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October 24, 2006

Curb Your Carbon Cravings

Slate Magazine and TreeHugger.com are sponsoring an 8-week challenge to reduce your portion of carbon-dioxide emissions by changing some habits. The goal of the program is to reduce your personal carbon by at least 20%. For some, this may just mean recycling a bit more and turning on the heat later, but for others who are already rather eco-conscious, this may turn out to be a real challenge.

Household Baselines

Last year, our energy company, PG&E, offered an incentive program to get people to cut their bill by 20%. If they did so over 3 consecutive months, then you got a 20% rebate on your bill. Our household managed this for almost a year before an emergency situation caused us to lose it. Long story short, water damage caused need for special dehumidifying machines that sucked more energy in 10 days than we normally spend in a month. But now we're back on it.

Over the past few years, we've made lots of changes for the better. Here are a few:

• Switched from desktops to powerful laptops
  
• Switched to fluorescent lighting, and turn it off when not in use.
  
• Started using our fireplaces occasionally in winter
  
• Hardly ever turn the heat on (just wear sweaters)
  
• Don't have air conditioning, just ceiling fans and windows
  
• Bought a hybrid automobile
  
• Keep up with what can be recycled. We recycle 2-3x as much as we have trash.
  

We are rabid recyclers. Lucky for us, our county has an excellent recycling program. Not everyone is so lucky. In fact, I get very frustrated when I visit friends and they do not have programs that encourage them to recycle. I really hate throwing a can or a bag in the trash. Even around here, it's still near impossible to find recycle bins in the malls or airports. When I walked around the Super Safeway that just opened up down the road, I couldn't find a recycle bin anywhere. When I asked, I got offers to make sure my can got to a bin, but I was more concerned with the fact that it wasnt obvious. When I asked the manager, they told me that they just pick the recyclables out of the trash. It's how they pay for the employee coffee fund. When new businesses and buildings go up, the county or city will often put its own conditions on it. Why isn't one of these requirements obvious recycling when there's a waste bin every 5 feet and public restrooms?

I hate being reminded how far we need to go just to be moderately earth-conscious.

Human carbon-dioxide emissions come mainly from two sources: burning fossil fuels and changes in land use, such as deforestation. Americans are the climate's worst enemy. On average, each of us is responsible for about 22 tons of carbon-dioxide emissions every year, according to the United Nations, compared with an average of six tons per person throughout the rest of the world. That means the typical U.S citizen emits the equivalent of four cars.

...

Average carbon emissions per year, per person:
United States: 44,312
Qatar: 117,064
France: 13,668
India: 2,645
Kenya: 440

More at: Slate's Green Challenge

But anyway, here's our baseline for carbon emissions:

Perlgurl's annual carbon emissions are 27,836 lbs. That's equivalent to the emissions from 2.73 passenger cars.

Posted by sorsha at October 24, 2006 4:38 PM