What are you doing to reduce your "carbon footprint?"

In My Humble Opinion
21

Not directly, perhaps, but when environmental catastrophe hits and millions or billions of dollars’ worth of assets and productivity are destroyed, GM gets socked in the pocketbook like the rest of us. This is why, for example, insurance companies have been getting nervous about the predicted economic impacts of climate change.

Once again, do you have anything to back up this extraordinary claim other than your own wishful thinking? Remember, we’re not talking about whether any one specific weather event in recent years can be attributed solely or mostly to climate change. We’re talking about the predictions of climate scientists about general climate and weather trends over the next several decades, and the effect that rising CO2 concentrations and rising global temperatures will have on them.

To claim that global temperatures are rising, that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are playing a large role in this increase, and that the higher temperatures will produce a number of disruptive effects like rising sea levels and more severe weather patterns, is not “ridiculous” in the least. On the contrary, it’s the considered opinion of most climate scientists working in the field today, as this recent IPCC report makes clear:

These are the conclusions you’re blithely dismissing as “ridiculous”. On what grounds? Please, if you have access to crucial scientific truths that thousands of climate scientists all over the world have somehow not discovered, do explain them to us in detail.

Believe me, we’d all be thrilled to find out that climate change is really mythical and that there aren’t going to be any environmental catastrophes and economic disasters resulting from it. But I think we’d like to have better evidence for believing such a scenario than your mere assertion that the findings of mainstream climate science are “ridiculous”.

There is certainly no definitive proof about what the exact consequences of climate change will be, nor exactly how and how much we can affect them by mitigation strategies. But not having definitive proof doesn’t mean that we have to sit around doing nothing. Especially not if it looks likely that the longer we sit around doing nothing, the worse the consequences will be.

“Shutting down the country”? Once again, do you have anything to back up such an extravagant claim, besides your own opinion?

And “conspiracy”? Who on earth do you imagine has both the desire and the power to put into practice a conspiracy that would have as its chief result shutting down the economy of the United States? AFAIK, not even the most feverish Europe-bashers on the right-wing loony fringe seriously believe that the political leadership or economic stability of Europe would be boosted by the economic collapse of the US. There is no wild-eyed gang of crypto-communists in the halls of power in the Old World trying to engineer our economic destruction by the sinister might of carbon trading schemes. Are you getting your information on the politics of climate change mitigation out of the Left Behind novels or something?

22

I never walked through carbon to begin with, so my feet leave no carbon behind.

23

compared to what? A non-hybrid version of the same car? I get 37 mpg with my Saturn. At $3 gallon and 15,000 miles a year it would save me $1,393 over 5 years. Taking that off the price of an economy car such as a Saturn I’m still $7,000 in the hole. To make it work you would have to figure the best time to take advantage of resale versus the added costs of battery maintenance. I like the Prius but it’s strictly transportation and not worth the extra money right now.

I will take advantage of technology as it becomes financially viable. The most notable benefit I’ve found so far is light bulb technology. My electric bill reduction was noticeable. Not going to sink a lot in my current house. I’ll save it for the next one.

24

Well, Consumer Reports compared it to a Toyota Corolla…presumably one toward the top-end, since that is what the Prius is most equivalent to…although it is actually bigger than a Corolla. Some argue a fairer comparison would have been to a Camry.

If you are really getting 37mpg, then you are already driving about the most efficient non-hybrid available so your savings will admittedly be less. And, as you note, the Saturn is an economy car while the Prius is not. I admit that if I hadn’t bought a Prius, I might have gotten an Echo and would have spent about $10,000 less. However, I would have also gotten a lot less features and a considerably smaller car…so I don’t think that is a fair comparison for me to make.

There are no added costs of battery maintenance that I know of. The batteries are expected to last the life of the car and are maintenance-free.

25

Well, I’ve got a wood-burning stove with a catalytic converter that I use when temps get really cold and I’m home. I wind up burning about 12 or 13 small-sized logs, and some kindling, to keep the house heated on those days, which is pretty efficient.
Have a programmable thermostat for heat/ac otherwise.
Take public transport to work.
Put in new siding and windows to insulate the house better. This worked pretty well; I noticed it when using the woodstove, as it was a lot easier to keep the house at our preferred toasty temp with it than it had been before.
OTOH, I’ve got a seventeen year old station wagon that measures its efficiency in gallons to the mile, I think. But I don’t use it for commuting, so it doesn’t get a lot of mileage on it anyway. Mostly it goes to the town dump, fully loaded.
We recycle all kinds of stuff. And yes, that does help: see this EPA carbon calculator,; according to them, I’m shaving 1787 lbs of CO2 off my usage per year by recycling everything they have listed.

26

I’m not doing anything to reduce my carbon footprint, I’m doing things to conserve energy, but that is not for reducing my carbon footprint, it’s just a side effect.

27

Our house is designed to use passive solar in the winter to heat the interior (south-facing ‘heatsmart’ triple-pane argon-filled windows).

I designed the lighting in the house to be mostly ‘task’ lighting - instead of lighting an entire room, I have smaller, more efficient bulbs located right where the typical tasks are.

In summer we do not use air conditioning, relying instead on proper ventilation and high ceilings to keep the living space cool. Plus, we designed the basement to be our main living space, and it stays cool in the summer.

My SUV is a small compact model. Our other car is a small 4-cylinder sports car. Neither are the most efficient we could drive, but both strike a good balance between our desires and good gas mileage.

We have in-floor radiant heat in the basement, and zone heating throughout the house, so we never heat a room we don’t have to.

Our appliances are all the highest-efficiency models we could afford, and all are new and ‘energy smart’.

Our plan for our vehicles is to drive these until plug-in hybrids become available, then replace them with plug-ins. Assuming that technology remains viable by the time those cars are available.

I’ve been replacing all our bulbs with CFLs over time. We have about 10 CFLs going now, which probably represents about half of our normal lighting needs.

I didn’t do any of this as a ‘sacrifice’ to ‘reduce our carbon footprint’. I did it because it made sense. I started using CFLs when the quality got where it needed to be and the price came down to where it made sense to use them. We own the cars we do because they struck the best balance between our desires and cost of operation. We don’t air condition in the summer because it’s expensive, so when I designed the basement I planned to use it as our ‘summer living space’, making sure it had the amenities we wanted. It saves us a hundred bucks a month in energy in the summer, which allowed us to afford nicer finishing. Win-win.

The lesson is that the environmental movement isn’t going to get anywhere if the message is, “Suck it up and sacrifice for the good of the planet, people!” People have to be convinced on the basis of their OWN interests. I’d love to solar power the house. But I’m not going to do it until -I- see a tangible benefit for that. Most other people feel the same way.

28

I don’t drive any motor vehicles. I walk to work. When I need to go someplace out of walking distance, I carpool.

29

Most definitely. I use solar simply because in addition to lots of rocks and sand, we have an abundance of sun out here. :stuck_out_tongue:

-XT

30

I heat my house entirely with wood pellets.

31

Sorry for my ignorance on this, but how efficient are wood pellets in heating a house? Do you require a special furnace for that? How ‘green’ is it, emmissions wise?

I really have no idea…cooling is more my priority (though to be honest its really pretty mild both winter and summer here…its really a great place to live :)).

-XT

32

My house has a good woodstove but I found it to be not economical. I compared the heating bill from a month when we were burning wood every evening to the bill from the same month in the next year when we were burning no wood. The difference was only about ten percent, probably because the house is insulated so well. Considering the cost of the wood, I was saving no money. The time and physical effort I spent dealing with the wood were totally wasted. But we still burn wood when the weather is extremely cold because it makes the house quite toasty.

During the Summer months I shut the gas furnace down completely. That pilot light costs almost a dollar a day!

I pay the power company extra for electricity generated by wind power.

CFLs are good. We use lightshades which really mitigate the unpleasant glare of fluorescents. Were you aware that fluorescents contain small amounts of mercury and should be disposed of with care?

http://www.worldwise.com/recfluorlig.html

An episode of Penn & Teller’s “Bullshit” show convinced me that the only things worth recycling are gallon milk jugs.

33

Hmmm…Well, I am not sure you should consider them the final word on this. In particular, the argument for recycling aluminum is very strong. Here is the wikipedia article on recycling.

34

I have an Englander wood pellet stove, which runs about $1800. It used to be very economical, but since fuel oil prices went up in 2005, the price of pellets has gone up about 25%. I paid $280/ton (delivered) this winter, and will use about 3.5 tons. Pellets come in 40lb. bags, and I use about 1 bag per day, 1.5 on cold days.

Pellet fuel is carbon neutral, because the wood is not a fossil fuel releasing sequestered carbon dioxide. The CO2 released by pellets was only recently absorbed from the atmosphere, and would be returned anyway when the wood decomposed.

35

My car is a Toyota Corolla; I drive 4.5 miles to work. I buy gas about twice a month. My thermostat is set at 65°. My light bulbs are compact fluorescents, and there are three of them (39 watts total) burning now. My total electric bill for the all electric apartment home I have was under $700.00 for last year.

I am not sure that reducing my power consumption is going to be all that easy.

Tris

36

Sounds like you are already doing your share. You can always be on the look out for a little more though.

When you buy your next appliance, whether a TV or printer or AC unit, look for a very efficient model. It won’t make a huge difference, but it is one more thing you can do.

If you want to do more, you can do little things. At work, I have convinced my boss the IT Director to only buy LCD panels for know on and we are slowly retiring our CRTs. I have half of the Florescent tubes over my Cube turned off.

Jim

37

Since this thread is staying mostly in the realm of personal anecdote, I am sending it over to IMHO.

[ /Moderating ]

38

I use the bus system almost exclusively. My truck broke down about a year ago, and I haven’t been able to afford completing the repairs just yet. Even when it was running, I took the bus at least half the time.

My reasoning is not entirely altruistic though. I HATE the unconstructed time of commuting, it’s 20 minutes to half an hour each way of completely wasted time. Whereas on the bus, I can do homework or other tasks, thereby giving myself from 1 - 2 hours more time and energy to do stuff that’s more fun, or useful, like going to the gym. Yeah, the bus takes a little longer, but I’m saving on the stress of driving in traffic. So that part evens out as well.

39

Big money relative to what? I seem to remember that setting up a hydrogen infrastructure for cars in the US was dismissed as being economically impossible due to a price tag of more than $200Bn. Twice that amount has already been spent on Iraq war, with plenty more to come, and it hasn’t exactly brought the economy to its knees yet. All that money has come either from profits, shareholders or straight out of the pocket of Joe Citizen, along with money for farm subsidies, hospitals, education, etc etc etc. Affordability isn’t really the issue, it’s just a matter of priorities. The fact that no-one has the stomach for the wall of whining that would arise if they took the issue seriously does not mean the problem can’t be addressed at a manageable cost.

40

I also elected wind power. I live in a small apartment, and I’ve barely noticed an increase in price (used to pay $20, now I pay $25 - in the winter, at least). We also bought some of those compact flourescents, but they’re definitely not my favorite. It makes home look like an office.

I don’t own a car. I bus to work during the winter and bike in the spring/summer/fall. I kind of cheat, though, because my boyfriend has a car and picks me up from work a lot during the winter.

I remember trying some carbon footprint calculator once (don’t remember which one), and one of the questions had to do with how often you ride in an airplane. I’ve only done so for three trips in my life, which seems pretty minimal.

I recycle. I don’t eat meat (that was another question on the calculator).