Mother's Day is May 8. If you still haven't found that perfect gift for Mom, look no further. I've found it. I found a gift that helps fight global warming by offsetting the impact of your Mom's carbon dioxide emissions. If you're not sure the impact your Mom is having on the environment, grab her energy bills, look up the fuel efficiency of her cars, then calculate her greenhouse gas emissions with this
carbon footprint calculator. Or, if you're afraid you'll give it away, just use the U.S. average. The average household in the United States using electricity and staying warm produces about 12 tons of CO2 emissions each year.
Now, go to
NativeEnergy.com and purchase a WindBuilders Gift Membership starting at One Ton for just $15! Your money will help "plant" a new wind turbine and its clean, renewable energy will reduce the use of fossil fuels to create electricity, offsetting the global warming pollution created by your Mom. Buy your Mom a 12 ton gift certificate and she'll have the same impact on global warming as powering and heating her home with wind for a whole year! ($144)
The
main WindBuilders page has 12, 8, 6 and 1 ton gift certificates. 8 tons is the equivalent of keeping one SUV off the road. So, if your Mom drives one of those nightmares, buy her 8 tons then send her to the
Sierra Club web site. If Mom likes ice cream (and who doesn't?) and you're cheap (and who isn't?), buy her the WindBuilders 1 ton Gift for $15 and she'll get a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.
Remooable EnergyNativeEnergy also offers "
remooable energy" - renewable farm methane projects in PA and VT that you can buy into. These projects capture methane from cow manure and other organic waste and use it to produce electricity. If your Mom has a good sense of humor, help finance one of these projects in her name. I guarantee she'll love the
cow.
According to Earthday.net, Earth Day is celebrated by a half a billion people each year. That's great news for the environment! Or is it? 500 million people celebrating anything doesn't sound very eco-friendly to me. And, where we live in New Jersey, we have a wide range of activities taking place over several days. We could celebrate locally today, drive to Philadelphia tomorrow, then take a trip to New York City on Sunday and really "show our support".On the other hand, we could do nothing. Just imagine if all 500 million Earth Day fanatics did nothing for one day - no parties, no big celebrations, no driving, no TV watching, no eating out and no shopping. Isn't that what Earth Day is all about? Saving the earth. Doing nothing would do more to show how concerned we are about the collective impact we are having on our precious planet.
If 500 million people did nothing for 24 hours, we wouldn't...Don't get me wrong, Earth Day brings awareness to millions of people about the state of our environment, and that's a good thing. I just wish we could make an impact on people without making an impact on the Earth.
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 1:24 PM 1 comments
... call planet Earth.I didn't write that, James Kunstler did in his eye-opening Rolling Stone article, "The Long Emergency. What's going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle.". The article is also long - 3,385 words in all. And, man, is it depressing. It's also a must-read for anyone with a pulse. Part of me hopes it's all true so we'll finally come to our senses and stop our gross suburban sprawl which Kunstler considers to be "the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world". The other part of me hopes he's wrong because we'll have to move and I love where we live. (Here's one of my favorite pictures of our house. BTW, it's not as big as it looks...)
I googled Mr. Kunstler to find out his background. His web site includes his bio with nice pictures at the bottom, a list of books he has authored and a series of even more depressing diary entries.
I've decided not to pull any quotes from his article, there are too many amazing ones and I'll never get this posted. Just read it. You'll see what I mean.
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 8:09 AM 1 comments
I pulled through a Wendy's drive-thru a few weeks ago to pick up 5 baked potatoes for dinner. Big mistake. I had no idea that each potato came in its own little styrofoam "boat" with a non-recyclable plastic lid. I also received 5 plastic forks, a pile of napkins and 10 individually wrapped butters that I didn't need. I guess I should have yelled that into the drive-thru speaker.I was reminded of my Wendy's experience this morning while listening to the radio. According to NPR:After hearing that lovely statistic, I searched for additional facts on McDonald's and discovered that according to their Web site, McDonald's actually serves 47 million customers per day worldwide! (15 million must be only in the US.) To be fair, McDonald's has taken many steps to reduce their environmental impact (which must be appalling!): McDonald's Web site also has a nutritional calculator. Just for goofs, I put in the items I used to eat in college: quarter pounder with cheese, medium fries and a medium soda. The results were startling: 1080 calories and 44 grams of fat (68% of my daily fat requirements!) What I would like to see on McDonald's web site is an environmental calculator. I envision it calculating the environmental impact of your food choices. This would include water and land use, animal abuses, if any, landfill space required, child labor practices, if any, obesity rates, and any other resources required. At the bottom of the page, McDonald's would then multiply your results by the 45 million customers it serves each day. I wonder how many customers they'd lose, if any.
POSTED BY Wendy Richardson co-author of Nerdy Books AT 12:34 PM 7 comments