Can we stay within planetary boundaries and live good lives?

There's a big question that's being ignored. A question that's been vaguely swimming around my head for a while that finally found form recently: "Can everyone on this planet live a comfortable, happy life while staying within the planetary boundaries?". This is a big question that probably requires a PhD or two, but for now this blog will have to do. To make this question calculable, I rephrased it to "What does the average person need to live like to stay within a 1.5 degree IPCC scenario?". This isn’t an ideal framing as the planetary boundaries are manifold and complex, but it’s a place to start.

I Googled variations of this question of a good life that respects planetary boundaries but didn’t find any satisfactory answers. The best way I could think of to try and figure this out was to compare my carbon footprint with what the ideal carbon footprint would be.

I couldn't find out what an individual Carbon footprint would be under IPCC 1.5 degrees, but a website called 'ecocivilisation.info' reckons we need to limit emissions to 3 tonnes of Carbon per person. Which, when added up among all humans, is the amount which the planet's natural systems can manage sustainably.

So if 3 tonnes of Carbon is my budget, what kind of life can I live? Not the one I currently do, and I thought I was relatively good. My Carbon budget is coming out ~8 tonnes a year.

So, what if I made my life as eco as possible? I made adjustments to the most eco-options in https://co2.myclimate.org calculator and it comes out as 5.6 of which 1.2 is public services that I can't do anything about. So, still 2.6 tonnes over the budget.

What about using a different calculation? Using a different calculator (https://climatehero.me/) and the most eco-options I could select, I brought it down to 1.2 tonnes. Presumably, that doesn't include the 1.2 tonnes of public services Carbon that the previous calculator had included.

I don't consider my life to be extravagant. I can't seem to make the numbers work without living in a eco-house (which I don't have much control over as a renter), being a vegan and rarely going anywhere that I can't walk or cycle to. I can't imagine a world where everyone lives like this. In this scenario I’d have to give up seeing some of my closest friends and family, a sacrifice I’m not willing to make, however selfish that might be.

So how do we make these numbers work? I believe that we need aspirational lifestyles that are different from the ones we have now, lifestyles that increase human well-being without increasing consumption. I am working on a lifestyle that balances enjoying my one, short life on this planet and not leaving a horrible mess for others. Given my calculations, and ambitions for better quality of life as well as sustaining human life on the planet, we also need to reduce the embodied carbon in the products and services. These are not new ideas, but I hope my calculations can contribute to the growing collective attention on this subject.