Posted on 01/03/2009 4:50:04 PM PST by crazyhorse691
As we begin a New Year, please join me in taking the Climate Change challenge personally. By resolving to get active in your community and make small but important changes in your daily life, you'll not only get to know your neighbors better, but you'll also get connected to a global effort to keep the world a beautiful place for future generations.
While there's been a lot of discussion about Climate Change and its effects, I believe there's enough scientific agreement around how and why the Earth's climate is changing to begin taking action. No matter what happens, climate-wise, we need a longer-term vision and a more sustainable, global strategy of stewardship.
When starting a campaign to combat Climate Change, the same question often arises: "What can' I possibly do in my life to affect the world's climate?" Well, for a start, you and your neighbors can reduce your community's collective "Carbon Footprint." I know what you're thinking: "My carbon what?!" Well, as U.S. residents, we each generate about 6.5 tons (15,000 pounds carbon equivalent) of greenhouse gases per person, per year. More than 80% of these emissions are from burning fossil fuels to generate electricity, heat our homes and power our cars.
By that by making some simple changes in our daily lives, we can make a big difference. For example, the two areas that give us the most Climate Change "bang-for-the-buck" are: how we use energy to heat and power our homes and how we make daily transportation choices.
With that in mind, here are three ways to consider focusing your personal Climate Change effort in 2009:
1. Is This Trip Really Necessary? - Saving fuel means saving money, so consider combining your physical and fiscal resolutions by walking or biking more as you fight Climate Change. You can also try other Carbon Footprint-shrinking strategies like: carpooling or taking mass transit; choosing a hybrid or "greener" car; keeping your car maintained and tires properly inflated and avoiding "race car" starts. For more transportation ideas, take a moment and check out our EPA SmartWay http://www.epa.gov/smartway/ website for more ideas. To go a step further, encourage your community's planners and elected officials to adopt SmartGrowth development principles http://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/ to reduce landscape-gobbling sprawl, which means less vehicle-miles-traveled and smaller Carbon Footprints!
2. Power Down - by insulating your home, upgrading to energy efficient windows and lighting and lowering your thermostat, you can reduce your power bill and shrink your carbon footprint at the same time! Shop for Energy Star http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=home.index qualified appliances, since they're up to 40% more efficient than their non-qualified counterparts. Remember: "Saving drops, saves watts," so look for the WaterSense http://www.epa.gov/watersense/index.htm logo when installing faucet aerators, low-flow showerheads, and low-flush toilets to cut water use. Finally, by re-energizing our "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" efforts, we can see real energy cost reductions from consumption and disposal.
3. Join Forces - look for a local Climate Change action group in your area and join or support their work. In the Portland area, the Oregon Environmental Council is leading the charge to reduce the city's Carbon Footprint with their "Global Warming Solutions" Campaign http://www.oeconline.org/our-work/climate. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality's Climate Change website http://www.deq.state.or.us/aq/climate/index.htm can also help jumpstart your neighborhood campaign.
Join the global movement to protect our home. Make this your year for personal Climate Change action. It's the only resolution that will reap a planetary reward.
Miller is regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in Seattle.
You can follow every one of these suggestions but it will never be enough for the Carbon Commissars. We will continue to disappoint our overlords until we’re all living in housing projects next to public transportation hubs, and we have no more of those silly “cars.”
Ok, kooks, you first. Cut your carbon consumption by 80% and report back to us next January. I’m tired of you pikers changing out a few incandescent bulbs and combining a couple of trips to the store and then claiming you are saving the world. Your trivial 1% or 2% carbon reduction is offset a million times over by the opening of one new coal fired plant in China or India, anyway.
Yup. You want to see what environmentalism is all about, take a good look at Lake Tahoe. They're all "environmentalists" living at the lake, which they've paved over, built large apartment complexes for the "poor" environmentalists (believe it or not, Lake Tahoe has a slum), built an infrastructure of shopping malls, etc. to support all the "environmentalists" so they can be good stewards of the land.
Once they were the majority, they set about closing the gate behind them and made up those silly rules you mentioned, Aglooka. Last year the whole south end of the lake burned because it's against the law to clear dead pine needles and other combustibles off your own property. The "environmentalists" got together afterward to discuss whose fault it was, and they determined it was all those committees that make all the rules that create an unsafe living environment. So guess what they did? They created another committee to oversee all the existing committees!
This is coming to a lake near you (if it hasn't already).
Y2K, Y2K,Y2K,Y2K,Y2K! Coal will run out by 1959, country wil be starving by 1960.
You bet they do. They're old-school conservationism, a body of practical application that has been subsumed by a nonsensical popular culture that flatters itself it is "saving the planet." Here's a clue to the difference - you insulate your house to save your money, not perpetuate the wellbeing of the Snail Darter.
The term "conservation" has gone out of style, containing as it does the root "conserve" and being altogether too reminiscent of the horrifying "conservative." That doesn't mean its copy can't be stolen, though.
The whole theme is starting to sound a bit shaky, actually. I recall a conversation I had with an ecofanatic the other day that ended with him saying "well, at least we're doing the right thing, even if it's for the wrong reason." But that "right thing" does a little subsuming of its own to the point of expensive, insupportable, and counterproductive economic and political actions that do nothing but make their proponents feel good about themselves.
Nope! Books are made from trees. But I wish I had this guys mailing list. I have some beach front property for sale here in New Mexico.
My mother went through the Great Depression, and she brought me up with the phrase, “Waste not, want not.” I think it makes good sense. I do what I can to save energy, which also happens to save money.
I don’t happen to believe in all this global warming nonsense, a stuff like carbon caps and methanol subsidies is insane. But it does make sense to save energy in a reasonable way.
It drives me crazy when my kids—all of whom claim to be very concerned about the environment—stand there with the refrigerator door wide open for long periods of time, while they gaze at the contents. Or when they stand in the doorway saying goodbye to a friend on a freezing day. Go out on the porch for a minute and shut the door behind you, for heavens sake!
Or they leave lights on in their bedrooms when there’s no one in there. I’m not saying this to criticize my kids in particular. I think most Americans have been brought up to be rather thoughtless. They say one thing but they do another. Al Gore and his giant cars, house, and planes being a prime example.
Oh please, please I hope they are calling for them to come to my door. I would just love to have it out with some of these enviro-fascists.
We pay for this clown's groceries!
the envirowackos are changing global warming to climate change, pretty soon global warming will not even be mentioned...
You got that right. Now, where can I order a portion of that "Global Warming"?
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You can also try other Carbon Footprint-shrinking strategies like: carpooling or taking mass transit;
Sure. That’s what Algore does — isn’t it?
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Well, yeah. Remember: he took a bus to the Nobel Prize ceremony. After he flew there on a Gulfstream V.
Ever see the bumper sticker "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups"? The global warming types have morphed way past critical mass.
Carbon credits, carbon trading, carbon whatever has to be the biggest scam yet devised. Carbon dioxide is essential to life on the planet and as normal as breathing, yet we are to believe it's killing us? Periods of warmer temperatures have been the most beneficial to humans and all other animals...until now? A brief study of history shows that there is no "right" temperature for the planet and even if there were, we don't have a clue as to how to maintain it.
If the Warmers and their scheme weren't so damn dangerous, I would have to admire how well it's worked for them. Honestly, who would have thought that Algore of all people could have pulled something like this off?
1 and 2 make economic sense- why spend when you don’t need to?
As for joining in with others, I did that a while back, went to a “neighborhood climate awareness” meeting (free food) and brought my charts of actual world temperatures, showing the start of ice-age oscillations about 3 mY ago, plus recent ones showing no global cooling in the last decade (in fact cooling. There is also a nice graphic of solar cycle length vs world mean temperature. When I started to go into Milankovitch Cycles and axial tilt, I realized everyone had wandered off and were discussing what amounted to global economic socialism.
Oddly there was no interest at all in actual global climate, sea levels, solar output, or anything else that a real climatologist would care about! There was a green chile dip that was killer, some sort of beef and cheeze in tortilla wraps, and chicken wings with a yellow Indian-type spice that made the trip worthwhile. The Chablis was bland, though.
I think we should all go to these meetings, armed with real data and Lord Monckton papers, just to scoff up the food.
For 2009, I plan on consuming more fuel in my vehicles than I did last year since anthropogenic global climate change is making it warmer. Since we've learned that the science is settled and that abmormally cold temperatures are caused by warming, I'm going to make as much CO2 as reasonable to do my part to ensure that cold wins out over warm since warm is bad.
The advantage to this is that, any inventory specific to a "green" program - such as your methane capturing system or my logging operation, is kept at a common site: the landfill.
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