WTF is it and How to Get There.
My wife and I took the Carbonauts course with the legendary Graham Hill — it was fun, practical and all about lean carbon living. It’s about becoming aware of your carbon footprint and take action.
Graham’s mission is to get 3.5% of the population living low footprint lives, which would tip society and move rapidly towards mass net zero living.
It’s compelling and I highly recommend taking the course with a friend or family member. Climate change can feel overwhelming. Here’s your chance to make small changes that become meaningful over your lifetime, and ultimately impact our planet.
Greta Thunberg on Climate W/ Trevor Noah
What I Learned to Reduce My Footprint by 50%
- How to measure your personal footprint (calculator) makes it easier to understand how to cut back.
- Optimizing energy use — we converted our gas furnace and oven to electric / induction which dramatically lowered our energy footprint. Gas is dirty and I’m aiming to be off natural gas soon enough. We have solar/an EV but I learned some interesting things here and think the class is great to get started on the topic. Surprisingly, these changes are not terribly expensive and very practical (eg, a used EV could cost you $5k and dramatically reduce your fuel usage for example).
- Go plant-rich and reducing food waste — Graham admits he is not a full vegetarian, but he does what he can and has a nice philosophy here. For example changing your meat consumption from beef to chicken results in huge carbon gains (if you take nothing else away from this post, eating chicken instead is 10x less environmentally harmful). If you can, go vegetarian though, it’s even more dramatically impactful.
- Fly efficient and buy *quality* carbon offsets — Kayak and Google Flights now show CO2 efficient flights, and with travel our biggest CO2 contributor I liked the idea of (a) bundling trips (b) flying larger and newer aircrafts. Also, we’re committing to offsetting our CO2 consumption with *quality offsets* — this was something new to me, planting trees is not as efficient as refrigerant destruction. One kilo of the refrigerant R410a has the same greenhouse impact as two tonnes of carbon dioxide, which is the equivalent of running your car for six months. Offsets for our footprint will cost us about $200/yr depending on our travel plans.
- Get social — we can’t get to 3.5% without influencing those around us, Graham provides some create 1 liners that we are sending to friends, family, and Twitter. There’s an element of virality when people see me riding my kids to school on a bike, so talk about it and be the change you want to see in the world.
What’s our footprint look like? Our family is mostly vegan eating, 1 EV and mostly biking, clean energy powers most of our house, etc yields a 40T CO footprint, which is less than half a comparable family.
CHEAT SHEET — How You Can Live Lean Carbon
- bike/walk and, if you need a vehicle then go EV
- get solar, or if you can’t, join a community solar program,
- optimize energy usage and switch appliances (heat pumps, induction stove — Michelin chef approved!)
- Get on a plant rich diet, reduce beef consumption at all costs (my tips),
- fly better (low carbon flights, bundle trips),
- reduce plastic use (tips)
- and finally buy quality offsets.
Be aware of your footprint, do what you can to reduce and live carbon lean. Finally, talk about it and spread the word, we’re on our way to 3.5%
