Five Percent: Conserve a Little Energy

Thomas Friedman has done it again: he has presented the argument for becoming “green” not in terms of being right, or good, but in terms of being smart. His article today in the New York Times Magazine, called The Power of Green is truly incredible.

Read it.

We joined GreenDimes probably six months ago, and our mailbox is a much happier place. Use GreenDimes to stop junk mail and unwanted catalogs — they’ll remove your name from catalog mailing lists. Mostly, it’s just automatic, since they know all the places to contact to effectively remove your name from lists. Still, some catalogs would come, and you could add them to a list. When we joined, the process for adding catalogs was pretty painful and time consuming. I wrote a while back that the jury was still out for me on the efficacy of the service, but now I’m convinced its a good thing.

One great addition: they have added a much simpler way of adding new catalogs to stop: just type in the name of the company — in most cases, they already have a listing (even for some local companies, which I was pleasantly surprised by). In any case, you can now just type in the name and hit “Add” — I guess they look up companies they don’t already have in their database based on what you type in, and once added, they’ll show up in the list for other users. Smart.

I like GreenDimes because it’s more than stopping junk mail, they also plant trees. I think the cost has been well worth it for our formerly catalog laden household.

One of the many right-wing, conservative organizations I belong to sent me a list of companies who see an opportunity to capitalize upon the coming misery and despair of humanity as we run out of oil (and the price goes up) or as temperatures rise and cooling costs increase (and the price of oil goes up) or as climate changes, causing imbalances in ecosystems that create havoc and chaos (very lucrative, as we have seen in Iraq). But really, how much can we really invest in ExxonMobil and Haliburton?

I have a hedge investment. What if it turns out that all this hoo-ha about what those liberals call “global warming” and I call “balmy climate advancement” has any merit? Well clearly they are too afraid of their own shadows to know how to properly exploit the golden opportunity that balmy climate advancement affords. And that’s why, just as a hedge, I am giving all my conservative friends out there a tip: invest in those green funds run by the commies. For example, one group called Co-op America has suggestions for Social Investing: 7 Ways Your Investments can Fight Climate Change. If we all invest in their little companies, maybe we can smote those Prius-driving, bike-riding, organic-eating pinko-pansies for once and for all.

Ah sarcasm. If only I got paid for it I would be a rich man.

We started our conservation efforts in late September 2005, about the time I started this blog. Using data from our electricity bills, which report the number of Kilowatt Hours (KwH) used in each billing cycle, transferred the data to Excel and made the chart below.

Bottom line: we have reduced our total consumption of electricity by more than 40% on average. A little better than my 5%, eh? (more…)