Greatest good

November 5, 2009 at 11:29 am (Energy, Food security, carbon budget, green living)

global warmingI realized the other day that the next realistic steps my household might take to reduce carbon emissions are to carpool more (we commute to work together but could add up to 2 more people in our car) and to move to geothermal heat.

Geothermal systems – even with the rebates – would probably cost $15,000. That’s a ton of money. Even supposing we had $15K to spend on a system (and that’s a big “if”), would it be the best way to spend it? What would truly be the most carbon-reduction-bang for fifteen thousand bucks?

Some initial ideas:

  • Help 15 households insulate their attics to R-60
  • Buy super-efficient furnaces for several households
  • Help 3-5 farmers build hoophouses to produce local veggies through the winter
  • Invest in a “neighborhood energy startup” with a gasifier (makes heat and electricity and biodiesel), possibly with a permaculture system of greenhouses, coppice groves, etc.
  • Just buy land and start a coppice grove for sustainable heating fuel production, and possibly invest in a pelletizer
  • Some kind of education program? I’m thinking the actual return is hard to measure, and it’s not education about global warming that folks around here lack.

Anyone have data on any of these? Or other ideas? bonus points for things that are done once and keep on saving energy and reducing emissions without any further attention or work.

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Thermal cooking with the Tiger “magic pot”

October 17, 2009 at 10:53 am (Cooking, green living)

Empty inner potA couple weeks ago, I finally bought a thermal cooking pot. It’s been on my radar for a long time, and I finally splurged. The basic idea is that it’s a pot-in-a-Thermos. You put your ingredients in the inner pot and bring it to a boil on the stove, then put that pot into the insulated outer pot, close the lid, and the food cooks using the retained heat. It’s sort of like a countertop version of haybox cooking, and the idea is to save energy and keep from heating up your kitchen when cooking.

I’ve learned that this gizmo has definite strong and weak points. I’m honestly not sure I’d recommend buying one; they are pretty pricey and it doesn’t do everything I’d hoped it would. Still, it works really well for some things, and I can’t stop experimenting! I thought I’d post the results of my experiments to date, so if you’re considering getting one, you can make a really informed decision. Details after the cut: Read the rest of this entry »

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Upcoming workshop: Stocking your Pantry

August 13, 2009 at 8:54 am (Community, Cooking, Food preservation, Food security, Preserving Traditions, green living)

Cooking from scratch.I’m doing my first workshop on stocking a pantry to live out of! This workshop aims to appeal to a variety of folks: those who want to save money, those who want quick meal prep, and those who think the economy is going to collapse but aren’t quite ready to join a peak oil group or move to a commune. Here’s the announcement: [EDIT 8-13 4:30pm - revised location]

Oct 10: Stocking your Pantry

Join us at 10 AM on Saturday Oct 10 at St. Paul Church elementary school (495 Earhart Rd., Ann Arbor) when Emily Springfield, a member and organizer of Ann Arbor’s Preserving Traditions club (http://preservingtraditions.wordpress.com), will present a workshop on Pantry Staples. Having easily-stored staples on hand will make meal preps easy, and Emily will even share some simple recipes to which you need only add vegetables or meat. In addition, Emily will share tips on basics to have on hand in case of emergency (think blizzard or tight funds), items you could buy in bulk or on sale to stockpile.

Cost is only $5 and includes the workshop and munchies. We promise to let you go by noon. Please RSVP to Ruth Zielke 994 3718 (azielke914@comcast.net). Bring your friends. Ask that nice woman who sits in front of you every Sunday if she will join you. There will be time for sharing tips and stories, too. It will be great to be together. There is no home game, so you won’t even have to worry about traffic! Treat yourself to great fellowship!

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Make one thing beautiful

June 20, 2009 at 4:36 pm (Changing habits, Musings)

quiltGoing into this weekend, I was pretty tired of the eternal To-Do list. Items might change, but I never really catch up. And some items never change: clean the kitchen, weed the garden, clear off the dining room table, do the bills. Gah.

I wanted out of my rut this weekend, so I decided to ditch the to-do list and instead focus on making something beautiful. I decided to start with the front flower bed. Flats at the market are $8 – don’t need to make that offer twice! And black-eyed susans were 4/$10. And supposedly perennial, too. Sold!And as luck would have it, my favorite garden store was demoing a meat smoker by offering surprisingly large samples of smoked pork butt, homemade salsa, potato salad, and curtido. Beautiful!

Got home and started puttering, and before I knew it, I’d planted the flat of flowers – mostly in the front bed (let me just pull this grass and clover and elm seedlings out to make room), and also in the shade planter on the back deck (hmm, none of the herbs overwintered…better yank those…), and because I had a few left, I scanned the garden and planted them smack in the middle of my line of sight. That happened to be the edge of the rutabaga bed (just let me toss those last scraggly turnips that didn’t get harvested last week and hey…are those volunteer potatoes? Looks like dinner to me…). And oh, heck, why don’t I plant up this empty pot of dirt on teh deck with the last couple things from that flat? And move the rest of the junk off to the end of the deck where I don’t have to see it? I’ll put it away…later. But at least now I don’t have to look at it.

Dinner’s in the sun oven (baby potatoes and rutabagas, a couple bulb onions, brussels sprouts, and asparagus with a little schmaltz and seasoned salt), so while I’m waiting, I’ll put away this stack of cookbooks (huh, if I wipe down the coffee table, the living room will look really nice…) and take a shower. And if I wash those last couple pans, hey, the kitchen is also beautiful!

I’m glad I decided to ignore my to-do list today. Making things beautiful was much more interesting.

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New well and Simple Pump review

June 14, 2009 at 9:00 am (Food security, green living)

Last summer, we were told that our well was getting up there in years and would soon need to be replaced. So we started a New Well Fund, and by this spring, we’d saved up enough to have the new well drilled.

Out here in the boonies (only 5 miles from “civilization” like cable, natural gas, city water, and Meijer’s), we are plagued by power outages. It’s better than it was a couple years ago, when every heavy rain would kill our power for hours at a time, but we still lose power for 8 – 72 hours about once or twice a year. And as you probably know, when you’re on a well, no power means no water. We keep jugs of water in the house, but we decided that an even better solution would be to have a hand pump on the well.

DSCN1503We opted for a Simple Pump. The beauties of this pump are many. It needs no priming. (Older-style pumps require you to pour water into the pump before it will start to draw water, so you’re out of luck if you’re completely out of water, or your priming water is frozen). The pump won’t freeze in the winter – you can use it all year with no modifications. It installs alongside your existing electric pump, so there’s no switchover between electric and manual. In fact, both can be running at the same time. And supposedly, you can run a hose from the Simple Pump to the pressure tank in your basement, charge the pressure tank, and continue to get water flowing out of your faucets. I need a male/male hose adapter, and then I’ll try this out and report on how it goes. [Update: here's the review. The verdict? Possible but maybe not preferable.]

For pumping into a bucket or hose, the Simple Pump is very easy to use. I can operate it with one hand, though I prefer the balance of using two hands. Our well is about 100’ deep, and it takes 5 strokes to get the water going, then an additional 10 strokes to pump a gallon of water. There are two handle settings; the other setting makes pumping easier, but you get less water per stroke. I actually found that setting too easy at our depth, like riding a bike in first gear downhill. A child could definitely pump water, and because of the hose attachment, you could use the pump action to move the water rather than relying on hauling buckets.

The cost of having the Simple Pump installed during new well installation was $1300 (parts and labor). That was a bit steep, especially on top of the $4300-5000 for a typical well installation, but we think it’s worth it. Cribley Well Drilling did the installation; they said this is the 6th or 7th they’ve done this year – so apparently, lots of folks are thinking this is a good idea. It might be something that a group of neighbors could pitch in for, or perhaps a church or Grange.

Whole-house water filters with manganese (?) and iron (rust)I also have to say, the quality of water from the new well just floors me. Our old well was at least 40 years old, we think, and the steel casing was starting to disintegrate. We used a whole-house sediment filter and a Britta pitcher filter, and the water tasted like iron and stained everything. Bathwater was gray from suspended manganese sediment. From time to time, I would switch to store-filtered water for drinking, and it tasted so…clean. (Although even the old well water tasted cleaner than chlorinated city water.)

The water from the new well tastes decent right out of the tap. I’ll be curious to see if that lasts; the well was just bleached, after all. And I know that the plastic (PVC?) lining is not the best thing to be in contact with drinking water, but well water is 55 degrees, and plastic leaches the least when it’s cold. And honestly, after drinking rust flakes and fine particle sediment, I think I’ll risk it. The well driller said we should be able to quit filtering the water completely, too.

So all in all, I’m really pleased. The service from Cribley was fantastic (they even ran a PVC conduit through the basement wall for the hose to charge the pressure tank), the water is great, and the hand pump is everything I’d hoped for. I’m also wondering if the country curse of “iron in the water” is a misnomer, if the iron is actually your disintegrating well casing.

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How we save energy

June 5, 2009 at 4:44 pm (Energy, carbon budget, green living)

global warmingI thought I’d list thethings we do as a matter of course to save energy. You can use this list as a resource, an inspiration, or ignore it completely; just please don’t use it as a springboard for guilt, unless guilt actually motivates you to change.And especially don’t guilt-trip if you’re un/underemployed and just trying to get food on the table.

But if you can put aside a few extra bucks, a lot of this stuff gets at 30% tax rebate until 2010, so now’s a great time to make some of these changes. I’d dearly love it if you would find one or more things on this list that make you think, “Hey, I could do that” and then take 3-6 months to work it into your daily life. If you really commit to doing just one or two at a time, five years from now, you’ll be doing all this and more and it won’t even seem like a drudge.

I do recommend writing out all you do to save energy, though. It sure surprised me to write all this out…it’s become so natural that I don’t even think about it any more.

And please, won’t someone write the “Energy Savings 102″ book? It seems like lots of people say “change your lightbulbs” or “throw away your fridge and furnace” but there’s not a lot out there describing realistic steps to take in between. Well, maybe this is the beginning of that list, and y’all can add your own comments of additional steps to take.

Details, details… Read the rest of this entry »

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Carbon Budget – Year in Review

June 4, 2009 at 7:45 pm (Changing habits, Energy, carbon budget, green living)


Goal: 10.25 tonnes
Actual: 14 tonnes

Well, we missed our goal. By a *lot*. We used only about 1 tonne less carbon than last year, so far as I can tell from my less-than-perfect recordkeeping for 2007-08. I’m not happy about it, and I’m not making excuses. I am looking for reasons, though, and ways to cut. But I also feel like we’ve hit a plateau, and it’s going to take some oomph and hard decisions to further reduce our carbon output.

Goal Used June 2008-May 2009 Conversion factor Carbon emitted US Ave* Our use as % of US Ave**
Gasoline 300 gal 581 (26,000 miles) 19.35 lb/mi 11,244 lb 1000 gal 58%
Air travel 9500 mi 6715 mi 0.55 lb/mi 3693 lb 2400 mi 280%
Electricity 4500 kwh 4970 kwh 1.4 lb/kwh 6958 lb 11,000 kwh 45%
Propane 400 gal 689 gal 12.7 lb/gal 8750 lb 1100 gal 63%
Wood 1 cord 1 cord 150 lb/cord 150 lb ? ?
Total carbon emissions 10.25 tonnes 14 tonnes 2205 lb/tonne 24,084 lb 22.7 t 48%

* per household, or for 2 people
**  Every place you look will tell you a different number for average US carbon emissions per household. To get the average figure of 22.7 tonnes, I used the same conversion factors I used for us and applied them to the US averages I found.

Agonizing detail, including several surprising ways we reduced our impact, after the cut… Read the rest of this entry »

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On Earth Day

April 22, 2009 at 11:37 am (Changing habits, green living)

dancingI’m sure many of you out there act every single day to lessen your impact on the Earth, and so Earth Day might seem superfluous at best; commercialized and wasteful at worst.

I invite you to join my own Earth Day celebration:

Go outside, wherever you are, whatever the weather. Be still. Give your attention to your immediate environment. See if it gives any attention back. Accept that this is where things stand right now. And decide where you want to be standing next year.

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One Stone Carbon Challenge

March 8, 2009 at 7:32 pm (Changing habits, Energy, You must try this, carbon budget, green living)

global warmingIf you read this blog, you’re probably familiar with the idea of global warming, and you know that it is going to have serious effects in the coming decades (see this image only if you want to be depressed). You may also know that scientists are suggesting there is a “point of no return” where we won’t be able to stop or reverse global warming. This point is usually described as a ratio of how much carbon (or more accurately, carbon equivalent[1]) is in the atmosphere. There’s some debate about the exact number, but somewhere between 300 ppm and 450 ppm is considered the “safer” level that will prevent the worst of the effects.

Individual people can have a lot of impact on the total CO2 emissions dumped into the atmosphere. The average American household dumps 18 tonnes of carbon equivalents into the air every year. The sustainable level of carbon emissions – that is, the level that every person in the world could emit and keep the greenhouse effect from worsening beyond the point of no return – is one tonne per person per year [source].

If that sounds like a pretty big drop, well…it is. There’s a group of folks who are committing to make that reduction within a year. They’re calling it the Riot4Austerity, and I take my hat off to them for their bold undertaking, and I hope to reduce my carbon to at least 75% below American average in the next 2 years.

But for me, right now, it’s just too much to change all at once. Anyone else out there feel the same way?

I wanted to come up with a more manageable “chunk” to whittle away at, and I wanted to know the relative merits of various actions. Take the bus for 45 minutes or drive 5 miles? Eat 100% local or go vegetarian? Give up the hair dryer or turn off the A/C? Give up my car, or airplane flights? If I can do one thing to reduce my footprint today, which thing should it be? If I can’t give up my car, how else can I make up the difference?

onestoneAnd so, I bring you the One Stone Carbon Challenge. The basic premise is simple: I’ve created a list of activities which produce, on average, one stone (14 lb) of carbon emissions. You choose activities that prevent 14 pounds of carbon equivalent from entering the atmosphere, and you mark one stone off this chart (200Kb PNG). When you’ve crossed off the 157 stones on the chart, you’ve prevented one tonne of carbon pollution.

I’m putting the detailed calculations on a static page, here, to prevent any further clogging of people’s feed readers.

So, let’s make this a formal Challenge, in best blogging fashion. The One Stone Carbon Challenge runs from now until May 1, 2009. Comment below and tell us:

  1. That you’re participating
  2. Your goal – how many stones will you reduce by May 1?
  3. If you like, tell us your current carbon footprint, and at the end, recalculate your footprint and tell us the difference. Feel free to skip this if it sounds too much like a Weight Watchers weigh-in. ;)

Feel free to snag the icon above to post on your blog, for thems what like badges.

I’ll check back in on May 1!

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Depressing climate news and call to action

March 3, 2009 at 8:11 pm (Changing habits, Energy, green living)

desertDid you see this article in New Scientist magazine? And the map that goes with it? They give a prediction of what the world may look like in the next 50-100 years. We’re talking in my lifetime, the Lower 48 could be so arid they’d only be able to support wind farms, and the entire remaining population of the world would have to move to the Arctic or Antarctic.

It’s a given that the average world temp will rise 2*C before it can possibly start heading back down. The big question is, how much will it rise? Four degrees (the rise this model is predicated upon) is a pretty conservative estimate. I’m not sure how conservative or drastic the interpretation of “what would happen if the temp rises 4*” is; I’ll admit, this looks pretty severe. But just because it’s severe doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

I spent a lot of time thinking about this yesterday. I went around in circles from despair to denial to hopelessness to furious determination and back. And where I’ve landed at the moment is this:

  1. I’m praying the predictions are wrong
  2. I am going to take as much action as I can to reduce my carbon emissions. My personal goal is to reduce my household’s carbon output from 12.7 tons per year to 6 tons per year by June, 2010, with additional steps after that.
  3. I’m asking every person in this blog to commit to reducing their own emissions by 10-20% in the coming year. I will be posting my One Stone Carbon Reduction Challenge within one week. This will give you a roadmap to reducing your carbon footprint in a very meaningful way that will let you see results right away. Think of it as Weight Watchers “points” for carbon emissions.

Every single one of us needs to take the strongest actions possible to reduce our personal carbon emissions impacts, starting right now. I’ve been writing this blog for over a year and have consciously taken the editorial stance of Cheerleader. But I’m afraid my inner Drill Sergeant is going to come out now. We do not have ten years to get started. We do not have time for happy, hand-held baby steps.

Yes, we should have started years ago. Yes, we need government regulation. Yes, China and India need to make changes, too. But dammit, we are the richest, most wasteful country in the world and we need to clean up our own personal acts right now.

Here’s your homework for tonight: go figure out your carbon footprint. Try one or more of the following:

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