Well, it’s week two of the Treehugger/Slate carbon diet challenge and so far I’m not jonesing for carbon yet. Looking back on last week’s assignment, I’ve done everything I pledged to do.
This week’s focus area is home heating. Ironically, I can’t really do much about this one. I live in central Texas where home heating isn’t really a big issue. You know, what with global warming and all.
There were good ideas for shedding carbon if you live in colder climes, but I could only manage to shed .18 cars worth of carbon by making small adjustments with the thermostat, which will be hard since we don’t really run the heat much anyway unless it gets really cold. Which it doesn’t. This is Texas. It’s like Hell, but with BBQ.
Since we live in a new house, I know the insulation is good which means I don’t need to add any, nor do I need to caulk the windows or do any of the other suggested things. The thermostat however, nets these benefits according to my results page:
- Turning down the thermostat 2 degrees in winter during the day saves about 800 pounds of CO2 per year.
- Turning down the thermostat 8 degrees more at night in winter saves about 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
So by doing these things, I can reduce my carbon load by 1800 lbs, which is about 9% of my initial total of 18,274 lbs. Combined with last week’s 14%, I’m now at a 23% reduction of carbon.
You can thank me when it’s still snowing on Earth in a few years.
James Brush is a teacher and writer who lives in Austin, TX. He tries to get outside as much as possible.
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