I’ve been reading and hearing a lot lately about “carbon footprints.” I’m not sure who coined this term but I began hearing it about a year ago. I started looking into what this meant and trying to figure out if my carbon footprint was something I really needed to be concerned about or was it just some new fad designed to make a group of people feel good about themselves while fleecing them of every penny one could fleece from them.
What I found out was mixed. You see this carbon footprint issue falls under what we once called global warming but no, more accurately I suppose, call climate change and there are plenty of shysters on both sides of this issue. There is both money to be protected and money to be made being an activist in the global climate change discussion. When money is at stake credibility comes into question.
I trust the actual research scientists looking into global climate change but, as a lay person, I can’t fully understand their papers. I look for papers that can summerize what the researchers’ papers are saying in laymens terms and warning bells start going off telling me these guys don’t understand what they are trying to summerize any better than I do and I may have a foot up on them.
What I finally came up with is that I do need to be concerned with my carbon footprint because the bigger it is the more money it is costing me. This is money I could use to pay off bills and put toward my retirement, which the eventuality of keeps getting closer and closer. I have little concern about global climate change because, as I see it, there is little actual effect I can personally have on affecting the outcome of it one way or another. I can do what I feel is a moral obligation that I have in not being wasteful and to conserve natural resources as best as I can.
To that end I boarded a bus this morning. That bus, in turn, took me to a train station where I caught a train to the airport. From there I got on another bus which dropped me off at least a mile and a half from my office. The total cost of the trip was $1.75. The total leangth of the trip was something like 44 miles. My savings? ~$5.75 or $11.50 for the round trip. If I can do this just twice a week that’s $1,150/yr. In my mind that’s all the reason I need to reduce my carbon footprint.
Other things I’m trying to do is to convert to CF lighting where possible. The problem I’m having with this is that the lamps I’ve been using are not giving me the lifespan promised. However, I have noticed that there has been a reduction in my electricity usage that corresponds to my replacing several incandescent lamps with CF lamps.
What I’m trying to say is that I don’t know if global climate change is real or just another scare but I do know that by using less energy and reducing my waste I can save myself some money and that isn’t a bad thing.
