Posted on 12/06/2007 1:02:22 PM PST by grundle
Recently I have spent considerable time considering my environmental failings, if not actually doing much about them. Like the average American household, we own two cars. Between my husband and me, we drive 13,000 miles (21,000 km) a year, making our country 520 gal. (2,000 L) of gas more dependent on foreign suppliers. The thermostat in our 2,200-sq.-ft. (200 sq m) house is set at 70°F (21°C). It takes 6,960 kW-h a year to power our computers, halogen lights and plasma TV. My child went through an industry-calculated average of 4.4 diapers a day for 34 months, which amounts to 4,488 soiled Huggies in some landfill. So far this year, I have traveled 34,574 miles (or 55,636 km, which sounds a lot worse) by air. According to the calculator on ClimateCrisis.net my household produces 15 tons of carbon dioxide a year. The average is 7.5. Mine is the Sasquatch of carbon footprints.
The reasons for not going green usually boil down to one, so elegantly put by a frog who had no choice in the matter: It's not easy being green. It's easier to toss the leftovers into the 13-gal. (50 L) Hefty bag than figure out how to use the compost bin that sits just outside. It's easier to drive to the grocery store than to plant my own vegetable garden. It's easier to keep my job writing for a magazine that prints 3.25 million copies a week than it is to start over in a new career designing suburban yurts.
Yes, the truth is inconvenient. But I'm trying. I am attempting to reverse my eco-unconsciousness, if only to assuage the twitchy sensation in my cells.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
If Lisa’s husband is an actual man, he won’t last long around this house. Either he’ll eventually run away screaming or Lisa will discover someone more compatible with her bio-consciousness fetish.
But if Lisa’s husband has already been assimilated, then things should work out just peachy.
She barely lifts her little finger to be “green” but just this sub-nano effort is enough to make her feel thousands of light years above us lousy conservatives.
You must have known that I live in a State Forest. Lakes and lots of fallen trees, leaves and porcupines.
A beetle told me. We bow before the same sacred oak.
Would that make her an anti-vegan?
In fact, for most of the last billion years, CO2 levels have been several times higher than they are today. Our current low levels are so recent that the plants now on Earth are evolved to grow best in levels 2 to 5 times what we now have.
~~ AGW ping~~
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