Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

greening

Rob and I watched An Inconvenient Truth tonight. I have some qualms with how the film is structured — too much focus on Al Gore, and some of the animations and appeals to emotion ring hollow — but for the sheer information presented, it’s well worth watching. The statistics and charts offered about global warming are quite interesting — and not a little scary.

The movie ends with an appeal to viewers to get involved, even if that means just making small efforts in their personal lives to curb their energy usage. And it got Rob and I thinking about what we can do — and what we’ve already done, even if it wasn’t deliberately done with “saving the earth” in mind.

• We’re living the urban lifestyle, which, with some tradeoffs, brings certain benefits:
  • We live in a small, one-bedroom condo, which means we’re not expending a lot of excess energy keeping a large place heated / cooled.
  • We have easy access to public transportation — and we make use of it. Rob and I take the bus and subway, respectively, to get to work. We do have a car, but its use is generally limited to errands and entertainment. A side benefit is that we rarely have to stew in rush hour traffic.
  • We live in an area where we can walk to restaurants, shops, services (bank, dry cleaner, etc.) — even the grocery store. Added bonus: exercise.
• We participate in our building’s recycling program. And we’ve (slightly) reduced our trash by receiving and paying most of our bills online rather than through the mail.
• We installed a digital thermostat a few months ago. (Sadly, we don’t have enough of a baseline of information to know how much energy it’s really saving us. But having that level of control over our environment is geeky reward enough.)
• Fuel efficiency will definitely be a consideration whenever we choose our next car. (That said, our 1999 Saturn doesn’t do too bad, averaging 30-something miles per gallon, at least on road trips.)
• Most of our major appliances — stove, refrigerator, heat pump, water heater — are original to the unit, built in 1985. Because of their age, I’m somewhat resigned to the likelihood that we’ll have to replace each of them at some point. I’m sure just about any equivalent appliance on the market will be more energy efficient than what we have now, but energy efficiency will be a factor we’ll be looking at when making our decisions.
• When I do laundry, I do most of it in cold water (mainly because I’m paranoid about shrinkage, but there’s the added benefit of not having to expend energy on hot water).
• When cold weather set in last fall, we put some effort into weatherstripping / sealing the patio door and bedroom window — mainly because the bedroom was so darn cold, but also to save money on the heating bill.

I want to do more, though. When I was in middle school, I was part of an environmental club that participated in beach cleanups, recycling programs and local water quality testing. My recent trip down memory lane brought back some of that old zeal, and a hankering to get involved in something like that again, to feel like I’m actively making a difference somehow. I’m not sure where to start, though.