Strong Verbs Are Just Better

While carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are active in our atmosphere for many human generations, methane – a powerful, but short-lived, greenhouse gas – is broken down in about a decade. This means that the methane emissions of a herd of 100 cows today are simply replacing the emissions that were first produced when that herd was established by a previous generation of farmers. There was an initial pulse of warming when the herd was established, but there is no ongoing warming from that herd.
Under the new, updated metric, GWP*, the greenhouse gas emissions from UK agriculture fall from 46.5 MtCO2e in 2016, to just 9.5 MtCO2e*. Warming from CO2 and N2O across that period are the same as previously reported, but methane is recalculated as -10.6 MtCO2e*. That’s a negative emission value, because methane levels have fallen since the base year of 1996.
The transformation in the results is staggering. By accurately measuring the impact of methane, agriculture’s emissions under GWP* are just 20% of their original value.

If the Internet demonstrates what we’d like to receive on demand—attention, Thai food, episodes of old sitcoms—one of those things, clearly, is excessively bad vibes. In the nineties, the shock site Rotten.com became famous for publishing a fake photo that purported to show Princess Diana’s corpse just after her death in a car crash. I was a child in those early Internet days, and I remember steeling myself, in my AOL explorations, for the ever-present possibility that an ordinary image would turn into a jump-scare prank. I disliked the feeling of alarmed detachment that freaky online images provoked in me, but I craved it, too.

Beck: Is it emotional labor to manage household Christmas merriment, such as sending Christmas cards, baking cookies, and planning family get-togethers?

Hochschild: There seems an alienation or a disenchantment of acts that normally we associate with the expression of connection, love, commitment. Like “Oh, what a burden it is to pick out gifts for the holiday for my children.” Or “Oh, it’s so hard to call a photographer to do family Christmas photos, and then to send it to my parents.” I feel a strong need to point out that this isn’t inherently an alienating act. And something’s gone haywire when it is. It’s okay to feel alienated from the task of making a magical experience for your very own children. I’m not just judging that. I’m saying let’s take it as a symptom that something’s wrong. I think a number of my books speak to that. The Time Bind says, wait a minute, what if home has become work and work has become home?