My job is getting the better of me these days; I’m studying greenhouse gas emissions and the relationship with patterns of human consumption (North American). It’s really a case of the more you know, the more you suffer. I’m not feeling good about the future of our species and our ability to respond to change, especially on the global near term scale. On bad days I’m certain we’re going down for the count in less than a couple of centuries.
I’m tasked with making recommendations on projects that will result in significantly reduced emissions but shouldn’t cost much money or require any hardship on the part of the consumer. I don’t think it’s gonna work fast enough, if at all, if we go that way.
If you don’t believe that humans are causing global climate change that is resulting in major habitat loss/shifts then don’t bother to respond; this thread is for those that believe there’s a problem and that it’s not too late to at least try.
So, what are you doing?
I’ll start- we are a four person (two adults, two kids) one car family (drive fewer than 5K miles per year, commute on foot or bike by design), we buy locally produced, in season foods whenever possible, eat mostly vegetarian, buy clothing and durable goods on the used market (unless the new version saves 50 percent of the energy of the old) and live in a small (1,200 sq. ft.) used house. I won’t drive to a ride anymore unless there’s three other riders in the vehicle. And I talk about sustainability to anyone who’ll listen til they punch me or walk away.
I take public transit to work. I have a 5 year old car with less than 30K miles on it. We have a large garden where we grow a lot of our own veggies and we make our own compost. Still gettin tomatoes in December!!! I eat organic beef that I get from a friend who is the rancher, he also farms oysters…which by the way are a very eco friendly way to produce protein…they require zero feed, zero pesticides, zero herbicides, no watering, and they actually help clean the water in the bay after heavy rainfall washes pollutants down stream. His oyster farm produces 30 times the protein per dollar invested than his organic beef ranch.
We don’t have air conditioning…which was tough for my wife last summer who was 9 months pregnant during a heatwave when it was over 100 for 12 straight days…I convinced her that AC would only add to the problem.
We recycle everything we can. Our garbage goes out each week almost empty but our recycling can is always full.
We also have a well used house but I just sprung for new triple pane energy efficient windows and put in some new loft insulation.
Our big sin is disposable daipers, but I hear they have just invented a biodegradeable one which I’ll have to check out. We also just consume too much.
I work as a company as a project manager that goes into power plants and upgrades their steam turbines so they put out more energy using less fuel. Last project I did increased the steam turbine/generator output by 10 megawatts using 2% less fuel. For reference 10 megawatts is enough power for about 3000 homes.
Helped to spec. out geothermal equipment for my folks new that heats, cools, and provides hot water for a 7k sq. ft house using the same amount of energy as a 2k sq. ft house. Triple paned windows and insulated concrete forms that are 4 times as efficient as standard homes.
Replaced 75% of the incandescent bulbs in my house with compact flourescents.
Upgraded all of my heating/cooling systems from old gas fired boilers to ultra efficient heat pumps. Put the latest setback timers on the unit so it heats/cools only when we’re home and up.
We traded in an old 6 cylinder sedan getting 17 mpg to a newer (but still used) 4 cyl Camry that gets 38mpg on the highway.
We have no car and take public transport or walk. We rarely take a taxi.
I buy carbon credits to offset my air travel and pay for tree planting.
I eat vegetables and some fish only. Most food we eat is local or seasonal.
Appliances here tend to be smaller and energy efficient anyway.
Recycling is complusory.
We rarely use Air Con or heaters. If we are hot we open a window, if we are cold we put on a jersey.
Still got a long way to go. I have too many electrical devices that I leave on standby when not in use and only some of my lightbulbs are energy efficient.
Most of mine have been covered already. Vegetarian. Recycle everything possible. 4 cylinder econo style car, and as little driving as possible. Walk to some stores, can bike to work in nice months. Frugal with the heat/ac. Etc…
Not a thing , tsunami’s , hurricanes , earthquakes , have done a good job of thinning the herd.
Conserving is counter productive , years ago they had a water conservation push . We don’t use much anyway – so the cars missed a wash every week — the lawn went brown ---- the driveway got the weed blower ,not the hose. They raised the rate due to low consumption .
Being that all business - retirement - pensions - banking - education , operates best under the idea of a GROWING Population . Hope for bird flue to save resources.
We keep our water heater very low, use fluorescent bulbs, have an automatic thermostat set to let the house get quite cold at night, buy as local and as organic as I can, eat little meat, buy in bulk (less packaging), drive a small 4 cyl car, purchased carbon credits to offset my family for the year (although I don’t think it really offsets all of it), don’t use AC, carpool with other kids, buy energy efficient items, turn off electronics at the power supply (phantom power), use wind energy (actually we moved so technically we are back on the waiting list), keep tires inflated properly, keep windows and doors sealed, reuse things, recycle. On the downside we didn’t use disposable diapers, I fly in an airplane sometimes, don’t bike to work enough, and haven’t gotten my house off the grid.
“If you don’t believe that humans are causing global climate change that is resulting in major habitat loss/shifts then don’t bother to respond; this thread is for those that believe there’s a problem and that it’s not too late to at least try.”
Did Al Gore tell you to write that?
For my part, I am wasting more and being less efficient. It is a fact that ‘saving energy’ and being ‘more efficient’ only causes more consumption. The more efficient, affordable and readily availablle existing energy sources are, and newer energy sources become, the more people will use them. This is because these new sources become cheaper and more readily available than what already exists. The only way to “slow the extinction of humankind” is to be less efficient and waste more. Being more efficient and speeding up the delivery of efficient energy sources only perpetuates and accelerates more comsumption because more cheap sources of energy become available to more people. This whole concept of ‘more, more, faster, faster’ creates the situation you crusading against.
Ooooooo, such a rebel. Such an iconoclast. Don’t follow the herd of do-gooding sustainophiles. Be your own man as Rome burns so when the songs are sung, you’ll be counted as one of the proud, the few.
No, I’ve been off the deep end since I was a kid being raised by hippies on a NorCal commune. Al Gore is late to this sustainability gig. We had the Eco Flag hanging from our “dwelling” while he was in uniform and burning the jungles of Vietnam for good of mankind. What did he know (ahh, youth)?
MJM, I know you like to consider your “use it all up real soon so we can get down to the brass tacks of survival” as contrarian but it really puts you into the same social Darwinist camp that lots of folks, also disgusted with humankind and their weaknesses, fall into to. I mean, we’re triathletes right? Bring it!! We’ll grit our teeth and bear the pain. No room for the weak of body, will, or spirit.
That day will come soon enough. Why rush into the arms of suffering if you have a chance to plan your death a little and go gently into that good night. Because doing it your way isn’t like a bullet in the brain, over in an instant; it’s like getting syphillis back in the Dark Ages.
Simple. We are all going to be raptured soon and we will live this stinking polluted planet for you to deal with.
I think Tim makes some good points and I respect his views as he is an encourager and not an in your face enviro-nut. If you want to change the behavior or people it has to be done in baby steps and it has to be done by changing their heart and not getting in their face. You don’t deface their SUV and expect them to be won to you cause.
**I’m not feeling good about the future of our species and our ability to respond to change, especially on the global near term scale. On bad days I’m certain we’re going down for the count in less than a couple of centuries. **
At the risk of sounding like a complete a**hole…are you saying—or feeling—that there has been absolutely no improvement over, say, the last several decades? Are you that much a pessimist to say that Earth is so overrun by humankind and its destructive tendencies that we will cease to exist within 200 years?
Wow.
While I certainly respect the viewpoints, it is statements such as those quoted above that make me wonder. “The future of our species and our ability to respond to change…”—you can’t be serious, can you?
I just don’t get it sometimes, the World has legions of devout, mindless, zombies plugging for their God and their flavor of savior, but those same people can’t muster that desire, devotion, and enthusiasm for their planet- the wonderful and amazing home they claim was divinely given to us. Weird times.
I like that, good point.
I have a question for a lot of you not using A/C. Where do you live? I’m in Atlanta and if we didn’t use A/C, I think my house would become a total mold spore.
I haven’t heard anyone say they use the , “if it’s yellow - let it mellow, if it’s brown - flush it down” rule.
I do a pretty good job on the standards - don’t drive much, take public transit, keep energy consumption down, don’t rely on meat for most of my calories, etc.
but i’m also skeptical that the answer to these problems lies in individuals being virtuous. I think that answer lies in policy changes and economic costs. Environmentalism keeps showing signs of breaking out of being just a left-right issue, but never quite does.
This stuff is all really good, Tim, but how come neither you nor anyone on the board would play in the global warming threads regarding the question of what actual changes would need to be made world wide in order to actually make a measurable difference in anything? Further, what policies would cause those changes?
What budget of GHG can be sustained globally, and what policies can achieve that?
The one who came closest to playing was astrotri who said that we could drop to zero tomorrow, but since we have already passed the “tipping point,” we are all doomed regardless. Just a question of how soon.
He then showed a graph which “proved” that we had passed a tipping point, though it actually proved exactly the opposite. When challenged he explained his vast intellectual superiority and then moved on. Hey, at least he played.
I guess it is really great that you eat organic food or whatever, but not really seeing how that helps when China brings on a new coal fired power plant on line every week or so. So, I am taking you up on your desire to discuss sustainablity. I don’t think you actually will discuss that in a substantive global sense, though maybe you will prove me wrong.
No, I can’t say no improvement; the fact that we’re discussing this is cause for some hope. The challenge lies in figuring out whether or not we are responding fast enough or if it’s already too late. The whole concept of a “tipping point” is what scares the researchers so much; you won’t know it til it happens and then the question becomes, “Can you put the genie back in the bottle or do we just try to adapt?”
Humans have evolved such intelligence and accomplished so many wonderful things to get where we are today. But for the bad luck of choosing to combust ancient and buried sources of carbon as the means to populate the world, we might be facing some other crisis at the moment, who knows; I just can’t get past the notion that we aren’t evolved enough to think beyond the time span of just a couple of generations. Our hunter gatherer roots has us hardwired to live for the day, not for the future. Maybe that’s the fatal flaw of the human species; we couldn’t comprehend to complexity of our world fast enough to prevent our demise due to our actions.
I made the mistake of going into Neiman Marcus today while out with the girls on a holiday shopping excursion- $2,000 for a scarf, on sale. To say that our sense of the value of a thing is horribly skewed is understated.
