Five Percent: Conserve a Little Energy

Warning: the following is my opinion. While everything I write here is to a lesser or greater degree a reflection of my opinion, this post falls into the “greater degree” category :-)

I believe Barack Obama is the only person with a strong political voice with the courage to tell the truth and a lot to lose by doing so. Republicans and Democrats all have stood on their bully pulpits and pronounced their “solution” to high fuel prices. There’s only one I saw who had the common sense to realize that people could understand a slightly more nuanced view of the cause of high fuel prices. I don’t agree with all of Obama’s policies relating to energy, to be sure, but when it comes to common sense and honesty, this guy’s got it.

Before you watch the ad I have copied below, please be sure you read all the other responses from our elected and want-to-be elected representatives. If you don’t come away feeling as though we need Obama’s kind of honesty and courage in our White House this fall, I encourage you to help me understand what I am missing. (more…)

The Smart Strip power-saving surge protector will pay for itself in 6 months (for me) and probably less than a year for a typical computer setup. Or home theater setups. This is one of the best $35 I could spend. I plan to buy two more; one for Theresa’s computer and one for our TV/Stereo setup.

I do have an important tip for laptop users that solves a problem others have reported.

Review: Smart Strip Model LCG3, by Bits Unlimited

The power strip is well designed and clever in several ways. (more…)

My lawn is beginning to turn green. Several years ago I realized that I could have a green lawn, with very little effort, much less energy used, and no smell or nasty chemicals. Oh, and I also saved a ton of money.

Lawn Aerator Shoes

It’s hard to say if aerating my lawn by walking over it with spiked plates strapped to my shoes was helpful. It was not hard to do, involved a very small cost for the shoes, and did not result in noise or stench from gas-powered equipment. All I know is, my lawn was nice and green for the last several years.

Rechargeable Electric Mower Review

The electric (battery) lawn mower is awesome. It is quiet, effective, and has way more juice than I need to mow my suburban lawn. It doesn’t stink, and charges in a short time, after which it’s ready to go for the next time I need to mow. I highly recommend a battery electric mower for anyone inclined to get rid of their gasoline model. It’s a better change for the environment, too (gas mowers, like most small gas motors, are terribly inefficient and spew forth great amounts of greenhouse gasses.

I set the mowing height to 3 inches, which is pretty long but still makes for a nice, lush lawn. Better yet, this means I mow very infrequently, and there’s plenty of room for the clippings to fall in between. All that nice organics material falls back into the ground, traps moisture, and I don’t have to rake or bag clippings. The lawn also grows more slowly, so in the last few years, I mowed maybe 8 times total.

Best Organic Fertilizer for Your Lawn

Because most of the organic material is going back into the lawn as compost, you need very little fertilizer, and maybe no weed killer. The lawn is robust enough to keep down most of the weeds (I do pull a few dandelions and crabgrass by hand, but not a lot). So a little organic fertilizer in spring is enough to give the grass a great boost.

Don’t Water Your Lawn Too Much

Last year, I didn’t use my underground automatic sprinkler system at all. This was not a great idea, since it was a very dry summer; I should have watered a few times. As a result, I now need to resurrect one patch of lawn, and I am pretty sure our shrubs and flowering trees would have been more able to fend off pests with just a little watering.

The grass itself does better if you cut it long (see above). The beds do well with mulch, but still, a little water when needed goes a long way.

On the bright side, my water bill went way (way!) down. Keep an eye on the moisture level of the soil, and water only when necessary. Two years ago, I needed no extra water; last year I should have given a little. It depends.

But watering every day, or other day, or more is totally unnecessary, and incredibly expensive. A lot of water once every few weeks (if nature doesn’t provide) is much more effective.

Best Landscaping Services

It’s a little work, but doing your own landscaping and gardening is good exercise and very easy if you follow some basic rules.

I no longer have any gas powered equipment. I shoveled my driveway all winter, eschewing the snow blower in favor of a good old shovel. It snowed a lot this winter, and it wasn’t that hard.

I especially hate the whiny leaf blowers used by landscapers, mainly. They are noisy, smelly, useless, and terrible in all ways. Just rake! It’s far better for the lawn, too.

Ride a Bike To Work

I am back on my bike again, commuting to work, now that the roads and weather are more benign. It’s good for my muscles, and good for the environment, and reduces congestion, and takes less time. And my wife likes what it does for my legs.

There are many, many small ways you can upgrade from the old way of doing things we never though about. These are just a few. What changes have you made?

Cars cost a lot more than we pay for, say Dubner and Levitt of “Freakonomics” fame:

with roughly three trillion miles driven each year producing more than $300 billion in externality costs, drivers should probably be taxed at least an extra 10 cents per mile if we want them to pay the full societal cost of their driving.

Their article will be published in Time Magazine this week. In nearly the first paragraph, they define the problem:

…there are all sorts of costs associated with driving that the actual driver doesn’t pay. Such a condition is known to economists as a negative externality: the behavior of Person A (we’ll call him Arthur) damages the welfare of Person Z (Zelda), but Zelda has no control over Arthur’s actions.

That’s the good news (I guess). The bad news is they say that externalities from carbon emissions are a mere $20 Billion of that $300 Billion a year cost (traffic congestion and property damage are both far more costly unrealized costs). (more…)

Gore’s We Campaign has been busy. They have been advertising heavily on TV (including my weakness, American Idol), and now have a new ad for your too see. Strange bedfellows (just an expression … I think) Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich sit together … on a couch (no, not a bed) in front of the Capitol Building proclaiming their support for efforts to address climate change.

Here’s the video: (more…)

Oil is now at $113 a barrel which is not quite double the cost last year at this time. More than 2 years after Katrina hit New Orleans, things are beginning to get a little better… but far from great. And food prices are setting new records. All of this is more than “inconvenient” for some people, and simply “just inconvenient” for the rest of us.

These are not isolated events.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

A service called SquidNotes let’s you create a signed birthday/going away/having a baby card, the kind we all cringe when we see being passed around a company. Ah, the Internet, saving the world, one uncomfortable moment at a time.

But Ed Begley and TerraPass have started a cool card … to Earth, for Earth Day, on which we can all write a little something we mean to do. Check it out!

New York City recently failed to pass a law that would change the price of tolls based on the time of day—higher prices during busy times and lower prices off-peak.

It’s not hard to see why this well-intentioned law didn’t pass. Take a look at this article (actually a “Freakonomics” Blog Post) in the New York Times. Are your eyes glazing over? Mine were.

The thing is, this is not only something near and dear to my environmental leanings, it is the main topic that I wrote my bachelor’s thesis on in college: change the price of something based on predictable patterns of use. So it’s possible that I am slightly more willing to understand this stuff than most people.

But my eyes glazed over anyway. (more…)

eRedux is a new site providing resources that are aimed specifically at getting things done locally. Maps and charts of carbon footprint by state, regional and local level are available. US Government and other sources of local data are grouped together by zip code with links to various resources right there.

But what I think is especially cool is that there’s a town, county, and state blog that members post entries in, comment on, and communicate with each other.

I just made a post soliciting people in Newton, where I live, to help me get my new green site (that still has no name yet) off the ground. I really like this idea and hope it can grew and be successful.

My recent windfall from the water company reminded me that I could not possibly have known how much water I was using. I am not so tied in to our heating bill. I am very aware of my electricity bill. I am aware of my vehicle usage. They are all important—why the difference?

When it’s in your face, it’s harder to ignore

I have some proposed solutions that should help get our consumption in our faces. (more…)

Paper or Plastic? According to one article, the right answer seems to be “more vegetables.” The TerraPass blog did a very interesting article based on a study comparing the embedded energy of

• Plastic Bags
• Paper Bags
• Vegetable Diet
• Meat Diet

Their conclusion is simple: a meat diet is 186 times more energy intensive than the plastic bags used to carry it home. Paper bags were judged to be worse than plastic, meat worse than vegetables.

But, this is the wrong conclusion to draw from the facts.

I am of two minds when seeing articles like this. (more…)

When I started this blog in 2005, I quickly realized that the only way to conserve energy was to know how much of it I used. We have had continued success reducing electricity use. And finally, I can quantify how much we have reduced our water use.

We finally got our adjusted water bill, and we are getting more than $2,400 back from Newton Water and Sewer. Wahoo! (I need the money: we’re not getting a tax refund this year :-| )

Our water savings came from conservation. Here’s how: (more…)

Telephone rates fall in the evening and many people respond by deferring their calls. People with flexible hours commute to work earlier or later to miss the rush. My company’s website (and many others) does processing at night when load is low. If we use electricity at off-peak hours, the cost is less. And if enough people did this, we would actually use less energy overall to make the same amount of electricity.

How can that be? (more…)

Did you see the TV Ad for the We Campaign? You can see it below — pretty nicely done if you ask me.

The tag line is “We Can Solve It”. This new site is well designed and oriented to educate and motivate people to motivate the government to make policy changes. As part of Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, it’s clear what the agenda is, and it looks like they have a pretty good strategy: TV ads, lobbying, send messages to representatives and so on. Kind of MoveOn for global warming.

Here’s the TV Ad… (more…)

A friend pointed me to this site, MetaEfficient: The Optimal Green Guide. The focus is on efficiency, which is generally a “green” idea. This site is more of a newsy blog, but there is a reasonable assemblage of products.