Turn off the lights ! - It's beautiful.

After a storm at Arches National Park

I have always loved the lighting that occurs when the sky is dark from a recent storm and the sun is out behind me shining dramatically on the foreground.  It's spectacular and beautiful.  In portrait photography too, working with contrasts of light and shadow can produce beautiful and striking images (if the camera can handle it).

Even though I know this, I hadn't thought much about how that quality of light might affect my use of household lights until I was at a meeting last week in our fellowship hall at church.  I'm not a big fan of meeting in that space.  It's a big room with florescent lighting above and bare walls - rather blah. I often have trouble understanding other people when they speak as their voices seem to disappear (that's my hearing issue at work).

We were a small group - maybe 10 or so - of people gathered to talk about our next steps in working to slow climate change and there we were in that big room with all of those lights on.  I got up and went to the row of switches, turning them off until only the lights above our table remained.  When I went back to the table and sat down, I was actually amazed about how much more pleasant it was!  With a dark room around us and lights above us, I had created that dramatic lighting you see in the photo above.  Our space became more cozy and the light that remained over us appeared more brilliant.   My table mates' faces were sharper and easier to see without a lot of excess light behind them and it was easier for me to hear, probably because I could read lips more easily.  So there you go.  I saved some electricity and created a nicer space at the same time.  I love examples that show changing our lifestyle to use less carbon can be a nice thing for us as well as for the environment.

Turning off lights at home is already a well used practice for us - enough so that I hardly think about it. I just turn off lights if I'm not in a room.  It shows on our energy usage too.  Electricity use is the one area where we actually perform better than our most efficient neighbors!  Yay!.  I wish I could say the same thing for our use of gas.  Not so good there.

For a background link, I looked for statistics on the carbon imprint of turning off the lights.  For all of the talk about switching to CFL's, there wasn't much about just not using the lights to begin with, which seems to me to make even more sense.  I did find this great link though, which is a teaching outline for junior high on personal carbon use.  It's a great outline and even comes with test questions and statistics to use in your computations.  Try it out - might be fun.  Oh, and the statistic for turning off your lights is:  Turning off unneeded lights could be a savings of 376 pounds of CO2 emissions per year (similar to air drying your clothes for six months).  Of course, everyone's electricity use differs. so here is the basic statistic to use in your own computation:  Electricity to run lights and appliances - 1.64 lbs of CO2 per kWh. (kilowatt hour)

Here's the link:  Reducing Personal CO2 Emmissions

Innovative Ways to Use Your Car

Our Van 

Here's a photo of the van we bought last year. It's a big one and if you've read this blog before, you probably know that I'm feeling guilty about having purchased such a gas guzzler when I'm supposed to be so concerned about global warming.  But then, I'm just not a perfect person.  Our reasoning behind the purchase was that we needed a vehicle that would pull that cute pop up camper for us and, more importantly, we wanted to be able to comfortably fit two grandsons and their enormous car seats, our daughter, and the two of us when we traveled - not only on a few camping trips - but anytime we wanted to go together somewhere - which is actually fairly frequently.

Still, the vehicle gets driven several times a week with only one or two persons - not an efficient use of gas.  To compensate, I try to encourage car pooling when going on outings with friends and we offer to drive.  That's been somewhat successful.  We've filled the vehicle at least twice for day long trips and I've had multiple passengers for many shorter ones.

While on vacation,  however, Cathy taught me a new way to use our car.  She was also headed out on vacation to Brainerd for a few days with her large family plus a friend and couldn't fit them all in her nicely economical Prius - so she asked if we could switch cars.  What a great idea!

I love the idea of borrowing but am slow to get into the habit. Just think of all of the resources out there we can use without buying new.  Ask your friends or send a note on the neighborhood list serve the next time you have a temporary use for an item.  You'll save some money and some carbon at the same time.

Six Ways to Reduce Car Use

Last Sunday's Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast suggestion was to find the lowest carbon impact method of getting to church (walking, bus, bike, carpool) and to look at the week's short trips and find at least two ways to reduce driving.  Here are the stats behind that suggestion:

• Reducing driving is one of the most effective ways an individual can reduce carbon use.
• The average person makes 44 car trips a year that are under a mile.
• A four mile round trip walked rather than driven keeps 15 pounds of pollutants out of the air we breathe.
• Walking and bicycling are healthier than driving (at least from an exercise standpoint).

I must admit, it is a lot easier to follow this advice when the snow and ice are gone and the temperatures are warmer, but I gave it a try.  I didn't do particularly well, but there were a few bright spots:

(1) The weather warmed enough today that I braved the wet and beginning to freeze sidewalks to walk to a meeting that I would have driven to when the weather was colder or the sidewalks icy.

(2) I alleviated a bit of my guilt about traveling all the way to Shoreview to go to the gym by arranging to run errands in that location rather than taking separate trips in town.

(3)I had also made the effort to carpool to a concert, but the arrangements fell through at the last minute and my attempt to take the bus also fell through when I realized the easy route going to the concert disappeared in the late afternoon and coming home would have been just too hard.

But the weather is warming and the snow will be gone eventually.  Then my options - and yours - will increase.  So think about this when planning a trip about town:

Carpool - Everyone that rides with you equates to one less car on the road. It's a nice way to visit with friends too.  If you drive to work, Metro Transit has a carpool matching feature.  I haven't tried it because I work at home, but sounds like a good idea.  Here's the link:  Metro Transit Carpool

Bike -  It's amazing how quickly you can travel on a bike.  I can get to church, for instance, in about the same time as it takes me to drive. Here's a link to Bicycle Maps and Resources

Walk -  It's the best way to smell the roses.  Here's a link to walking and biking maps in the Twin Cities: Bike Walk Twin Cities

Bus -  That takes some planning, but the more we use the bus, the better the routes will become.  Here's a great resource with interactive maps, bus schedules and trip planners (Minneapolis St. Paul):  Metro Transit

Light Rail -  The new green line from St. Paul to Minneapolis will open this summer. Here's link to a Minneapolis site that links to light rail schedules.  It also shows some free bus routes downtown.

Hour Car - saves insurance and upkeep on a second car and gas cost is less. Here's the link: Hourcar

Thoughts From My Vacation

Traditional and Modern - View of Old Acapulco from Roqueta Island

I just got a link to this month's Women's Press and see that the article on my blog is featured and I haven't written a thing in 10 days.  I'll blame vacation for that.  We've been back from our trip to Acapulco for a few days but I'm only getting back into the swing of things now.

I have no idea how my carbon use impacted the world during our vacation, but I certainly thought about it a lot.  Like everything, there were ups and downs.  On a daily basis, I expect that our carbon use was lower.  We walked a lot, took cool showers, slept in an unair conditioned - unheated room and ate at restaurants (so the heating of the stoves was shared with several people). We didn't shop much and had little waste. On the other hand, we were located on a high hill and it was hot, so we took a taxi home from our walk almost every day - and the taxis are old and battered and stinky- so I assume they pollute a lot.  And, of course, we had that very long plane ride guzzling up gas for which I have previously bought a carbon offset to allay my guilt.

Nothing is simple.  Walking around Acapulco,  I thought about our impact on the earth.  We were staying in the old town and I am sure that in very many ways the carbon use of residents must be lower than here - warm weather, fewer car owners, poorer people, so there can't be as much consumption and waste.  But still, the impact by people on this area is clear.  Noisy buses and taxis and cars fill the bay side street and buildings cover the hills, with few parks in between. The bay has struggled with pollution, though it looked quite blue/green and clear when we were there so I hope that the city has been successful in its efforts to keep the water clean. Hillsides are still a dumping spot for garbage, though I've seen worse.

Acapulco is one of those cities where you can clearly see how the city has changed with time.  It is located on a long curved bay and if you stand in the old town at one end, you can see how the buildings become more modern as the they progress along the curve of the bay, from the 1950's to the 70's to the 80's and 90's and then the 2000's directly across the bay a few miles as the crow flies and 10 or more along the bay front. (The newest development is further away still - out of sight.)  On the modern end, there are fewer taxis and more personal cars.  The cars are newer with more pollution controls, I assume, the buildings taller and air conditioned.  The stores are fancier and full of gift shops and boutiques.  It would be interesting to make a comparison of the ecological impact of those two ends of the city - the modern, airconditioned, polution controlled newer end and the old, noisy, poorer end where taxis clatter, buses roar with boom boxes pulsing but people have less money to spend.

Riding The Black Pearl Bus - Buses are privately owned and carry their own unique decor and sound system.  Choose carefully before boarding!  The "music" was so loud on this one that we didn't last more than a few blocks before having to get off.

Unfortunately, I don't speak enough Spanish to have the slightest idea what is going on in Acapulco and Mexico generally for that matter, but I can GOOGLE it!  Here's an interesting link to Mexico's National Climate Policy.  Hmm, Mexico has set a goal of reducing carbon emmisions by 50% of the 2000 level.  They are also implementing pricing for electricity and water that reflects actual costs and ecological costs of their use.  Hmmm.

The Users and the Losers

" We cannot help the world until we change our way of being in it."

Bishops of the United Methodist Church

Source: Atlas of the Biosphere

I saw this map yesterday at a conference I attended of United Methodists exploring how to mobilize an earth care movement among Minnesota United Methodists.  I'm happy to see that the Methodist church is taking action on climate change.

The map shows a global look at per capita oil usage.  In the presentation it was shown with a second map which showed the countries that are most impacted by climate change.  It was striking to look at the two maps together because the countries most impacted by climate change were the ones with the least per capita oil usage.  As with so many other things in our world - the ones who are causing climate change are not the ones suffering the most from that change.  Food for thought...

Unfortunately, I can't find that other map.  They were both from the website of Sage: Center for Sustainability & the Global Environment, which as it turns out has links to many, many resources and I just wasn't sure where to look, so sorry for the lack of a completed blog post.  Perhaps someone else will help me figure out where to find it and I can look it up.

My weekend was actually full of work on climate change - an all day conference yesterday, and my first meeting with the land and water use group that is part of a transition town movement in our neighborhood.  So I've been doing lots, but the blog posts are slow in coming.  I'll try to get it all sorted out and share more over the next few days.

Planning Ahead

The Snow is Accumulating Rapidly in Our Yard

It is hard to reduce my carbon footprint in the winter.  We need heat to keep our house warm in this frigid weather and I am certainly not one of those brave souls who actually bike in Minnesota when it is cold and there is snow and ice on the ground!  In fact, I barely even walk outside.  So when the temperature gets above 10 and the wind stops howling, a walk seems like a good idea - particularly if the sun is shining.  Yes, 10 and above, sunny and no wind is actually pretty darn comfortable weather.

This morning fit the bill.  It was snowing, but the temperature was reasonable and I decided that I would walk to my noon hair appointment.  I am particularly lucky to live in the city where it is possible to walk to the grocery store, the library, shops and services without too much effort.  The beauty salon is a little farther so I knew that I had to plan an extra 20 minutes into my leaving time to make this work.  Didn't happen.  At a quarter to (instead of half past) I tore out of my house in my big boots, waved a thank you to my neighbor who just finished shoveling the sidewalk in front of our house - once again- and hit the deep newly fallen snow at a jog.  I made it about a block before deciding there was no way I would make my appointment in time. I returned home to get the car. The difference between driving and walking to this appointment was a matter of 15 minutes.

So much of what we need to do to reduce our carbon use significantly is like that.  It's not necessarily hard - in fact much is quite pleasant.  The walk in the newly fallen snow would have been lovely and healthy.  Riding to a meeting or an outing with friends, ie: carpooling is fun.  Reducing clutter in the house and not filling it up with more stuff is liberating.  Yes, much of the changes I am trying to make are not only good for the earth, they are good for me.  And yet it does mean that I have to change the way I think about doing things.  To walk to my hair appointment means leaving the house 15 - 20 minutes earlier - to carpool means taking the time in advance to email my friends and suggest we share a ride - to reduce waste means remembering to take a reusable bag to the store, to think twice about buying that cute whatever on the shelf, to think about how to reuse the things I have.

I'm working on it, but it certainly doesn't happen overnight.

Update:  For those of you who read yesterday's post on solar leasing, the company I mentioned sent me some additional information on their business partners.  If you are interested in that update, I've added it to yesterday's post.

Solar Energy Leasing - A Great Way to Save on Your Electric Bill

Solar Panels

A few days ago Cathy Eberhart alerted me about a really exciting opportunity to get solar panels on my roof at hardly any upfront cost and to benefit from reduced energy charges for years to come - but the opportunity is going to go away in a few weeks.

Here is how it works:

• Cooperative Energy Futures will install a 3 - 10W solar array on your roof at basically no upfront charge. (A $25 share and a $300 refundable deposit). 
• You pay a monthly bill for the electricity generated by the panel at 75% of your current electric rates for 15 years
• After 15 years, the ownership of the solar array transfers to you along with a 10 year warranty on the equipment.  At that point, you get full credit for all of the electricity it produces.

Cooperative Energy Futures says that during the first 15 years you can expect to save from $150 - $300 per year on energy costs and after the first 15 years, they are projecting savings over $1000 per year - and of course, you are reducing carbon use for all of those years!

For this to work, you need to live in Minnesota, get your electricity from Xcel Energy (for this program.  There may be other folks offering programs for other Minnesota power companies) and have a roof position that will enable a solar array to generate enough electricity. And if there are too many home owners applying, there will be a lottery to choose who gets to go ahead.  Here is the site with the details:
Solar Leasing: Cooperataive Energy Futures

This program is dependent upon the Minnesota Made Solar Incentive program, one of those great initiatives of the 2013 legislature that I mentioned in an earlier post.  But the deadline to apply for that is February 28th and to get approved through Cooperative Energy Futures, you need to apply by February 14th.  So if you are interested, call: Bruce at Cooperative Energy Futures right away.  His phone number is: 612-568- 2334.  He's a nice guy - easy to talk to, and it doesn't hurt to at least see if your house qualifies.

I called him regarding our house.  He Googled our address to look at the house on Google Maps - it's that easy.  Unfortunately, the neighbor's trees and the particular shape of our roof puts us out of the running, but at least I tried.  Why don't you give it a try too.

Now keep in mind, that I have not worked with Cooperative Energy Futures and this is a new business model and there may be other companies offering similar models, so read the details, ask the questions and make your own decisions.  I'm just passing along information on what sounds like a good idea and a good deal.  Let me know if you do it and how it goes.

Update:  After I wrote this post, Cathy shared it with Cooperative Energy Futures.  They thought you all would also like information about their partners - all Minnesota companies - in this project.  Here is the information they sent to me with links to those companies:

Cooperative Energy Futures is working with the following partners to offer this solar leasing program to its members:

The Gopher Solar Program coordinates the financing and manages the financing and bill payment system for Minnesota’s first solar leasing program. Developed locally in January 2014, Gopher Solar harnesses the recent 2013 Minnesota solar legislation to enable Minnesotans to install solar at no upfront cost.

Innovative Power Systems is one of Minnesota’s oldest and largest solar installation contractors, named a top 100 Solar Contractor nationwide by solarpowerworldonline in 2013. Since 1991, IPS has installed hundreds of solar systems across Minnesota and serves as the system developer and installer for this program.

tenK Solar, based out of Bloomington, is one of two Minnesota manufacturers of solar     electric panels. This project will utilize their latest 410W modules, which have built in micro-inverters, full 25-year equipment and production warranties, and qualify participating households for the Made in Minnesota Solar Incentive.

A Car Free Day

Junco Approaching Feeder

I didn't think about it until I was typing the post's title, but there is an interesting juxtaposition between the words car-free and carefree.  Today was a car free day for me and a carefree one as well.  We had another good sized snow last night and together with relatively warm (27 degrees) temperature, today was a nice day to just hang about the house and yard and neighborhood.   It was one of those rare days when I could walk to the store pulling my grandson on a sled through the snow most of the way before the snow shoveling got serious.

There is something very peaceful about walking in the snow - when it is not too cold and when the air is still. The snow muffles the sound of traffic and other mechanical noises, and yet I found that the sounds of the birds calling were much more clear to my ears.  Normally I can't hear that much at all due to hearing loss and tinnitus, but today, the crowds of juncos were indeed music to my ears.

Today was a day to watch the birds come to the bird feeder (we saw junco, house sparrow, purple (or maybe house) finches with their pretty red heads, nut hatch, chickadee, cardinals and blue jays at the feeder and woodpeckers (hairy and red bellied) and crows in the trees.  It was a busy afternoon at the feeder.

I wonder if our days will be more like this when oil becomes just too expensive for us to drive our cars very much?  Not entirely a bad thing, is it?

Day 10 - What It Is All About

Yosemite Valley

We are at 400ppm (parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere).  "Unless we are able to rapidly turn that around and return to below 350 ppm this century, we risk triggering tipping points and irreversible impacts that could send climate change spinning truly beyond our control." (per 350.org)

It was a quiet day today, spent with the grandsons at the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge visitor center - a wonderful building of native limestone and glass which looks out over the woods and where we can watch the birds and turkeys eat right by the windows. It's a good day to remind myself of why I am writing this blog - because our beautiful world is in real jeopardy and there is not much time to fix it.  I want my grandsons to live in a beautiful world too - and a peaceful one.  We in the United States are the ones that need to take the biggest steps because we are the biggest producers of carbon through our consumption.  We need to take action in many ways - political, community, cultural and personal.  I am only one person, but I hope that this blog will help me to reach out to others and for you to reach out to me so that we can share our journey.  I want to thank all of you who are reading and commenting and giving me support.  It is really wonderful.

To Fly or Not to Fly

I woke up in the middle of the night last night and didn't go back to sleep for a couple of hours.  That's unusual for me.  Normally, I'll wake up, roll over and I'm out again in a wink.  But last night I started thinking and worrying and turning things over in my mind.  The cause?  We had just booked a flight to Acapulco.

Oh dear, how could that possibly keep me up all night worrying?  It's this carbon business.  In a flash I've probably wiped out all of my lower thermostat, no plastic bags and eating meat free meals by one spur of the moment whimsey to spend a week sitting in warm weather by a swimming pool.  In the Chutes and Ladders game of reducing my carbon use, I've just slid down a very long chute.

Should I feel guilty?  My daughter says to get over it and in today's Worldwatch Institute's newsletter the author of an article on transforming culture to reduce consumption makes the point that putting too much import on the individual's responsibility to change behavior can inadvertently take away emphasis from the cultural, political and business changes that are necessary to have significant impact on global warming.

That's all well and good, but I know that a culture is composed of individuals and it is the actions and decisions of those individuals that dictates how that culture will be  - so I feel guilty anyway even though I plan on having a very good time during our winter break.  It's not that I think flying to someplace warm in the winter is a bad thing.  We live in Minnesota after all.  It seems the only sane thing to do after a week like the last one.   But I know that our decision was made quickly without a lot of thought and there are closer, easier to get to places that we could have chosen.

So what am I going to do to alleviate my guilt?  Maybe I'll buy some carbon offsets.  It isn't the same thing as not flying, but it will help.   I'll let you know about that.

Is it better to fly or drive?  Getting specific statistics is kind of like reading the Bible - the answer changes depending upon how it is interpreted, but generally speaking, flying has a  slightly larger carbon impact than driving alone and when you add people in the car, the benefit to driving expands significantly.  With 4 people in an efficient car you can even compete with the efficiency of a train.  That was a surprise to me.  The most efficient way to travel though, by far, is to take the bus!

Can One Person Make A Difference?

January 1, 2014

I've decided to bite off a big chunk for this year's New Year's Resolution - doing my part to save our world by writing a daily blog (with a requisite daily action) on one woman's (me) attempt to reduce our carbon imprint and I NEED YOUR HELP!

1.  I'm really not very consistant, but I figure if I tell the world about this resolution, I have kind of commited myself.

2.  I could use your support, so encouragement will really spur me on.

3.  I will run out of ideas, so send me yours.

4.  The more people who read this blog increases the chance that my one person will expand to more - and more is what we need.

So please read from time to time, give me some encouragement, and share your ideas.

Can one person make a difference? :
What spurs me on in this personal quest is a graph I saw that compared the per capita carbon footprint of many countries in the world.  The US's carbon use was at the top of the graph reaching out to the edge far far beyond any of the other countries.  We are a country of consumers and that is the issue.  It isn't just the milage we drive or the heat we use to keep our houses warm - particularly here in Minnesota - it is everything.  We consume without even thinking about it and we need to cut back - not just a little bit - a whole lot.  I can't find that graph, but here's a similar one that you might find interesting. It doesn't look as bad as the first chart I saw until you realize that to stop the warming, our carbon imprint - and everyone else's - has to be about where India is on the list (scroll down):

http://carbonfootprintofnations.com/content/environmental_footprint_of_nations/

And of course, if you are still wondering, the goal is to slow the path we are on that is warming our climate to such a degree that our forests will change, our coastal cities will flood and many species will become extinct.  The earth will survive, but people and animals and plants are going to have a hard time of it.

Here is another interesting link.  It is an interactive map from the EPA.  You can click on different regions of the US to see the projected impact of climate change for each region and there are other links to see what the locals are trying to do to adapt.

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/

Coincidentally, this arrived in my email today.  It's a chance for us all to sign a pledge to make
saving the planet your own New Year's Resolution:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/432/762/747/?z00m=20691258

Wish me luck!

Christy