No Impact Man

Who needs appliances anyway?

Yesterday, we talked about whether replacing old but perfectly good and working appliances with new, more energy-efficient models made sense (see here). We crunched numbers to do with the "embodied energy" and environmental impact of the manufacture of the new appliances versus the amount of energy potentially saved.

[This just in: I majorly screwed up yesterday's calculations causing the embodied energies of the steel to be over estimated by a factor of five. Ugh. So sorry. The argument is not as straightforward as I had hoped and I will have to look into it more for the future. I'm afraid I'm back, for now, to being unclear about the embodied energy versus energy saved balance. Anyway, yesterday's post and its conclusions are, for now, unreliable.]

Today, I wanted to discuss what we've done in regard to appliances here in the household formerly known as No Impact (but still, hopefully, low impact).

I should start by saying that before we started No Impact, our little apartment contained the following appliances (I'll explain the numbers below):

• 46-inch, rear projection TV (1)
• TiVo box (1)
• Laptop computer (N/A)
• Under the counter fridge (4)
• Under the counter freezer next to the fridge (1)
• Food processor (0)
• Electric rice cooker (0)
• Blender (0)
• Air conditioner in the bedroom (4)
• Air conditioner in the living room (2)
• Electric dishwasher (4)
• Vacuum cleaner (6)
• Natural gas stove and oven (N/A)
• Laundry machine (10) and dryer (5) in the basement of our building and shared with 95 other other apartments.

During the course of the No Impact project, we turned the mains electricity off and put away or didn't use all of the appliances except the laptop computer and the gas stove. We powered the laptop from a single solar panel we sneaked onto the roof of the building in order to maintain this blog. We did our laundry by stomping it in the bathtub and hang drying it in the bathroom.

What I've done, for fun, is put numbers in parentheses above indicating, on a range from 0 to 10, how much we missed the particular appliance. 0 means I wouldn't destroy a snowball for the amount we missed this appliance, leave alone a planet. 10 means we missed this appliance so much that I believe we should we should find a sustainable way for everyone on the planet to have access to one.

Looking at the numbers, I gave the TV and TiVo box a 1 because once in a while we missed it, though overall we were and are happier without it. The fridge got a 4 because our food spoiled quickly in the summer, though it still wasn't terribly hard (just a bit like camping). As for the A/C, none in the bedroom made it hard to sleep a few nights. The dishwasher grade comes because Michelle dislikes washing dishes by hand.

As for the laundry machine's 10 rating, we hated washing our laundry by hand. It was long, hard work. Maybe if we had had different equipment it would have been ok. Trying to squeeze it dry particular bugged us.

Anyway, as a result, now that No Impact is over, here's what we still have or use:

• 46-inch, rear projection TV (1)
  
• TiVo box (1)
  
• Laptop computer (N/A). I bought a second laptop computer (an Apple PowerBook, which I love) because the other one is on its last legs. I bought the computer second hand in an effort to save resources (and also saved $1800). Isabella gets to watch a couple of DVDs a week on the old computer.
• Under the counter fridge (4) We turned it back on, but we've adjusted the thermostat to keep food cool not cold. We still eat largely local and so buy our food frequently.
  
• Under the counter freezer next to the fridge (1) It's still in the apartment but we haven't turned it on. Believe me, our tummies don't miss the Ben and Jerry's
  
• Food processor (0) Given to thrift store.
  
• Electric rice cooker (0) Given to thrift store.
• Blender (0) We never use it but couldn't, for some reason, part with it on the day we were taking things to the thrift store. Probably next time.
  
• Air conditioner in the bedroom (4) Air conditioners were by far our greatest use of energy. The bedroom unit is the one thing that feels like a mild sacrifice, but one we're willing to make.
  
• Air conditioner in the living room (2)
  
• Electric dishwasher (4) We intended to use it but it died. We went out to buy another one but couldn't bring ourselves to do it. I don't believe that the water saved--hot or not--would equal the embodied energy. We have a flow restricter on our kitchen faucet (.38 gallon per minute).
  
• Vacuum cleaner (6) Cleaning the house is much easier with the vacuum cleaner and it doesn't use that much energy.
  
• Natural gas stove and oven (N/A)
  
• Laundry machine (10) and dryer (5) in the basement of our building and shared with 95 other other apartments. The laundry machine is the one appliance I believe makes the difference between a life of drudgery and not. If cars are the Devil, as I think they are, then laundry machines are God. Sadly, we use the dryer, too, because we find it hard in our 750 square foot apartment to hang dry with three people and a dog. I'm still hoping we might get back to hang drying.

Apropos of the question of replacing old appliances with more energy efficient versions, I can't bring myself to believe that, the way we operate our fridge, the embodied energy and impact would be recovered by the energy savings. As Vicki commented on yesterday's post:

"If it is broken and the repairman can fix it then he fixes it. If he just shakes his head then you buy a new one. Seems simple to me."

I just prefer the wear-the-old-one-out-first philosophy. It seems to me to have the most respect.

By the way, here's what some other sites have to say on these and related issues:

• Treehugger: Should I replace my old cooker and fridge
• Grist's Umbra: On replacing appliances
• Casaubon's Book: What to do with your appliances when you get over them
• Ecogeek on refrigeration systems that work by pumping cold air from outside
• Sietch Blog on seven ways to save water at home
• GreenOptions on using off the grid energy-saving principles while still on the grid

Why Isabella still doesn't watch TV

I'm still at the New Economics Foundation Conference that I mentioned yesterday and having the time of my life. We've been talking today a lot about how television and advertising promotes a set of values that--by definition--promote resource consumption and undermine sustainability.

After a day of that, I can't tell you how glad we haven't allowed that particular enemy back into the living room since the end of the No Impact project. For fun, I noodled around on the internet, looking into the effects on my little Isabella that we're managing to avoid, and I found an article by Jane Brody of the New York Times that says:

• "The average young child in this country watches about four hours of television a day and each year sees tens of thousands of commercials, often for high-fat, high-sugar or high-salt snacks and foods; thousands of episodes of violence; and countless instances of alcohol use and inappropriate sexual activity."
• "By the time American children finish high school, they have spent nearly twice as many hours in front of the television set as in the classroom."
• "Nearly 60 percent of children aged 8 to 16 have a TV in their bedroom...With access to television wherever children may be, it is hard for parents to control the amount and content of what they watch."
• "It is no surprise, then, that the percentage of American children who are seriously overweight has risen to more than 15 percent today, from 5 percent in 1964. 'TV reduction appears to be the most effective measure in reducing weight gain,' said Dr. William H. Dietz of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
• "Studies have found that children who watch 10 or more hours of TV a week have lower reading scores and perform less well academically than comparable youngsters who spend less time watching television."
• "The more TV watched by toddlers aged 1 to 3, the greater their risk of attention problems at age 7. For each hour watched a day, the risk of developing attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder increased by nearly 10 percent."
• "A study two years ago by the Center for Child Health Outcomes in San Diego found that children aged 10 to 15 who watched five or more hours of television a day were six times as likely to start smoking as those who watched less than two hours a day."

The good news for parents who rely on TV to keep their children busy? Anecdotally, people find that kids who lives in households without TV learn other, more active ways to entertain themselves.

Some real environmental heroism

It's all very well when well-off schlubs like me go on about reducing their environmental impact, but the fact of the matter is, there are lots of people in the world who only wish they could make environmental impact.

That's why I think the folks at the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) are real eco-heroes. SELF's mission is to bring solar power and modern communications to rural villages in the developing world--to produce meaningful, life-improving enhancements in health, education, and economic well-being.

In other words, while the rest of us wring our hands and worry about the effect on climate change of the developing world improving its standard of living, the folks at SELF are already working to improve those life quality standards in a sustainable way. They are both preventing increasing CO2 emissions and making life easier and better for people (a happier planet, as I always say, makes for happier people).

For example, according to an article posted at Renewable Energy World by SELF executive director Bob Freling:

"The Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) is working to install low-cost micro-irrigation and solar water pumps in two villages in Kalalé District [of Benin in western Africa]. This will create a reliable and economical means of irrigation and enable families in these villages to grow crops during the six month dry season for significant improvements in family income and nutrition. At least 20 families (100-200 people) will directly benefit from the solar-irrigation project and approximately 4,500 people living in two communities will benefit from the added supply of clean water during the rainy season."

About another project, Bob writes:

"Like all modern medical centers, the five rural health clinics in eastern Rwanda operated by Partners In Health (PIH) need reliable power 24/7. But unlike other offgrid facilities, each of these centers is powered by a hefty 4.4-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system designed and installed by the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF). The solar systems have been up and running since February 2007."

These are just two among a slew of other incredible projects: solar schools in South Africa's Eastern Cape, solar electrification of clinics in Tanzania in league with Clinton Global Initiative, solar electrification of Jan Goodall's Gombe Research Center and on and on.

To find out more about SELF's excellent work, look here.

To make a contribution and support SELF's projects, go here.

 

A balanced approach to climate change policy

OK. The title sounds over-grand, I'll admit. But below you'll find the last installment in my debate with Break Through author Michael Shellenberger, which I've just realized sums up my position on what we need as a culture.

As you know, he has been arguing that reducing our cultural carbon footprint is not the way forward. He believes no one will go for it. He thinks we should make huge investments to find a renewable way to keep consuming. I don't think that's possible. The problem is too big for a single-pronged approach. You can find the first three installments of our debate here, here, and here.

The funny thing is, Michael, the point of the No Impact project has never been to be ascetic. The point was to use fewer non-renewable resources, but what we found was that our culture doesn't provide much that is renewable with which to replace the non-renewable! That meant we had to resort to less stuff, and the fact is that many of the gifts that we've received from our No Impact lifestyle experiment were related to the space left behind when we had less.

We learned, as a family, for example, that we were much happier without our attention and time being sucked up by all the screens--TV, computer, video games. We saw that these things have the tendency to make us all spend more time alone, when in fact, what makes people happier is spending more time together.

From our experience, I began to wonder about American cultural emphasis on gross domestic product (GDP), and the almost unquestioned idea that we should do what it takes to make sure we should all have more of what we want--namely, more TVs, computers, and video games. Economic growth.

As you know, many of the politicians have stood in the way of our joining the rest of the world in concrete carbon emissions reductions targets for fear that it would stifle economic growth, the idea being that this would mean fewer TVs, computers and video games (I'm being simplistic, I know) and therefore less happiness.

But if my little family found that we were happier without, for example, the TV, that we had rid ourselves of one obstacle to thriving family and community relationships, then maybe an emphasis on economic growth and getting more is not synonymous with happiness anymore (though I agree that it was 100 years ago in the US and still is in many parts of the developing world).

In fact, over the course of our No Impact year, we spent about half of the money we spent the previous year (negative growth). Yet, we spent more time with friends, spent a lot more time with our little girl, ate much more healthily by avoiding packaged and far-away foods, and got a lot more exercise and time outdoors riding our bikes. We were happier.

This is a long way from asceticism, assuming that what you mean by asceticism is deprivation. Because I would argue that, in fact, our culture is already deprived.

Most of us work so hard that we don't get to spend enough time with the people we love, so we feel isolated. We don't really believe in our work, so we feel prostituted. The boss has no need of our most creative talents, so we feel unfulfilled. We have too little connection with something bigger, so we have no sense of meaning.

To top it all off, not only are so many of us discovering that we've been working our years away to maintain a way of life that we don't really like, but we are waking up to the fact—hopefully—that this same way of life is killing our habitat—the same one we need if we are to thrive.

So while I agree with you that we need to find technological solutions in order to make consumption less harmful to human health, security and happiness, I disagree that we should be working only to find systems that can maintain the social status quo. I think we could do better. I think we can innovate not just technologically but socially to save energy. I think that we can work towards a society where people don't lust after the consolation prizes because they don't need to be consoled.

Much of what brings people together is also better for the environment. Doing things one at a time, as isolated people, is energy inefficient. Living together, traveling together, being entertained together, on the other hand, is more efficient and makes us happier.

Let's build villages instead of suburbs. Places where you can walk to the store or the post office and stop at your neighbor's for a chat along the way. That would mean less driving for the environment, more community for the people, and more exercise for the tummies! Meanwhile, as an example, studies show that the unhappiest of commuters are drivers while the happiest are bikers. Let's make it safe to bike--a virtually free innovation--and build excellent public transportation systems where people can talk to each other instead of honk at each other.

Let's also work less and make our work more meaningful. Because of the throw-away-product based economy, so much of what we make is designed to be trashed within months. We have to make things and buy things over and over again unnecessarily. Yes, recyclable materials would be great but what about durable products?

Not only would that help the eco-systems but think of the labor it would save. What if we turned that same labor to doing something more meaningful? What if we turned that same labor to figuring out how to provide water access to the billion that don't have it? That's called improving human happiness while saving the environment.

You've said that reducing our carbon footprint isn't enough to do the trick, and I agree that--alone--it is not. You've suggested that reducing our carbon footprint veers towards deprivation, but I believe that that reducing resource use, if it includes system change, can actually increase abundance--if what you mean by abundance is human happiness as opposed to economic growth. Therefore, it should be part of the equation.

As for people always choosing greater material wealth, I don't believe you (unless you juxtapose it with poverty). Take your own example. With your incredible smarts, you could work for anyone doing anything. You could make a lot more money working on the other side for Exxon. You don't. Why? Because once we reach a certain level of comfort, we want meaning. You write about this yourself. What's necessary is to provide a social structure where meaning is actually achievable.

What you say about breaking the link between energy use and emissions is absolutely true. It is also absolutely true that there will be and should be increasing energy use in the developing world. The wealth in standard of living must and should be spread. But here in the United States there is just so much waste that doesn't make us happier and often makes us less so. So while we need huge investment in renewable energy solutions, we should also be looking to cut the waste here in the United States (and the rest of the developed world).

So look, it's not really that I disagree with you at all. I first contacted you because I agree with so much of what you say. And I think it takes all kinds. What I'm adding to the agenda is that, here in the developed world, we can actually tighten our belts and end up less deprived, because some of the systems we've developed, that suck up so much energy, don't make us happier. And part of the way I came to this conclusion was by trying to live within these systems without sucking up as much energy, in other words, by living as No Impact Man.

Image courtesy of NASA, and it's worth clicking through to see it full size.

A day in our life

One of the questions people ask me again and again is to describe a day in the No Impact life. I always think it’s a funny question, because I’m so used to it now and it seems so routine. All the same, I thought I might as well answer it:

1. If I get it together, I wake up before the girls when my wind-up alarm clock goes off (no electricity) and take a little quiet time to meditate. If not, I wake up with Michelle when Isabella, the two-and-a-half-year-old, makes the short, two-foot trip from her toddler bed to our bed (we live in a one bedroom). How I miss the cage…I mean, crib!
2. Michelle and I contort our bodies to fit into the space allowed us. We sleep on one quarter of the bed; Frankie, during the night, progressively takes over three-quarters. When Isabella arrives and insists we don’t touch her, our share reduces by another half.
3. Eventually, after noisily sucking her thumb for a while, Isabella gets up and starts running around after Frankie. The windows are open (no air conditioning) and Michelle can’t bring herself to believe that the window guards—which could stop a gorilla—are strong enough to prevent Isabella from cart-wheeling out. We have to get up, too.
4. We brush our teeth (baking soda) using a cup of water (rather than letting the faucet run). We may or may not take a bath—one at a time in the same water—depending on whether it is bath day (we’re in the water conservation stage). We use homemade unscented beeswax soap to wash and baking soda for shampoo.
5. Breakfast consists of marvelously fresh cantaloupe and toast, both from the farmers’ market. I haven’t been able to bake my own bread for the last few weeks because the combination of a 400 degree oven, 90 degree weather and no air conditioning could potentially overwhelm my family’s ability to live with me.
6. One of us—depending on who wins the “discussion”—walks Frankie down the nine flights of stairs, around the block and back up the nine flights of stairs (no non-self-propelled transportation which means no elevator).
7. We all get dressed in clothes that are just this side of fermented (thanks to the combination of perpetually putting off washing our clothes by hand and our attempts to conserve water).
8. We stumble down the stairs, Michelle carrying the bags and bike helmets and Isabella riding on my shoulders.
9. We stop at the Gray Dog with Michelle’s reusable cup and my glass jar. The no coffee part of the local food stage has fallen by the wayside. Michelle couldn’t cope with the caffeine withdrawal. I couldn’t cope with not hanging out in coffee shops.
10. One of us delivers Isabella to her new Montessori nursery school, using either the tricycle rickshaw or a seat on the back of my bike. Sadly, Isabella this week left her childcare provider of two years (We love you and miss you every minute, Peggy). Thankfully, the nursery school is on the ground floor (But we don’t love your six flights of stairs, Pegs).
11. Michelle rides up the very substandard Sixth Avenue bike lane to work on the rickshaw, eliciting smiles and comments all the way. I ride over to the Writers’ Room, where I work.
12. Michelle gets a pass and takes the elevator to her office because she works on the 43^rd floor. The Writers’ Room is only on the 12^th Floor. I take the stairs to the 11^th and then take the elevator the last flight because there is no reentry on 12. My brain wonders every time whether that is idiotic (my legs are quite sure it is).
13. At the Writers’ Room, I sit very quietly tapping on my keyboard and giving the impression to anyone else that I am working instead of procrastinating. Then I actually get some work on the book done. Then I procrastinate some more. At Michelle’s office, she produces about fifteen articles to every one page I manage to write.
14. After lunch (generally fruit and cheese which we both bring from home), I go up and down about 563 more flights of stairs in order to shop at the farmers’ market, take the food home, take Frankie for her walk and get back to work at the Writers’ Room.
15. I write the next day’s blog post and make phone calls to friends about how slow the book writing is going (To my editor: Just joking!).
16. One of us picks up Isabella, again on our respective bike. If it’s me, Isabella and I either “see what happens”—which means we ride around searching for adventure—or we go to the Hudson River and watch the sunset.
17. We meet Michelle back at the apartment when it’s just getting dark. Dinner consists mostly of salads and eggs or cheese (simple fresh food that makes us happy and thin). We chat around the table. We spark up the one solar-powered lamp and read.
18. Michelle and I flip to see which of us will wrestle Isabella into her bed. Isabella says she’s not tired. We ask when she will be tired. She says, “Not today.”
19. If I lost the toss, I sit on Isabella’s bed and tell her stories: about the day she was born, about the day we got Frankie from North Shore Animal Rescue, about pretending to go alligator fishing with my favorite uncle when I was a kid. “Another story, please…another story, please,” Isabella says.
20. Michelle and I brush our teeth by beeswax candlelight. We talk a bit. One of us humps Frankie out. We talk some more until, by 9:30, our bodies, apparently cued by the darkness, tell us bedtime has arrived.

In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, “And so it goes.”

Doing stuff instead of watching stuff

A while back I went to Shabbat dinner at my friend Rabbi Steve Greenberg’s house. At a certain stage, he handed out booklets and we all sang together. I’m not Jewish so it was new to me, in a wonderful way, and I felt jealous that we did not all sing together in my house. I wondered why not? Why is singing together and making music not something we do everyday?

Part of it was the stereo. Why would you try to sing or play an instrument yourself if you can buy a CD where somebody else can do it so much better? I’ve picked up the guitar ten different times in my life but never been satisfied because I couldn’t play a song that even came close to resembling whoever I was trying to copy at the time.

But why does making music have to sound like someone else? Why is there some standard of perfection to adhere to? When I had dinner at Rabbi Steve’s, there was no perfection. That wasn’t what made it great. What made it great was the togetherness. We sang and gently tapped on the table to the beat and smiled at each other and pointed to the correct line in the books when we lost our place. It wasn't about perfection; it was about connection.

For a while there after that, I looked for a second-hand guitar (there’s no buying anything new on the project), but it didn’t work out and the idea kind of fell through. A few weeks ago, though, my friend Michelle Casillas, the lovely and beautiful musician who leads the New York band Ursa Minor, brought over a nylon string guitar for me to borrow.

She told me I could play just about any song I wanted with just about three chords: A, D and E. I knew the chords already from my previous sojourns into guitar playing. What I didn’t know how to do was accept my mediocrity.

This time on the guitar was different, though. I wasn’t trying to get something to sound as good as my iPod. I just wanted the experience of singing and playing together with my family and friends and Isabella, my little girl. This time, because there was no stereo to compete with—and because we missed music—I was willing to just accept the best I could do.

The obsession with perfection that comes with the consumer culture has made many of us ashamed of our creative efforts. Few of us sing—especially not in front of each other—because we know of so many who can do it better. Few of us show our paintings for the same reason. But why is the best always so important? Besides, why waste our time making admittedly mediocre music or art when we can just plop on the couch, watch TV and eat potato chips?

Well, as it happens, the best isn’t so important to my two-and-half-year-old daughter Isabella. Because the other night, when I sat beside her bed and very haltingly figured out how to play Puff the Magic Dragon using those A, D and E chords, she looked at me and said the one sentence I live my life to hear from her: “Daddy, I’m so happy.”

PS If you feel like unplugging your ears from the iPod and blowing the dust off your old guitar, the chord chart above is just for you (and it comes courtesy of the League of Guitarists).

No Impact update

In answer to some questions from No Impact Man reader Phil Brady:

How are the earthworm castings faring, and to what uses are they being put?

For those of you who don’t know, I prevent my food scraps from ending up in the landfill by composting them. But because I live in an apartment, I use a technique that accelerates the process and prevents odors, called vermicomposting, which means keeping red-wiggler worms in a bin and letting them eat the scraps.

Red wigglers are worms that live in the leafy part of the forest floor. They have a nice leaf-like home in my worm bin made from other people’s torn up newspapers (for the purposes of the project, we buy no newspapers so as not to make trash). The food scraps go in, and about three months later, a rich, loamy compost (literally worm manure or “castings”) comes out.

I have harvested from the worm bin twice now. Both times I used the compost to top feed whichever plants looked like they needed the most help at the Laguardia Community Gardens, where I help a man named Mayer Vishner with his vegetable plot.

Should the tomato plants not be bearing by now?

Alas, the window I had the tomato plants in got full sun all spring, but when the earth tilted for summer, the tomatoes ended up in the shade. They got really tall and lanky. Finally, I faced up to the fact that they would bear no fruit and gave them to a friend to plant in her garden (Mayer’s plot was already full). They are much happier now, I’m told, have flowered and will soon make tomatoes.

How was the matter of cooling/refrigerating/pot-in-pot ever settled?

The last thing we tried was a cooler with reusable freezer packs from a neighbor’s fridge. But the neighbor is taken to all-night parties, we could never get the freezer packs when we needed them, and the solution was inelegant anyway. Now, we just live without a fridge. We simply shop for only two days at a time, and it’s all working out.

What does the daily diet consist of and how does one avoid deadly monotony in it?

Monotony? When at last the farmers’ market is teaming with every vegetable you can imagine, you ask me about monotony? What you mean is excitement, no? After all, local eating meant we virtually survived on cabbage, apples and eggs all winter. In the heat, we’ve been eating a lot of salads with all sorts of yummy veggies and berries tossed in. Our diet is the healthiest it’s ever been. You can see it in the whites of our eyes.

How is everyone getting along in the hot summer of New York?

Because we have no mains electricity, we have no air conditioning or fans. We’re lucky in that we get good cross-ventilation. We close the windows and shades in the morning to keep out sun and hot air. We open them at night to let in cool air. So far, not so bad, actually.  I  mean, we sweat, and we try to stay out of long sleeves and pants. It feels kind of natural.

There has to be an exchange: NoImpactMan has no impact on the environment, but that does not mean that the environment will have no impact on NoImpactMan. What impacts is the environment having on him?

Little things. Who knew that the sun shone full in the living room in the spring but not in the summer until I tried to grow tomatoes? Or who knew that without air conditioning the way to stay cool is just to spend more time outside on the stoops and in the parks? Who knew how glorious it is when the summer arrives and all the wonderful vegetables or fruits start to be in season? A gift of this project is that even though we live in the City, we have found ourselves reconnected with some of nature’s rhythms. And that, I think, is a good thing.

Cure the planet's fever

I expect a lot of new visitors here today, so I’m going to devote this post to a quick survey of consumer-related activities that contribute most to the planet’s pressing environmental problems and some measures each of us can take in our own lives to improve things. But before we get to that, let me tell you why I’m expecting all the new visitors.

First, I’m going to be on WYNC’s The Brian Lehrer Show live at 10:06 AM EST today, March 21, 2007 (you can also listen to the recorded show if you missed it live). We’ll be taking calls (212-433-9692), so please phone in! I will not be nervous…I will not be nervous…Well, that’s not working.

Second, there’s a New York Times story about the No Impact project on the front page of today's House and Home Section. It’s the result of reporter Penelope Green following us around for a few days asking all manner of personal questions about our No Impact lifestyle. 

(One thing I wish I could change in the story is this idea that we are doing this project  because it "was the only one of four [book ideas] his agent thought would sell." If I could change that bit, it would read, "Mr. Beavan had decided that with so many urgent problems in the world, writing more history books felt irrelevant. He decided to change the course of his career. When he presented ten ideas about the environment to his agent, Beavan was surprised that his agent most liked Beavan's personal favorite--the No Impact Man idea.")

But the point of today’s post is to point you towards things we can do to cure what Al Gore yesterday called the planet’s fever. When it comes to helping the planet, I’m just a schlub trying to figure it all out myself, so I hope you won’t mind that I’ve borrowed from the Union of Concerned Scientists’ The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices (you can read the first chapter online).

I’m going to mention, first, the consumer-related activities--which your purchase and activity choices can affect--that most harm the environment. According to the Guide, they are (in order of importance):

1. Driving (because of air pollution and greenhouse gasses)
2. Production of meat and poultry (because of land use that destroys natural habitats, use of water, water pollution, and production of methane, a greenhouse gas)
3. Cultivation of fruits, vegetables and grains (because of water use, soil erosion, and water pollution through pesticide and fertilizer use)
4. Home heating, hot water and air conditioning (because of air pollution and greenhouse gasses)
5. Household appliances and lighting (because of air pollution and greenhouse gasses)
6. Home construction (because of land use that destroys natural habitats, timber harvesting, and water pollution due to materials production)
7. Household water, sewage and solid waste disposal (because of water pollution and air pollution from incinerators)

So what can you do? Well, for one thing, now that you have a really brief understanding of the problems, you can come back here to No Impact Man to see what me and other folks or up to. But for today, I’m going to send you on your merry way to the following places for actions each of us can take to make our own lives, if not No Impact, then at least Lower Impact:

• Ten personal solutions from the Union of Concerned Scientists
• Ten things to do from Climate Crisis
• Ten things you can do to help from the Sierra Club
• Take Action! from Stop Global Warming

Also, please don’t forget that April 14 is the National Day of Climate Action, when tens of thousands of Americans will gather all across the country to call for action on climate change. To find out what is happening in New York City, go here. For elsewhere in the country, go here.

Let there be really cool light

What I feel like telling you about today is the great place I get our low-energy compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) and how you can get them there, too. But first, in case you’ve somehow missed the recent coverage (see here and here, for example), I’m going to shed some light on the subject (oh, the fun of the pun).

CFLs, according the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star website, use only 10-30% of an incandescent bulb’s power, last 10 times longer, and save an average $30 in electricity over their lifetime. If every American household replaced just one incandescent bulb with a CFL, we’d prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to nearly 800,000 cars.

The CFLs I have look like a clown made a balloon sculpture from a long skinny fluorescent bulb and mangled it into a coiled snake. There are others that look like regular bulbs. Whatever they look like, they fit into your normal bulb sockets, and you can buy them at a number of “color temperatures,” so they cast a warm light that looks like a regular bulb’s, not fluorescent looking at all.

The slight downside to CFLs is that they each contain about 5 mg of mercury, a toxic metal (see the EPA fact sheet on proper CFL disposal). You shouldn’t handle the glass with your bare hands if you break them, and when the bulbs burn out, you should dispose of them through your local household hazardous waste collection site (find yours here). That way the mercury will be reclaimed so it won’t harm the environment.

Now for the cool place to get them.

Of course, you could just get them in Wallmart, which announced a huge push to convert their customers to CFLs. But I like getting mine from the “CFL Tipping Point” project of Solar One, New York’s green energy, arts and education center. CFL Tipping Point is an educational project where kids from Manhattan Comprehensive High School have created a “mini-business” with the goal of converting consumers to CFLs by offering them for sale at events, fairs, markets and even by home delivery.

I love the project because it is community building, the kids get to learn about various green technologies, and part of the proceeds from every bulb goes to a charity that brings solar power to villages in the developing world (the Solar Electric Light Fund). Bringing electric light to villages is hugely important for increasing literacy rates in children by allowing them to study at night.

To get CFL Tipping Point bulbs, you have to contact the project leader, Chris Neidl, by email. And if you don’t live in New York, you can still buy your bulbs at Wallmart or somewhere else, and go here to give to the Solar Electric Light Fund or here to give to Solar One directly (in fact, if you let me know, I’ll match the first gift for $100 to either one). PS Anyone else got any CFL tips or ideas or cool places to get them?