Rob (over at One Straw: Be The Change) had a great post last week about New Year’s Revolutions, and I am totally jumping on that bandwagon. His categories are re-localization, re-skilling, and re-building community. I might also add “reliance” to that – learning to trust your own skills to get you through.

What revolutionary acts am I committing myself to this year?

• Teaching through Preserving Traditions. This will include classes on food preservation and cooking. This year, we’ll do more intro canning classes, work days for preserving large batches of salsa and such, and also do some more work with animal products: chicken stock, butter, and probably cheese, too. This will address re-skilling and community in a big way.
• Make connections among the right people around a couple projects. Specifically, a local slaughterhouse and a gasifier project. I don’t think my place is in the middle of either project, but I may be able to connect a few dots.
• Start learning about large-scale cool storage of vegetables. To that end: build a root cellar and learn how to use it. I don’t know where this will go – helping others build home-scale cold storage or something on a larger commercial scale – but I need to start with getting a feel for the process. This will also give me a chance to finally learn some basic carpentry skills!
• Reduce fuel use and favor local fuels. To that end: use wood heat as much as possible and reduce propane use from 700 gallons of propane in 2008-09 to 400 gallons in 2009-10. (So far, we’ve saved about 150 gallons, I think. We usually have a fill-up around New Year’s Day of 330 gallons, and we’ve got 50% of our tank left.) I’d love to save more electricity, but I’m honestly not sure how to do that at this point. We’ve harvested all that low-hanging fruit!
• And on the gardening front, I will
  • build more compost. I’ve been slacking in this area, using compost mainly as a disposal system and resting on the fertile laurelsof newly-made garden beds. Time to step up my actual building of soil. First concrete step is to compost my existing garden beds with the compost I made last year. Second step is to build actual thoughtful, layered compost so I’ll have something to spread in the fall.
  • work on succession planting for peas, beans, broccoli, and kale to extend the fresh seasons of those crops
  • grow all my own kale, peas, onions, and potatoes for next year. More on that in an upcoming post…

Yesterday, in my post on local food, MK and Patty pointed out that if local eating is really going to take off, people need to know how to cook, and realize cooking isn’t necessarily more time-consuming than cooking from a box.

This got me thinking…what are foods that people could easily make at home, but think they can’t? The idea would be to have a series of cooking classes with the theme “Yes, you can cook it at home.”These things would ideally take no special equipment or hours of prep, and would replicate things that people think they “have to” buy because it’s way too hard to make them at home.

Here are some of my initial ideas:

• Chinese restaurant-style sauces (white, brown, sweet-and-sour, and spicy orange glaze)
• Crackers
• Pizza
• Fajitas
• Fish sticks & chicken nuggets
• French fries (oven fries)
• Lasagne

What else can you think of?

Going 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.

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.

* 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…

Here are some factors to take into consideration

• Most of our family lives far away – 600-1000 miles away. Not visiting is not an option at this point in time.
• My husband was participating in some training that required 1300-mile round trips 3x/year. He carpooled with 2 other people and he always drove, because our Prius gets the best gas mileage of the available options. That training is done, and will eliminate nearly 400o miles of travel next year.
• Our stove, dryer, and hot water are electric. No other option where we live, except maybe solar water pre-heating.
• We had a leak in our propane tank for 6-9 months last year.
• We live in southern Michigan; temps got down to -20 at times this winter. Our thermostat is set at 55 when we’re out of the house; 63 when we’re home and awake; 57 overnight.
• We bought a full cord of wood but didn’t use it – next year, we’ll do more wood heat instead of heating the whole house.
• We bought wind offsets from our power company AND from Native Energy, to the tune of 125% of our electric usage. However, we’re counting offsets as a “gift” and recording our actual usage here.
• Our wood was harvested by a neighbor about 3 miles from the house and consisted mainly of ash trees killed by the emerald ash borer.

Things that really, really helped us save energy

We had already plucked a lot of low-hanging fruit like CFLs, carpooling to work, and putting plastic on the windows in the winter. Here are a few things that don’t show up on many how-to-save-energy lists that REALLY worked for us:

• Fixing the propane leak. The month we got it fixed, we saved 125 gallons of propane over the previous month. If we’d fixed the leak earlier, we might have made our propane goal.
• Putting in the fireplace insert . Inserts seal up tight, like a wood stove, and block the flow of warm air up the chimney. Keep in mind – we had an inflatable flue blocker installed, but you could tell air was always moving through there. So fixing (sealing) the fireplace let us turn the temp down, saved 175 gallons of propane (maybe twice that, if we’d fixed the propane leak sooner), and felt *warmer*. If you can’t spring for a fireplace insert (~$5000), seriously consider getting the chimney permanently capped (~$350). You are losing more heat up the chimney than you’re gaining by burning wood – not to mention that inserts trap/reburn much, much more of the pollution caused by burning wood.
• Heating only the main living space, when practical. The fireplace heats the living room but doesn’t do much for the rest of the house. We’d heat with wood one evening and one or two weekend days each week and let the furnace kick on overnight. We didn’t start a fire when we were only going to be home and awake for an hour or two. Next year, we’ll try to do more of our heating with wood, though that may mean we use a small electric heater in the bedroom to take the chill off. I’ve discovered it’s hard for me to sleep when my nose is cold and runny.
• I discovered I feel colder when the temp gets up to 68, vs. 63 degrees. We’re still learning how to regulate the heat from the fireplace, so there were times when the living room got up to 68 according to the room thermometer. I generally felt colder then than I did when the fireplace was still heating up and the room was 62-63 degrees. My only explanation for this is that maybe I was getting too warm and starting to sweat, which then made me feel cold.
• Our furnace has a large phantom power draw. In May, 2009, our electric usage was 130kwh (30%!) less than average. I can think of two things we did during that time: One, we turned off our radon fan for a week or so. (But I’ve done that before and not noticed a dip in kwh). Secondly, our furnace has an off switch right on the furnace. (It looks like a light switch.) I turned the furnace off at the switch off for about half of May, rather than just turning the thermostat off. I think our furnace was drawing a lot of “standby power” even when it was not in use. Hopefully, we can keep the central system off for the summer, except for the nights when it’s too hot and humid to sleep.

So ok. We were nearly 4t over our goal, and only about 1t less than my estimate of last year’s emissions. But we still managed to be under 50% of average US carbon emissions this year, which isn’t bad. It’s still too much, but it’s not horrible. I guess it takes more than a year to make changes of this scope.

What these results tell us

• We drive a lot. Even at an average 45 mpg, gasoline is our #1 carbon emission. We do carpool, combine trips, and all that good stuff, but we’re 11 miles from town, so round trips add up. Long car trips are our big downfall, though. And they’re tough to cut because our best friends, most of our family, and important parts of our spiritual life are 650 miles away.
• We need to find a more efficient way to heat our home in the winter. We insulated the attic to R65 a couple years ago, and we put the fireplace insert in, but heating 1800 square feet for 2 people is just silly.
• We use more electricity than we could possibly “make up for” with solar, wind, or human power. While our electric usage is less than half US average, and I don’t think we have that many appliances, lights, etc., we still use way more electricity than we should. We use about 13.5 kwh/day; suggested use for a solar array is 3 kwh/day. This is a tough one to cut, because out here in the boonies there’s no alternate fuel for hot water, stove, and dryer, and I’d thought we had already cut all phantom power and useless gadgets.

Changes we’re planning to make next year

• Keep the furnace turned off at the switch as much as possible without freezing people or pipes.
• Heat more with wood – any time we’re in the house and awake for more than 2-3 hours.
• Insulate the walls of the house and see if we can turn the thermostat down any more.
• Get a new, better-sealed and -insulated front door.
• I’m going to shower only every other day, and wash my hair on the off days. (I have a really hard time getting out of a hot shower! I tried timing myself this year, which helped, but I think just skipping showers will be easier with better results.)
• Washing clothes on true cold, rather than “auto temp cold” – which is actually using some hot water.
• Fewer long trips by car.
• Air travel is dicey; we have family with health issues and won’t have as much control over our need to fly as we’d like.
• Experiment more with environmental energy: solar cooking, haybox cooking, freezing jugs of water on the deck in the winter and putting them in the fridge, etc.
• Contemplate unplugging the fridge in the winter (use ice jugs and turn it into a cooler) and unplug the tiny chest freezer in the summer (eat all the food until harvest/hog season comes back).

So that’s where we are. Next year’s goal is 10.5 tonnes. We’ll see how that goes!

I’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.

If 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?

And 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!

Did 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:

• The Nature Conservancy
• EPA
• Carbon Fund
• Carbon Counter

Something I read quite often these days is “We really just eat meat as a condiment.” I know, in theory, that this means meat is not the center of every meal, but what I want to know is, what does that look like? If you perceive yourself as “not eating a lot of meat,” how many ounces are we talking about? Four ounces per serving? Two ounces in a six-serving casserole? Six ounces instead of ten, and lots of vegetables on the side? A shaving of prosciutto sprinkled on like parsley?

Tell me – or better yet, show me – what you consider to be “not very much meat.” Actual weights and number of servings would be much appreciated. What kinds of meat work best for this manner of omnivory?

Hey, folks-

I’m hatching my next project – sort of a carbon-reduction challenge for those of us not yet ready to go for the 90% reduction levels of the Riot 4 Austerity. I could use a few more pairs of eyes to check my math and help me figure out a few calculations.

If you’re interested in helping out with a couple hours of research and middle-complexity math calculations, drop me a comment. The final product will be available here for free, and your contribution will of course be cited. :

Emily

I’m sure many of you know about Heifer International, which provides livestock and training to folks around the world (including the US). You can “give a gift of a flock of chickens” to a friend; your friend receives a card, and a family somewhere in the world gets the chickens.

Oxfam has a similar type of system, though their gifts include a wider range of items: not just livestock, but mosquito nets, school books, water pumps, and the like.

With both of these programs, you’re actually giving a cash donation to the organization to be distributed as need dictates. So, you’re not actually giving a hive of bees; you’re giving a cash donation roughly equivalent to the price of setting someone up with a hive of bees. In fact, your money might be used to buy five flocks of ducklings instead of a hive of bees.

I’m fine with this arrangement. The “gift” pretense makes it much more fun to personalize the gift to the recipient, and also gives the organization the latitude it needs to do its work. I trust that they will do good things with my donation; Charity Navigator gives Heifer 3 stars and Oxfam 4 stars.