Quick one tonight. I’m flying tomorrow (if the snow holds off like I expect it to), so I offset my emissions today — carbon emissions, that is. I’ve written about this before, because I think it’s important so I do it every time I fly. Actually, I should probably set up an account to offset all my day-to-day emissions (although since I don’t own a car or a home or even commute to work, my largest contribution of greenhouse gas might come from my bum — do human gas expulsions contain methane, or just cows’?).
Anyhow, I digress. So I’m offsetting my share of the airplane emissions I’ll be responsible for tomorrow. Read more about how that works here. In the future, when I’m not on such a tight travel deadline, I hope to start taking the train between Denver and NY/DC — it’s about a two-day ride crossing most of middle America and stopping for half a day in Chicago. And it costs about $200 one-way. Not quite as cheap as flying (even when I add in my emissions payment), but not too much more either.
Ok, I’m doing a new thing now. I was inspired by “An Inconvenient Truth” this afternoon (depsite watching it in black and white due to an unknown TV malfunction). If you haven’t seen it, the message is basically this:
(1) the Earth’s climate is definitely changing,
(2) human activity is the overwhelming cause,
(3) there will definitely be significant effects for all of us, and probably catastrophic ones if we don’t change our ways immediately. But,
(4) we can still change course, and
(5) as individuals, it’s up to us both to change the way we interact with nature and
(6) to demand our politicians institute even more widespread changes.
I guess this blog is mostly about #5 — what we can each do in our daily lives — although More…
Sign up to have your home powered with renewable energy.
The view from 32,000 feet—
each turbine is about 10 stories tall.
The Earth from above — there’s almost no more amazing sight. I’ve been flying back and forth between NY and Colorado fairly frequently over the past few years, and despite my long legs, I always take a window seat and generally keep my face pressed to the pane the whole time. Across those 1,800 miles of farmland, hills, dales, small towns, and big cities, Friday was the first time I ever saw a windfarm. A sign of the changing times, I’d say.
I saw a few windmills from below once when driving in West Virginia. You can’t imagine how big these suckers are until you stand below one. Most are about 10 stories or more these days. Once you understand their size, the sight of 50 of them from 32,000 feet is all the more impressive.
Over the last ten years (through the end of 2005), wind energy-generating capacity grew by an average of 29 percent worldwide More…
When your car is supposed to be serviced, don’t put it off.
Don’t try and extend the time between oil changes in your car, it will end up costing you more in fuel and increases the pollution levels your car pumps out.
According to EarthEasy.com, a poorly tuned engine will use up to 50% more fuel and pump out 50% more emissions. Also, be sure to change clogged air filters that can eat up 10% of your fuel efficiency.
Another fuel and environment saving tip is to check and maintain your tire pressure regularly. I know More…
I’ll probably be about 30,000 feet over Memphis when this posts, doing my part to hasten the onset of global climate change, right? Well, only sort of.
You see, I try to fly as rarely as possible, because I know air travel is one of the single most potent contributors to climate change. But when I do have to fly (it’s sort of an emergency this time), I pay a company called Climate Care that invests in projects that clean the environment.
Here’s how it works. They provide a handy calculator to determine how much extra carbon dioxide my trip is spewing into the atmosphere, and translate that into a dollar amount. (Actually, it’s pounds, but who’s counting?) The money supports projects around the world, doing an equal amount of repair to the climate as the damage I’m doing up there in the troposphere. I pay, and travel guilt-free.
The projects Climate Care supports are all over the world, “wherever More…
Use an electric blanket or mattress pad on your bed.
Plug in your bed!
This one comes to us from Jonathan in Boston, who’s too busy setting technology policy for MIT (and raising my niece and nephew) to write a silly little blog post. (For anyone who can find some time to write with us occasionally, click here!)
Many of the ideas on this blog focus on ways to minimize energy use, so pushing an electric blanket might seem a bit out of character — until you consider the savings to be had on the back side of this move, when you turn down the thermostat!
The truth is, I don’t know how well this equation works out. I’ve poked around on the Internets a bit and haven’t come up with too much on the difference between energy consumed by electric blankets and energy saved by lowering the home’s heat. My intuition tells me the blanket is probably a good idea, because you’re focusing a bit of heat More…
Buy an energy-saver light bulb next time you’re at the drug store.
So you don’t need a light bulb. It’s okay, buy one anyway. Here’s why:
I’m switching out my old
bulbs as they blow.
“If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR, we would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars.”
800,000 cars! That’s directly off a U.S. government Web site (here). And you know the U.S. government wouldn’t lie to you, right? Or stretch the truth? But anyway, a ton of very reputable organizations are saying the same thing, so this time I’m buying.
A wonderful Web site for people who want to live greener lives, Treehugger.com, explains it like this: Energy saving light bulbs cost a little bit more than the regular ones but only use about a quarter of the More…
There have to be a million reasons to use less energy. I’ll give you four.
Goodnight my banjo buddy.
#1, unless your landlord is picking up your electricity bill, it costs you money. A kilowatt/hour saved is a kilowatt/hour earned.
#2, the energy we use in our homes is generated at power plants far, far away, often using oil that comes from even farther. Americans like to talk nervously about “our dependence on foreign oil.” Less energy = less “dependence.”
#3, burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) pollutes the environment. The less energy we use, the less fossil fuel we burn, the less pollution spews into our skies — and lungs.
#4, and probably most important by far, is that burning fossil fuels to generate electricity releases carbon dioxide into the air, and carbon dioxide is causing climate change and all its very serious consequences. I’ll go more deeply into climate change in a future posting, I promise. For now let’s leave it at this: our kids will thank us profusely someday More…
Quick one tonight. I’m flying tomorrow (if the snow holds off like I expect it to), so I offset my emissions today — carbon emissions, that is. I’ve written about this before, because I think it’s important so I do it every time I fly. Actually, I should probably set up an account to offset all my day-to-day emissions (although since I don’t own a car or a home or even commute to work, my largest contribution of greenhouse gas might come from my bum — do human gas expulsions contain methane, or just cows’?).
Ok, I’m doing a new thing now. I was inspired by “An Inconvenient Truth” this afternoon (depsite watching it in black and white due to an unknown TV malfunction). If you haven’t seen it, the message is basically this:
Don’t try and extend the time between oil changes in your car, it will end up costing you more in fuel and increases the pollution levels your car pumps out.
