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According to safeclimate.net, Nicole is an enviro angel |
Dear Mega Carbon Emitter... I mean, Megan: I love a challenge, especially one that’s impossible to lose. See, here’s the thing—it’s not that I’m more environmentally savvy than you (hemp? ew!); it’s just that I never leave New York City. I rarely travel. I’m practically a hermit. And hermits have tiny, tiny carbon footprints. Like baby shoes. To prove it, I logged on to Al Gore’s Web site (www.climatecrisis.net) and calculated my carbon impact. I spent two minutes answering simple questions about the type of car I own (a 1996 GTI with 82,000 miles on it), how often I fly (about four times a year), how much I spend monthly on utilities ($65, max.) and how many people live in my little apartment (uno). The results: I emit 5.1 tons of carbon dioxide a year. (Presumably this calculation does not take into account the amount I produce by breathing, which brings up an interesting trivia question: How much carbon could we keep out of the atmosphere if humanity held its collective breath for 20 seconds?) Anyway, the average person, according to Al Gore and friends, emits 7.5 tons of carbon each year—a conservative estimate compared with Environmental Defense’s calculator (www.fightglobalwarming.com), which says I emit 9.3 tons. Either way, though, I’m better for the planet than you.
Granted, I’m a loser: I seldom leave home, I’m single, and I read in the dark. I ride public transportation, and I rarely shop online (think of all those carbon-emitting FedEx planes!). But these things are beside the point. When cities flood and deserts dry up and plagues spread like kudzu—all the fun promised by global warming—I will feel better knowing that it’s your fault and not mine.
Which isn’t to say I have no plans for making my already petite carbon footprint even more petite. Since you’re buying your way to a cleaner, greener conscience, I’ll definitely need to take action to maintain my competitive edge. This weekend’s project is to replace my incandescent lightbulbs with energy-saving compact fluorescents and hope they’re compatible with the awesome dimmer switches that I recently installed in my kitchen and bedroom (CF bulbs typically have narrow dimming ranges). It would be a huge bummer to sacrifice mood lighting for the sake of this competition and the environment, but I’ll do it if push comes to shove. And if things get really nasty, I’ll even consider running my compact GE dishwasher less and switching to one of those dreadful eco-toilet-paper brands and pray I don’t get a rash. So those are my modest but doable carbon-saving plans for the weekend. What about you, Megan? Oh, wait, you’re flying to New Mexico... —Nicole Dyer
If you want to win this contest, here's a tip for you! (I hope you catch onto this before your opponent does, because she said something about her next post being about food.) As I posted on my blog http://its-obvious.blogspot.com, the UN released a scientific study showing that we do more to help the environment by switching to a vegan diet than by switching to a hybrid car. I personally am a RAW vegan (I wanted to put the word raw in italics, but there was no such option in this comment form), and I do believe that's the healthiest way to eat (plus the chef-created recipes taste great). But because I want to help save the earth, I encourage planet-minded people by all means to go (non-raw) vegan. Maybe some day you'll look into raw vegan.
Judy Pokras
editor/founder
http://www.RawFoodsNewsMagazine.com
Posted by: Judy | March 22, 2007 at 04:31 PM
Nicole,
A couple of random, stream of consciousness sort of thoughts here . . . .
First skip the CF bulbs. Those are so yesterday afternoon! Leapfrog the competition and pony up for some LED bulbs. Not only are they more dimmable, but they last a heck of a lot longer. Further, typically they use a fraction of the energy required by those old CF bulbs. Now, I don't know the chemicals required to make LED fixtures and bulbs, so I'm not 100% sure about the "net" environmental impact, but, if I remember correctly isn't there a bit of Mercury in CF's? So when they do break, or burn out, where does that go? Just a thought.
Also, to be perfectly fair, since you live in a big city, you should have to account for the heat plution that a massive city produces just from all of the concrete and asphalt that you walk around on each day. I guess it's just hard to get away from being environmentally slack in modern society.
I heard Gore say that the planet has a fever . . . so does that make us a viral or a bacterial infection?
Posted by: Shaugn | March 23, 2007 at 10:50 PM
The problem with you tree huggers is that you take things to far. Yah the world is not perfect but, somethings are ment for a reason. We are carnivors. I have some sausage for you to stuff.
Posted by: John Lickalatapus | April 04, 2007 at 04:17 PM
The problem with you tree huggers is that you take things to far. Yah the world is not perfect but, somethings are ment for a reason. We are carnivors. I have some sausage for you to stuff.
Posted by: John Lickalatapus | April 04, 2007 at 04:17 PM
Ok, that tree hugger thing was just rude. Not to mention the sausage reference. The problem with extremes of opinion on either side of the question, you can always come up with some sort of counter argument, however absurd. It's all a bit like statistics. If you leave out the right facts, you can make an argument to support just about anything.
Posted by: shaugnd | June 12, 2007 at 09:03 AM