Oh Dear, Look at What I Have Done: Lowered the heat.

   Image from: http://avhsenvironmentalclub.blogspot.com/2010/01/bulletin-green-tip-3-turn-down-your.html

     Here is a fact: living in a cold climate is not good for the planet. No matter how you look at it, those of us who live far from the equator use a huge amount of energy to heat our homes and keep ourselves comfortable in the winter. In order to find out the average room temperature of Canadian homes I turned towards tenant acts to see what the minimum temperatures were demanded by law. It turns out that in BC there is very little information about this, it seems that BC has no law governing temperatures and lets municipalities decided. Looking locally all I could find for Kelowna was a proposed by-law from 2002 and a draft resolution calling for a minimum temperature of 20 degrees Celsius, as far as I could find this has not passed. It appears that this minimum is in line with many municipalities in Ontario which must maintain residential properties at either 68 or 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

     These minimum standards are very important for ensuring that no renters must face a winter in the cold and have access to a safe environment which is warm enough to support a healthy life. I will go right out and say that I do not believe that anyone other than those with poor immune systems need to maintain such a high temperature in the winter. Maintaining a house at 20 Celsius allows one to comfortably lounge around in a t-shirt in blissful ignorance of the winter outside of their walls. That's great, and while were at it why don't we eat candy for every meal because it tastes better, never exercise because its too much work, and drink a pint of whisky everyday because it gives us that perky stride.

     Luckily for the planet, my landlord doesn't believe in paying to keep the house warm in the winter. We keep our thermostat set at 58 F during the day and 55 degrees at night. Yes you heard me, fifty-five, or around 12.4 degrees C. Now when the winter started up I wasn't too happy to hear that the house was going to be so cold all of the time but because the landlord is a friend and also lives in the same house in the same conditions, I was willing to give it a chance. 

     Here is what I've discovered: it isn't as bad as it sounds. I wear sweaters more, sometimes I wear long underwear under my jeans, and most importantly I started to use a small 900w space heater. Now think about it: I've been sitting at my desk in my room for about 2 hours, I have the space heater running and I'm comfortably sitting in jeans and a t-shirt as I write this. The rest of the house is about 55-58 F, but that's just fine, everyone else is away at work and I'm only using one room. So based on this strategy I only need to heat the room that I'm actually using rather than a big empty house, this not only saves us money on our energy bill but also dramatically reduces the carbon footprint of our house. Using this quick calculator available on WarmAir.net, lowering our thermostat reduces our energy consumption by around 30%. I'm not suggesting that everyone should start to turn their thermostats down as much as we do, I'm just trying to say that its possible and I adapted to it fast. If I can turn my heat down to 55 F than surely the average Canadian can manage to keep their thermostat set at around 65 F. According to calculator mentioned before turning the thermostat from 70 F to 65 F will result in a 12% decrease in energy use.

    As I said earlier, those of us who live in colder climates require much more energy than those who live closer to the equator. Look outside, its winter! It's cold! If were going to live here we need to make some sacrifices. I love keeping the thermostat at 75 F as much as anyone else but the truth is that we are depleting our planet of resources and polluting its atmosphere in order to keep out feet warm. Put on socks, go for a run, get a space heater and only heat the room you're using, get into the kitchen and cook something over that warm stove, if you're still cold than you're doing it wrong. 

Green Piece Profile: Green Thing

An Image from Green Thing

This week’s Green Piece profile is about Naresh Ramchandani and Andy Hobsbawm who co-founded the Green Thing Blog and webpage with hopes to create a difference environmentally. Both men have careers in off an online communications, a lot of which focuses on web-based media.  Naresh and Andy are still part of Green Thing, but they currently have 6 other people who are helping run this website.

The link for their website is http://www.dothegreenthing.com/, and I encourage you to sign up. I signed up for free today, and was shocked by the variability of available interactions on this website. Users can add their own green story, purchase clothing and other items, and read about how to do greener things, such as being "all-consuming".

Green Thing has multimedia which leads to inspire people to “do the green thing” in their everyday lives, similar to what we are trying to accomplish with this blog. This blog is much larger scale, including people from over 200 countries worldwide! However, this blog is less personal and only includes 7 green things at this time. It does not appear that this blogger site will expand greatly in the future, but it was an interesting site that I wanted to profile as it had similar goals to us!

My Big Feet: Andrew

   Compared the average global citizen, my ecological footprint is huge! I used the myfootprint.org carbon footprint calculator mentioned earlier by Amy to calculate my impact of this planet. According to the results, if everyone was an aweful of a person as I am then we would require the resources of 3.83 earths to sustain our lavish lifestyles. In all honesty though, compared to the averages for Canada I'm on par or way under the average in every category.
 
     My carbon footprint in particular, while still very high at 12.3 tonnes of greenhouse gases (GHG), is less than half of the Canadian average of 29 tonnes of GHG. One of the biggest factors in reducing my carbon footprint is my use of a fuel efficient motorcycle and public transportation around town along with relatively fewer miles driven per year than many other Canadians, and the smaller size of my house as compared to the national average. One of my largest contributions to GHG emissions is from air travel. Because I fly across the country at least four times per year in order to visit family in Ontario, my air travel is one of my most significant contributions to GHG emissions.
   
     One place where I scored on par with the average is in my food footprint. Self-identifying as an omnivore, doing the majority of my shopping at supermarkets, not growing any food, and not making conscious choices to choose organic food products all brought my score up the the national average. According to the calculator cutting meat of your diet, buying directly from farmers markets and co-ops, and always choosing organic foods can significantly reduce the impacts to the planet from your diet.

   Cutting these numbers down is no easy task, like Amy I share a house with an umber of other people and do not have much control over what everyone else does or over the types of electronic devices used in the house. Cutting down my food footprint would be possible however as a student, I lack the funds to purchase organic options. Also because it is winter and I ride a motorcycle or a bus when I shop for groceries it is much too time consuming to visit multiple stores by bus and much too cold to shop around on my bike, because of this I usually need the convenience of a supermarket and often cannot purchase organic food products.

My Big Feet: Amy

To begin this blog, we would like to see how we are impacting our environment. Once we have found out the negative effects of our actions on the environment, we can better position our efforts to optimally improve our footprints. As a fun, interactive way to calculate this I have visited a website called http://www.myfootprint.org/ .

This website asks you a series of questions and proceeds to calculate your footprint. In the end you are shown how many earths the population would require is everyone lived like you.

I took this test, and unfortunately found that according to my results we would need about 4 earths to sustain this population!

It also compares your footprint to the average for your country. The areas which I was above, or close to the countries average included housing footprint and food footprint. These areas are where I plan to focus the bulk of my attention.  Unfortunately, many aspects of sustainable housing are out of reach for me, as I do live with 5 other people and cannot change many aspects of the house, as well I do not have the ability to purchase things like sustainably made furnishings or water saving appliances.  

I look forward to creating challenges to reduce my footprint and hopefully in the end of this, I will re-take the test and find that I have lowered my footprint!

Green Piece Profile: Fracking up the environment

     Today's Green Piece comes from the Citizen's Campaign for the Environment (CCE) based out of the great State of New York. The CCE is a non-profit group which has been working at bringing attention to local environmental issues and lobbying their government on a number of environmental issues.

     The CCE's newest campaign is to raise awareness of and hopefully stop hydraulic fracturing operations in the US. Hydraulic fracturing also known as fracking is a method of petroleum and natural gas extraction from shale beds. Wells are drilled down deep into the rock and water and chemicals are pumped into the well in order to stimulate the release of the the valuable gases which are subsequently recovered at the surface. This diagram provides a simplified view of this process:

     From The High Country News - Green Justice Blog

     The Fracking industry has been in hot water recently due to the documentary GASLAND, which has highlighted the dangers which fracking poses to drinking water supplies local ecosystems and brought the issue to the attention a wider audience.

     Fracking shale to release natural gas has a number of side effects, some of the most troubling being the release of massive amounts of methane gas and small earth quakes which have been reported to have been caused by this process. The methane gas is reportedly responsible for groundwater contamination in areas near fracking sites and is being released into the atmosphere. Methane gas is one of the largest contributors to the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere and its release from fracking contributes to the overall warming of the planet.

 
     On Saturday February 25th the CCE held a rally in NYC hoping to bring attention to fracking and connect concerned citizens. They hoped that by bringing a national concern to the local consciousness that they would have a better chance to change public opinion and gain followers for their cause. The Council of Canadians is leading a similar campaign on this side of the border, publishing maps showing the location of fracking activities and encouraging canadians to get involved by signing a petition calling for a moratorium on fracking in Canada.

    I'm hoping that the CCE and other environmental groups can get the ball rolling on this issue and make enough noise to be heard by decision makers. The fracking industry is rapidly growing and will be extremely difficult to slow down. Shale gas extracted through fracking has gone from representing 2% of natural gas production in the US in 2000 to 23% in 2010. This massive industry represents billions to the US economy and provides jobs for many people. Convinving leaders that it is the wrong path will be a difficult task indeed.

A Word of Introduction

Hello Readers!

This blog is one which hopes to inform and inspire you to take a look once more on how you are affecting the planet, and if this matched what you could be doing. This blog has potential to include tips and hints for how to reduce your impact, highlight people with great accomplishments or ideas about environmentalism, and also provide details of our own personal experiences as we tackle certain challenges posed by ourselves and potentially – our classmates.

Thank you for reading