Eco-conscious People Should Explore Housing, Transportation, Food
At the conclusion of the terrific conference I attended on Friday produced by “Climate One” at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, the host asked the panel, “Where are you personally trying to make a difference in your carbon footprint?”
I thought the best answer was this:
There are three basic areas that any eco-conscious person should explore: housing, transportation, and food. Try to make your home energy efficient, and do what you can to conserve energy and water. Minimize your driving, and maximize the fuel efficiency of the driving you can’t avoid. Cut down on meat. Of course, there are hundreds of other areas I could discuss, but if you’re doing those three things, you’re addressing the vast majority of your impact on the planet.
“Cut down on meat?” I stopped eating meat many years ago, for several good reasons, and never really missed it. It certainly is not a hardship to avoid eating meat.
My 2004 Mazda 3 has about 18,000 miles on it. However, since 2004, I’ve put about 35,000 miles on motorcycles, but they get very good fuel mileage.
The conference did come up with some ideas which could significantly reduce energy and water usage thereby reducing CO2 emissions.
According to what I’ve just read, airplanes now get about 100 mpg per seat which implies that for long distance travel, unless there are at least three people in a car, it is probably easier on the environment to fly instead of driving a car. Perhaps someone can confirm that; it was a surprise to me.