Carbon Reduction Resolution

Happy 2016! Did you make any resolutions for the New Year? I’ve been thinking about ways to reduce my carbon footprint.

What is your carbon footprint reduction resolution for the New Year? Now that we are on the other side of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Summit we all have to get serious about reducing our individual carbon footprints. Where to start? I am thinking about a couple of usual suspects for 2016: getting around, food and drink, vacations and entertainment.

I guess the big one is how to get to work each day. If you live in the city or around the city then there is walking, biking or public transportation. But, what of us poor suburbanites with little or no access to public transportation? Is an electric car in my future? I, for one, am waiting for someone to make a vehicle that can travel 200 miles on a single charge and doesn’t cost $100,000 (sorry Tesla). My threshold is somewhere under $50,000 and holds 4 people (related: Sustainability, more than payback). So far my ideal option is unavailable, so maybe I’ll try again next year. That said, you can buy second hand electric cars at a pretty good price these days. How about a second hand Smart Car for under $10,000 with 5,000 miles on it? Check the internet. It’s an inexpensive way into the EV world, but, then again, the range is only 65 miles on a sunny day.

Image source: Wikimedia via Creative Commons License.

The other big carbon monster is flying on vacation. Aircraft, along with cruise ships, are relatively under regulated when it comes to carbon emissions. Flying anywhere can eat up a big portion of a carbon allowance. So, don’t fly, as much? Sure, it puts a damper on my plans for a European holiday this spring. A single trip to Europe is equivalent to an entire year of me driving my car. What about a cruise? A single large cruise ship pumps out as much sulfur dioxide in a day as 13 million cars, not mention the industry-wide 1 billion gallons of sewage dumped into the oceans every year!

Image source: Wikimedia via Creative Commons License.

So, maybe no trip to Europe or a cruise to Alaska.

We’ll just go to a local restaurant or super market and eat … what? Certainly not a steak, cows are our carbon enemy (related: Cow vs GTI). I’ll be looking for locally sourced foods and will stay away from imported food and drinks. What is the carbon footprint of Fiji Water anyway? Come to think of it, we have gotten in the habit of buying Italian fizzy water from Whole Foods … maybe this year we switch back to tap water. I guess we’ll have to watch just how far our consumables are traveling before they make it to the restaurant and our kitchen.

What do you do when you get home in the evenings or on the weekends? We finally cut the cord and dumped our cable box last month. We stream our entertainment now, frankly no big loss. Streaming hasn’t improved what is available so we watch less TV, which drives us to the world wide web and that’s not a great place to cut your carbon footprint. I recently learned from my college-aged children that if it doesn’t have at least 8 million hits, it’s probably not worth watching … who knew?

What of all that time we spend surfing the net? Data servers are responsible for 2% of global greenhouse gases and that’s growing. (related: Carbon Footprint of a Tweet) What of individual use? Facebook states that the average annual carbon footprint of an individual user is equivalent to one cup of coffee. Does that mean more selfies and less coffee? No, just less senseless surfing in search of something interesting to occupy our time. Less is more, or is that totally a bore?

What are you going to do in 2016 to cut your carbon footprint? Or, does it just hurt your head to think about it?

I guess we will certainly ‘think global, buy local’ as much as one can. We can turn down the thermostat and put on a Snuggie. But, short of living in a cave and eating nuts and berries we will all continue to burn up the carbon. There is, of course, ‘carbon offsets,’ which I haven’t looked into yet. Say, I plant 40 trees to offset that plane flight to Chicago? But who plants all those trees and where are they going to put them? Not in my backyard!  Interestingly, Tesla makes more money selling carbon offsets to other car manufactures than it does making cars. Carbon offset futures, anyone? 

For your 2016 carbon reduction, it looks like it comes down to whatever floats your boat, because if we don’t do anything about it we will all need one here in Boston someday.