The headlines get hotter as the temperature gets hotter. We read and hear about rising world temperatures and have to wonder, “what will next year bring?” Our human condition seems to be one of concern, but at the same time ignoring our complicity in generating carbon emissions.
What can you do? What should you do?
Rather than wringing our collective and singular hands, we can all act. Every individual can take specific steps to change behavior and actions. Those steps can be small or big.
If you own a low MPG vehicle, like a large pickup truck, the next time you purchase a vehicle, make it one that gets improved mileage. Shoot for an average of 30 MPG minimum. It can be done. Force the hands for the auto makers.
If you’re handing down a vehicle to one of your kids who is just starting to drive, make it a hybrid. Lower emissions, better gas mileage on average than pure gasoline-fired autos.
Do other people head the same direction that you do for work? Consider car pooling.
A good friend has gone to a vegetarian diet in the past three years after heavily researching what steps an individual can take to reduce their personal carbon footprint and finding that eliminating meat from your diet is the biggest positive step you can take. Maybe you don’t want to totally cut out meat, so take steps to reduce your intake incrementally. See where that goes.
Stop mowing your grass so much. Take some of your grass out of commission and plant other native vegetation or create some artistic structure that fires your creativity and gets compliments from the neighbors. That’s fun.
Walk. Ride your bike. Even more fun, buy an e-bike. We had the opportunity to ride one on a trip recently, and what a joy it was to pedal longer distances with less effort. Put baskets on the e-bike. Run errands with it. Pedal to the supermarket, library, post office, or your other local stops effortlessly with the e-boost.
Plant diverse trees on your property. We have added 30-40 different types of trees on our property over the past seven years. Some didn’t make it, so the number that will mature is not that high. Keep planting. If one type of tree won’t make it in your climate zone, find the best trees for your area and put those in instead. Experiment. Appreciate the hard exercise and sweat equity you put into digging and depositing dirt, dropping the tree roots into the hole, covering it up and tamping it down.
No one is impotent when it comes to actions they can take to lower our world carbon output. We all have influence. We all should take steps. Don’t put it off.
There has never been a perfect world, nor will there ever be. The human species has always been faced with evolutionary challenges. Our blessing and our curse are our ability to think ahead and create tools to enhance our lives. We’ve built a degree of leisure and ease into our lives at the expense of rapidly changing the ecosystem which sustains us in a very short period of time by historical standards.
Our brains and ability to develop and deploy technology are at the root of finding the solutions to the byproducts we create. It’s on all of us. We must commit and act. Now is the time.
What can you do? What should you do?
Rather than wringing our collective and singular hands, we can all act. Every individual can take specific steps to change behavior and actions. Those steps can be small or big.
If you own a low MPG vehicle, like a large pickup truck, the next time you purchase a vehicle, make it one that gets improved mileage. Shoot for an average of 30 MPG minimum. It can be done. Force the hands for the auto makers.
If you’re handing down a vehicle to one of your kids who is just starting to drive, make it a hybrid. Lower emissions, better gas mileage on average than pure gasoline-fired autos.
Do other people head the same direction that you do for work? Consider car pooling.
A good friend has gone to a vegetarian diet in the past three years after heavily researching what steps an individual can take to reduce their personal carbon footprint and finding that eliminating meat from your diet is the biggest positive step you can take. Maybe you don’t want to totally cut out meat, so take steps to reduce your intake incrementally. See where that goes.
Stop mowing your grass so much. Take some of your grass out of commission and plant other native vegetation or create some artistic structure that fires your creativity and gets compliments from the neighbors. That’s fun.
Walk. Ride your bike. Even more fun, buy an e-bike. We had the opportunity to ride one on a trip recently, and what a joy it was to pedal longer distances with less effort. Put baskets on the e-bike. Run errands with it. Pedal to the supermarket, library, post office, or your other local stops effortlessly with the e-boost.
Plant diverse trees on your property. We have added 30-40 different types of trees on our property over the past seven years. Some didn’t make it, so the number that will mature is not that high. Keep planting. If one type of tree won’t make it in your climate zone, find the best trees for your area and put those in instead. Experiment. Appreciate the hard exercise and sweat equity you put into digging and depositing dirt, dropping the tree roots into the hole, covering it up and tamping it down.
No one is impotent when it comes to actions they can take to lower our world carbon output. We all have influence. We all should take steps. Don’t put it off.
There has never been a perfect world, nor will there ever be. The human species has always been faced with evolutionary challenges. Our blessing and our curse are our ability to think ahead and create tools to enhance our lives. We’ve built a degree of leisure and ease into our lives at the expense of rapidly changing the ecosystem which sustains us in a very short period of time by historical standards.
Our brains and ability to develop and deploy technology are at the root of finding the solutions to the byproducts we create. It’s on all of us. We must commit and act. Now is the time.
