Did you ever get into the car and just drive?
I have to admit that I did that yesterday. I blew my carbon footprint out of the water. I hate when that happens.
The problem is that I have to consciously live small to control my carbon footprint. A small life is one that stays home most of the time. One of my grandpas lived in the same county his whole life and never traveled out of state. I can't do that.
Even when I'm upset about something and have nowhere in particular to go, I apparently can't do that.
A small life never gets on a plane. A small life never takes a long shower or splurges on strawberries in January or drives the dog to the luxury dog park by the water just because it would be a beautiful day to see the lake.
I can't walk the dog out my front door. I always have to drive somewhere because we live by a highway. For a while, I took Teddy to every dog park within twenty miles at least once. These days, I try to combine his dog park stops with whatever errand I need to run. I try to make a small single loop.
Summer sucks for that. Teddy stays home for all of the errands and then I loop back out to take him somewhere to see his friends. Yes, he has friends. His friends' people ask me how the book is coming along and what happened with that job I was supposed to have gotten. Even Teddy needs to see his friends once in a while. So do I.
It helps my footprint that I 'work' from home. (I'm having a crisis of faith, that writing six pages a day and editing sporadically in between is a 'real' job. Please tell me this is a real job. I need to hear that it's a real job and I'll actually earn decent money some day.)
At least the three dog parks we visit most often are within a fifteen minute drive. The closest one is seven minutes away. The bonus is that the grocery store is on the way home.
Imagine you're an environmentally-minded person who loves to travel the world. How do you manage your carbon footprint then? I know a guy who's traveling the country with his girlfriend in a small RV. They have no other home except their parents' homes. If they don't drive their RV more than I drive in a day, will they ever get across Kansas?
Every time I drove across Kansas, it seemed so incredibly long. You began to look at the Rocky mountains in the middle somewhere and it took forever for them to grow into full-sized mountains. In fact, they're so tall they look like they should arrive much sooner than they do. Kansas seems so flat it feels like you should be able to see the curvature of the earth when you're on the road there. It seems like those mountains should never appear until they are close, almost there. But with the Rockies in Kansas, you're almost there for about eight hundred miles.
So, if my friends adjust that RV to the same amount of gas I consume with my Prius - then how far could they go without blowing up their carbon footprint? It sucks to be an environmentalist traveler, doesn't it?
And what about traveling by plane? What about the classic European tour? How many five minute showers do you have to take to make up for that?
Does anyone have a chart that compares the carbon released for different activities?
Well, the Nature Conservancy has a free carbon footprint calculator, but it doesn't get down to the level of five minute showers versus the flight to Europe. I was excited to know that our lives are small enough that our carbon footprint is 30% smaller than average assuming I did it right. I might not have done it right.
Thirty percent is a start.
But what I want to know is how to keep from exhaling so much, how to keep cows from farting, how to keep our cars from blowing CO2, how to get trees to breathe in and out around me more than I do.
The Nature Conservancy calculator didn't have any questions about how many trees we host on our property. If that were on the questionnaire, we'd be cruising in our attempt to shrink our carbon footprint. We host a lot of trees, big trees, tall trees, trees that breathe out clean oxygen into our air. Douglas fir, Western Red cedar, Japanese maple, Western hemlock, big leaf maple, alder, Alberta spruce. I love our trees. I love how the air smells in our yard, sweet and clean.
Maybe those of us who like to travel should have to host a small forest to make up for our miles. Or plan a bike ride or walkabout instead of a flight. I could just see my mother's face when I tell her we're going to bike out there instead of flying. Ha!
I'd never make it to the Rockies.
Thank you for listening, jules
I have to admit that I did that yesterday. I blew my carbon footprint out of the water. I hate when that happens.
The problem is that I have to consciously live small to control my carbon footprint. A small life is one that stays home most of the time. One of my grandpas lived in the same county his whole life and never traveled out of state. I can't do that.
Even when I'm upset about something and have nowhere in particular to go, I apparently can't do that.
A small life never gets on a plane. A small life never takes a long shower or splurges on strawberries in January or drives the dog to the luxury dog park by the water just because it would be a beautiful day to see the lake.
I can't walk the dog out my front door. I always have to drive somewhere because we live by a highway. For a while, I took Teddy to every dog park within twenty miles at least once. These days, I try to combine his dog park stops with whatever errand I need to run. I try to make a small single loop.
Summer sucks for that. Teddy stays home for all of the errands and then I loop back out to take him somewhere to see his friends. Yes, he has friends. His friends' people ask me how the book is coming along and what happened with that job I was supposed to have gotten. Even Teddy needs to see his friends once in a while. So do I.
It helps my footprint that I 'work' from home. (I'm having a crisis of faith, that writing six pages a day and editing sporadically in between is a 'real' job. Please tell me this is a real job. I need to hear that it's a real job and I'll actually earn decent money some day.)
At least the three dog parks we visit most often are within a fifteen minute drive. The closest one is seven minutes away. The bonus is that the grocery store is on the way home.
Imagine you're an environmentally-minded person who loves to travel the world. How do you manage your carbon footprint then? I know a guy who's traveling the country with his girlfriend in a small RV. They have no other home except their parents' homes. If they don't drive their RV more than I drive in a day, will they ever get across Kansas?
Every time I drove across Kansas, it seemed so incredibly long. You began to look at the Rocky mountains in the middle somewhere and it took forever for them to grow into full-sized mountains. In fact, they're so tall they look like they should arrive much sooner than they do. Kansas seems so flat it feels like you should be able to see the curvature of the earth when you're on the road there. It seems like those mountains should never appear until they are close, almost there. But with the Rockies in Kansas, you're almost there for about eight hundred miles.
So, if my friends adjust that RV to the same amount of gas I consume with my Prius - then how far could they go without blowing up their carbon footprint? It sucks to be an environmentalist traveler, doesn't it?
And what about traveling by plane? What about the classic European tour? How many five minute showers do you have to take to make up for that?
Does anyone have a chart that compares the carbon released for different activities?
Well, the Nature Conservancy has a free carbon footprint calculator, but it doesn't get down to the level of five minute showers versus the flight to Europe. I was excited to know that our lives are small enough that our carbon footprint is 30% smaller than average assuming I did it right. I might not have done it right.
Thirty percent is a start.
But what I want to know is how to keep from exhaling so much, how to keep cows from farting, how to keep our cars from blowing CO2, how to get trees to breathe in and out around me more than I do.
The Nature Conservancy calculator didn't have any questions about how many trees we host on our property. If that were on the questionnaire, we'd be cruising in our attempt to shrink our carbon footprint. We host a lot of trees, big trees, tall trees, trees that breathe out clean oxygen into our air. Douglas fir, Western Red cedar, Japanese maple, Western hemlock, big leaf maple, alder, Alberta spruce. I love our trees. I love how the air smells in our yard, sweet and clean.
Maybe those of us who like to travel should have to host a small forest to make up for our miles. Or plan a bike ride or walkabout instead of a flight. I could just see my mother's face when I tell her we're going to bike out there instead of flying. Ha!
I'd never make it to the Rockies.
Thank you for listening, jules
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