Carbon footprint and voting preferences of a council

Accounting for carbon should be undertaken at multiple scales to create awareness of the negative environmental impacts of consumption. We undertake a comprehensive consumption-based supply-chain assessment of a community's emissions for a selected council area in the Greater Sydney region of Australia using multi-regional input-output analysis, by constructing a customised input-output table with data from the Australian Household Expenditure Survey on items related to food, beverages, housing, transport, energy, clothing & footwear, household appliances & furniture, medical services, communication, recreation and education. We quantify the Scope-1,-2, and -3 emissions of households in the council area, and put the results in the context of voting preferences of the Council community. Our results suggest that despite left-wing voter preferences, the con-sumption habits of green voters carry high carbon footprints - the per-capita carbon footprint of Inner West residents is about 1.3 times more than the footprint of residents in the Rest of Greater Sydney. Furthermore, about two-thirds of the footprint is embodied in upstream supply chains for satisfying consumption. This result is significant in that it means that if policy addressed only energy-related direct emissions, it would be missing a majority of the population's CO(2)e footprint.

Automated summary

To raise awareness of the negative environmental impacts of consumption, accounting for carbon emissions should be done at multiple scales. A study conducted in the Greater Sydney region of Australia found that despite green voters' preferences, their consumption habits contribute significantly to carbon footprints, with most emissions embodied in upstream supply chains.