Comments on: How Much CO2 Do You Emit?

By: Mindalyn

Mindalyn — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 14:59:14 +0000

One (controversial) thing that I think gets overlooked is that folks should have fewer children if they’re concerned about the environment or about CO2 emissions. If somebody really wants to raise children, there’s always adoption. It’s like buying a hybrid car: it’s more expensive for you, but better in a global sense.

By: frumiousb

frumiousb — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 14:22:30 +0000

Buy organic foods as much as possible
Organic soils capture and store carbon dioxide at much higher levels than soils from conventional farms. If we grew all of our corn and soybeans organically, we’d remove 580 billion pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere!

Bullshit (pun intended). Carbon dioxide sequestration depends on the amount of organic matter in the soil, with “organic” having the standard chemical meaning of “carbon based” and having very little to do with which pesticides are used on the fields. Read here http://ohioline.osu.edu/aex-fact/0510.html for more info.

If we grew all of our corn and soybeans organically we’d run into trouble finding enough water to grow them all. Organically grown crops have lower yields than conventionally grown crops, meaning you have to plant more fields to get the same amount of food at the end. More fields means more land use and more water use. You also need land and water to produce all the plants from which the organic pesticides are produced.

Most of that corn and soybean crop goes to feed livestock, not humans. We could reduce the amount of water we use and the amount of carbon we release simply by eating less meat.

By: Arianna

Arianna — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 13:00:16 +0000

Ooo found a good Canadian one, very in-depth.

http://www.climatechange.gc.ca/calculator/english/home.asp

I’m at 3002 lbs, but that’s guessing alot of things (ie square footage of my house, some utilties as it’s a rental and not payed by me). I’ll have to doublecheck when I get home.

By: David Thompson

David Thompson — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 12:48:23 +0000

“And one of my favorite things about living in Europe is the clothesline-dried clothes. They smell better, they’re not wrinkley, your sheets are crisper… ”

Crisper? Must be something in the local air. Putting them out on the line doesn’t make my sheets crunchy, and my experience has been that clothes are less wrinkly from the dryer.

By: Arianna

Arianna — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 12:22:24 +0000

Hmmm. This calculator unfortunately only has US states, and I can’t figure out what would be closest in energy generation types, climate, etc, to my actual home (Ottawa, On). The same behaviours in Michigan and NY, for instance, leave my carbon impact at 5900 (Michigan) and 3100 (NY).

By: Julie

Julie — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 12:21:01 +0000

Apparently mine is average through the spring, summer and early fall when we don’t have to heat with oil, but during the winter months it’s ridiculously high. I was at average until I put in winter heating costs. The problem we have, I think, is that living in an old drafty farmhouse wastes a lot of energy/fuel. What we’re doing to combat it is taking one room at a time, re-insulating and re-drywalling so that it holds in more heat. The next step is going to be to replace all the windows. It’s a pain in the rear end, however and A LOT of work. Hopefully it will cut down on our energy waste though. We also do other things to combat it, we don’t turn on lights until it’s absolutely necessary, we put the computer on standby if we step away from it, we use air conditioning in only one room of the house and only if it’s really, really hot. My husband is pretty much the most anal retentive person I’ve ever met when it comes to stuff like energy costs, so ours are pretty reasonable for the most part.

By: Francis

Francis — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 11:11:07 +0000

BTW the solar generation thing – which is a great idea for lots of reasons beyond CO2 emissions – is something that snobby suburban homeowner associations frequently ban (along with other alternatives such as small wind turbines). My friend (and web host) provided this great rant on the subject.

I don’t understand why governments insist on subsidizing airlines. They can be profitable anyway, all subsidizing does is keep a bunch of airline employees in that line of work instead of hunting for another job. About the only justification for subsidy is connecting the truly remote parts of the country to the rest of it and even that needs to be looked at carefully if it results in a bunch of people living out in the sticks and (essentially) comuting via plane to their jobs.

By: Jill

Jill — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 08:15:39 +0000

No, I live in an apartment, so I counted my utilities. Luckily, they aren’t much.

By: Daniel@NYU

Daniel@NYU — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 08:12:08 +0000

I can’t believe how much carbon air travel generates. If we’re going to subsidize airlines so heavily, we should make them cut their emissions. You’d think that might have been something Gore could have accomplished as VP.

Are you living in the student housing and counting your utilities as zero?

By: Daniel@NYU

Daniel@NYU — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 08:12:07 +0000

Are you living in the student housing and counting your utilities as zero?