconvenient factors.

I’d rank not having kids as being an effective way to reduce long term environmental impact.

Bear in mind that it's likely a fair few people will also be reading on mobile so there won't be any cursor hovering.

EDIT: I was curious, that test file doesn't work on Acrobat Reader on Android.

Isn't this the same with people living on boats too?

Interesting discussion starter.

Yeah, hover states are pretty touch hostile. you can do on-click show/hide which be fine on touch, but I'm doing actual work now so won't throw another test file together.

Possibly, but I've been ranting plenty about house boat dwellers on here before so thought I'd give them a break this time.

Don't get me wrong, part of me think the idea of owning a house boat or refurbished school bus looks super cool, but it's the same part of me that thinks shooting a machine gun seems like fun. What annoys me is how they seem to piggy back on other left/liberal causes and claim they've got up on me in this respect.

Leaving aside Gbj_Tester’s unexpectedly aggressive comment, this is a suggestion that people have actually put a lot of research into, and you’re right. Having smaller families is one of the most ecologically impactful decisions a person can make.

In my leftie/liberal bubble I am increasingly often crossing paths with small house enthusiasts and those hipsters who refurbish old vans and school busses into mobile homes. Their aspirations to some kind of virtue annoys me anyhow, but the more particular question I am putting to you guys in this thread is to what extent they can claim to live "sustainably".

It's the same people in the "say fuck it and go travelling" crowd. It's a lack of awareness that most people don't have daddy's bank balance to fall back on.

There's a lot of middle class hypocrisy in the tiny house / school bus movement. It's all packaged as aspirational as it's a lifestyle choice, but if you live in a caravan park because that's all you can afford you're "trailer trash". Not sure it's the same for people who live on boats?

When you look at the disparity of environmental footprint of individuals, it's clear a wealthy, childless individual can still cause more negative impact than a whole family. So as a personal choice yes it's effective, but guard against feeling too superior to other people who have kids.

I am obviously superior to people with kids. But that's mostly down to your house smelling of used diapers and microwave meals, whilst my place smells of merlot and tinder dates.

However, following on from DJ's point, can I claim the CO2 quota of my unborn children? If so I will continue to fly long haul all over the place.

Personal CO2 quotas. Politically impossible to implement and police in reality, but I like the idea for sci-fi... 🤔

Thank you for indulging someone who is on the edge of their expertise.

Windows 10 laptop/Firefox.
Your test pdf gave me a stern warning
'This pdf contains forms. The filling of form fields is not supported'

Salamander, my choice of pdf readers, seemingly opened the pdf, but gave no warning, but equally no hover-revealed item.

Thanks,
I'll leave this idea for now,
and,
revert to hyperlinked images.

Thanks for the warning.
Some of the recipients will be mature,
and more likely to use a laptop/desktop than a mobile to read these reports.
Others will be councillors who will use their authority supplied iPads or
council offices with Lenovo X220s.

It's no longer enough to have 0 kids. To avert all accusations of hypocrisy you must have a net negative child count

best bet then - no kids, use your inherited wealth to buy carbon credits from the poor, live your best life?

I'll leave this idea for now, and revert to hyperlinked images.

This is the right answer. You can do some pretty incredible things in PDFs, but anything beyond 'text and pictures on a page, mild clickage' is unfortunately unlikely to work for a wide audience.

Personal CO2 quotas.

The whole idea of a personal carbon footprint came from BP as a strategy to shift the blame on carbon emissions onto the individual. While it is definitely useful to have an idea of what is bad for the environment and what you can do to lower personal emissions, things like taxation at point of emissions, and other larger systematic changes are what's required.

I'm aware this opinion isn't particularly helpful, nor am I trying to discourage people having a sense of responsibility about their effect on the environment, but forcing those with limited means to make ecologically conscious decisions seems like an unfair burden.

but if personal CO2 quota can be monetized then suddenly everyone could have some personal wealth to use (or more likely be exploited for). This is more for the SF novel!

your house smelling of used diapers and microwave meals, whilst my place smells of merlot and tinder dates.

Lol'd, would rep.

but if personal CO2 quota can be monetized

That's just purchasing carbon offsetting, isn't it?

Which reminds me of the whole Ryanair "carbon offsetting" debacle. People were given the option of offsetting the carbon of their flight by contributing to Ryanair's offsetting scheme. It then turned out that carbon offsetting isn't really regulated, and Ryanair's whole scheme was a single acre plot of trees (can't remember the exact size, but it was sufficiently miniscule for an international airline).

O'Leary was quoted as saying "From an acorn, grows a mighty oak!", despite the fact that they'd offset less than 0.01% of their emissions.

.

Yep, but it gives so many possibilities if applied to individuals, a lot of them nefarious like N3il said. I haven’t come across a dystopian novel where this is a feature. Would make for an interesting, if depressing, read.

I guess, but thats not as good a plot