There’s an international climate summit currently underway, where some stuff actually seems to be happening (or they’re talking about making stuff happen, anyway)!!! Like a 50% reduction of emissions in the US by 2030.
Two questions: Do you plan to celebrate or acknowledge Earth Day (and if so, how)? Have you done anything to lower your own emissions in the past year (what)?
I am dealing with brutal allergies, so not planning anything special today. But maybe this weekend we will go for a hike if the weather holds.
With H working from home and not really going anywhere, we lowered our driving considerably. I also try to group errands together so I drive less. I've also tried to find companies that ship with zero carbon emissions.
My emissions have naturally plummeted over the past year because I stopped driving to work, and we switched our weekly grocery trip to a once every 3 weeks trip and basically stopped going anywhere! When I go back in the office I'll be returning to my partial transit commute where I drive a few miles to the park and ride and take the bus the rest of the way.
I keep searching for viable ways to make this a fully low/no emissions trip - like biking to the park and ride, but it's in the middle of an interchange and I don't feel safe biking to it. I have seriously considered buying an ebike to replace other short milage trips...biggest hangup is where I store it at home, and I worry about theft locking it up around town (but could get over that).
I wanted to collect loose trash around the neighborhood today but I’m moving slow due to my slight side effects from my second Pfizer dose. I might do it tomorrow instead.
We have one car, a hybrid, and due to my H’s teleworking over the past year+ we only have to fill up maybe once a month. We really want an electric car but have yet to find the right size + right price. Hopefully in the next few years.
I’ve also pushed hard for paper bags when doing grocery pickup. Most of the time there’s no issue but rarely my request slips through the cracks and we end up with plastic.
No air travel for the past few years and I don’t imagine that’s going to change any time soon.
Of course, it’s not yet action, but I am feeling more hopeful with this summit happening, than I have in a really, really long time. I finally feel like we might have a chance.
We’re picking up trash today in a concerted group effort.
This past year, I’ve tried to get us off carbon based fuel, to the extent I can. Our electric account is now tied to a solar farm, and we now have plug in EVs. We didn’t fly anywhere, I ate zero beef, we’re now investing in some environmental, social and governance funds. There are many more but those are the bigger things off the top of my head.
Oh, food! this isn't new this year, but we belong to a local CSA that makes me feel pretty good about our food impact. All locally grown, on my way home from the park and ride, so no additional transportation impact, and the sheer volume of veggies mean's we're just eating more plant based in general.
I didn’t even know it was Earth Day until I opened FB today.
We converted our oil furnace to use biofuel last spring. Our fuel provider uses only post-consumer waste from restaurants, so we’re not taking any carbon out of the ground now except for my car. We also get our electricity from wind.
In two years, I will be replacing my car with an electric one.
In five years, we want to get rid of the oil burner entirely and install a solar panel to Tesla battery system, or something like that. The goal is for our house and cars to be completely net zero and contributing to the grid.
I've been thinking about this more, and it's hard for me to parse out what is emissions based and what is something else because I feel like it's so co-mingled.
Other things we've done to try and reduce our impact on Earth: -Composting. And holy cow, we only take out our kitchen trash once every like 7-10 days now. -We are planting a garden in our backyard to help with the fruits/veggies we eat a ton of -H's next car will be hybrid -Trying to reduce meat consumption. This one is hard, especially for H, but even if I make a meat based meal I eat less (or none) and give H his normal portion. -Going low and no plastic on as much as possible. This was my biggest goal for 2020.
I read an interesting piece this morning (can no longer remember if it was linked here or I saw it somewhere else) about U.S. leadership in this area still meaning something. In particular, companies around the world often still make investment decisions based on U.S. -driven market factors, so our stated leadership really can drive change even if it is not by official government agreements.
I didn't do anything special for Earth Day but that's more a factor of being gone all the time then anything about the day itself.
It sounds like basically it was Biden trying to reassure everyone that investing in emissions reduction strategies will also produce job opportunities, and won’t actually tank the economy. And of course there is the reminder that talk is nice, but they all need to do something about it already. In all, the summit seemed to have succeeded at bringing people together, and having the US emerge as a leader on this topic again. The UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in November will hopefully see more commitments.
This thread prompted me to see the impact we had when buying our EV. Prior to Covid and the EV purchase, we were filling up our cars an average of 52 times per year. That's total fill ups for 2 cars. We purchased DH an EV pre-Covid and dropped that number down to 18. Clearly DH was the bulk of the gas fill ups. Since Covid the number dropped further to 14 times per year. That's a pretty big difference. Also, with DH working from home for the past year we've used way less electricity to charge his car.
Our next step is to get solar panels for the house, hopefully some time in the next year.
DS and I picked up garbage in our neighborhood the day before Earth Day. I got my shot that day and didn't know if I'd feel well enough on Earth Day to do that.
When we moved into our house in Dec 2020 we got solar panels installed & an EV charger installed in our garage. In February we picked up our Tesla and since then have only driven our gas car a handful of times. (H WFH forever and I SAH with our DS hence our ability to only drive our EV.) The bus system is astronomical in our city so that's a non starter. We've been composting with a locally owned company since August 2020. It makes me so happy! We just started recycling glass locally through an all volunteer organization this month (they just started up last month). Recycling in my city is horrible; they accept very few things. We save stuff & take it to Seattle when we visit.
We use reusable bags when we shop at winco (self bagging). Other stores won't use our reusable bags when an employee does the bagging due to COVID.
ETA: We were only able to afford the solar panels, EV charger & EV car due to the sale of our TH in the Seattle area. The cost of those things is prohibitive for a lot of people.
eta2: I watched the documentary Seasiracy on Netflix. That is terrifying as to what it means for the health of our planet. Seriously scary shit. Basically 50% of the trash in the sea is fishing nets etc. And the fishing industry is killing so many sharks, dolphins etc that it's having a rippling effect on the health of our oceans.