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Tag: green living

Going on a Carbon Diet

October 24, 2006 • • 9 Comments

I decided to try out Slate’s Green Challenge co-sponsored by Treehugger. It’s described as an eight week carbon diet:

For the next eight weeks, Slate, in collaboration with eco-Web site treehugger, invites you to consider your own individual contribution to global warming—and challenges you to go on a carbon diet. The goal is to reduce the amount of CO2 that you put into the atmosphere by 20 percent.

You start with a test that estimates your individual carbon load. I used my car (not the hybrid my wife drives) and came out with a carbon load of 18,274 lbs, which is the equivalent of 1.79 cars. According to the results page for my test, the US average is 44,312 lbs per person so I’m not doing too bad there. I guess it helps to already be aware of some of these things.

Each week for the next eight weeks, I’ll log in and make a series of ‘pledges’ to do things that will reduce the carbon load in a specific area. This week it’s transportation. I will keep my tires inflated, make sure the air filter in the car is clean once a month, and drive 25 fewer miles per month by combining errands. I also realized that I can save 10 miles per week by taking an alternate route to work. If I do these things, I can supposedly take the equivalent of .25 cars off the road.

I could take more had I been willing to ride trains (Nope. I live in Texas.), carpool (with whom?), purchase carbon offsets (not sure I trust that one), and buy a hybrid in the next six months. The hybrid would be nice – we love ours – but reality is reality and greyhounds are big dogs and I need something that can haul them all. I’ve got a Honda CR-V and it’s great and gets decent mpg, but I’ll probably wait on the hybrid until hybrid CR-Vs come along. Honda sales people say it’ll be in a year or two.

Here are some other transportation things you can do courtesy of Slate:

  • Keep your tires properly inflated by checking them regularly when you fill up at the gas station. Environmental Defense notes that 32 million U.S. vehicles ride on at least two under-inflated tires, wasting 500 million gallons of gas each year.
  • Drive 65 miles per hour instead of 75. This increases fuel efficiency by 15 percent, thereby reducing emissions. And speeding tickets.
  • It seems almost too obvious to point out, but idling cars get zero miles per gallon. According to the Department of Energy, no more than 30 seconds of idling is needed to warm up a car, even on cold winter days.
  • Cutting your driving by a few miles each day stops tons of CO2 from entering the air each year. Could you walk or bike to do that nearby errand? Could you carpool or commute by mass transit—even just one day a week?

So, there it is. If I keep my pledges, I will have reduced my carbon load by 14% or 2558 lbs. If my math is right (a large if), I only have to lose 6% more carbon, but I’ll go for as much as I can. Won’t you join me?

100 Years

October 10, 2006 • • 3 Comments

Last week, I sat in a focus group for a company that wants to install systems that will use renewable energy in homes. The idea goes beyond solar panels to include wind and geothermal where possible. When the moderator asked us to rank the reasons we might be willing to consider renewable energy everyone chose cost savings first. Only two of us chose environmental protection first.

I like saving money, but I couldn’t help but wonder why more people don’t consider preserving a healthy and liveable world for future generations to be more of a moral issue, and quite frankly, the most important one there is. This is something I’d like to hear one of the so-called ‘values voters’ explain to me. I often read about the issues that drive these people to the polls and it’s rarely conservation.

There are some in the evangelical community (which seems to think it owns values and morals, but never mind) who would like to add environmental protection to the mix of values issues, but the leaders of the movement see it as a wedge issue to divide their base. Do they care about anything other than short term power?

Don’t answer that.

In 100 years, it seems unlikely that anyone other than scholars will care how we structured our families, whether or not we let gay people marry, what schools taught kids about evolution, or even whether or not abortion was legal. I suspect, though, that they will curse us for every methane spewing landfill, toxic waste dump, dead reef, poisoned aquifer, dead forest, overfished sea, desertified landscape, silt-blocked river, lost glacier, styrofoam cup and plastic water bottle that we leave for them to enjoy.

A few days after the focus group, I read Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and was struck by how often he refers to environmental protection as a moral imperative. I couldn’t agree more, but I wonder how long it will be before we look at politicians and demand to see their environmental ideas before we make the decision about their values. What kind of people ask about candidates’ positions on gay marriage before asking about ocean policy ideas?

Can you have values if you don’t value the well-being of future generations?

An Inconvenient Truth

October 5, 2006 • • 3 Comments

Al Gore’s book, An Inconvenient Truth, is a well put together overview of the dangers posed by global climate change. He documents the ways in which human activity has increased air temperatures and altered the chemistry of the Earth’s oceans as well as the political situation that perpetuates a status quo unwilling to acknowledge the consequences of inaction.

It’s hard for me to say how convincing the book is; I was convinced a long time ago so Gore is kind of preaching to the choir here. Among other things, I read Discover and National Geographic regularly, both of which have done a nice job of exploring global climate issues over the years.

What makes the book intriguing – and why I bought it – is the illustrations. It’s one thing to read about disappearing glaciers; it’s quite another to see photographs taken from the same spot (in some cases only thirty years apart) that show gigantic glaciers in one image and then no glacier in the other. The book relies heavily on this kind of visual evidence that tends to be very effective.

Interspersed throughout the book Gore includes autobiographical excursions that describe the personal experiences that have led him to undertake this crusade that he repeatedly states is a moral issue. As remarkable as the subject matter is Gore’s passion for it. It’s stunning that this man was painted as an emotionless robot with whacky ideas especially when you look at his imminently practical and profitable market-based solutions to this growing problem.

Gore’s book (I haven’t seen the movie) presents the causes and consequences of global climate change in easy-to-read and understand non-technical language accompanied by effective and often beautiful illustrations. An Inconvenient Truth would be a solid introduction or overview on the subject for those who, perhaps have not given the issue much thought.

I’m talking, of course, about the people who find nothing odd about days like today when the temperatures reach into the mid-nineties. In October. Nope, nothing to worry about here.

Sheila, Take a Bow

May 19, 2006 • • 6 Comments

This is Sheila. She’s a Honda Civic Hybrid (my wife and her colleagues have decided that hybrids are female) and great fun to drive.

Honda Civic Hybrid

We ordered the car in January and it arrived last week. It has that nice new car smell and it runs beautifully. We’re getting close to 40mpg in the city. The stereo sounds great.

Sheila, take a bow.