Going Green in Comfort

Photo by Holger Link on Unsplash Amid the stories in my Facebook feed of how deadly Covid-19 was in China and its progression to other nations, was this map: NASA and European Space Agency This shows the nitrogen dioxide — most commonly produced by automobiles and power and industrial facilities — in the air over China from before the Covid-19 quarantines began to a period during the emergency measures. The difference is startling, and as the virus spreads and other governments enact similar quarantines, more nations will also see a drop in nitrogen dioxide until the crisis passes. Since I first saw this comparison, I’ve wondered if this might be the silver lining in an otherwise devastating epidemic? Could this sudden drop in what people continuously pump into our atmosphere buy us more time to make permanent environment-friendly behavior changes? An ABC News story posted March 5, 2020, is not encouraging on this front. Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at...

In 12 years, my daughter will be 19. Another round of midterms will be just weeks away, and for the first time, my daughter and her peers will be old enough to vote. But if we haven't acted by then to limit global warming to a 1.5 degree Celsius temperature increase, there will likely be little those new voters can do to alter what could be a very bleak future, according to the U.N. report on climate change released Oct. 6, 2018. Even at a 1.5-degree increase, we'd have problems — and already do at the current 1-degree increase. The effects can be felt not just in extreme weather, but in crop yields, heat-related deaths, flooding, and more. But those negative impacts increase rapidly as the world heats up, even by a fraction of a degree, the report shows. The Guardian compiled a graphic showing the impacts and threats by degree, based on the U.N. report, that shows coral reefs already are at high to very high risk. (Scroll down on the previous link to "Rising Tem...

I don't have a programmable thermostat in my home, but I know the benefits of turning down the temperature when your home is empty. It can mean more money in your bank account and is kinder to the environment. I can get behind that. The challenge for me is remembering to make that adjustment each day before I head out the door to work. And when I do remember, quite often, my husband and I will walk around the house for days, bellyaching about how cold our house is, worrying that our heater has crapped out and wondering how we could afford to replace it. Then one of us will look at the thermostat and realize we never turned it back up. But I want to have a few more dollars in my pocket each month. I want to do a little more to reduce my carbon footprint. So I've set my phone to alert me each day at the same time that I need to turn the thermostat down. If I forget to turn it back up later, so be it. It's for the best in the long run. We are a particip...

(Image by Stuart Miles / FreeRangeStock.com ) Recently, my daughter asked me where paper comes from. The question seemed out of the blue, so I figured she probably already knew the answer, probably something she learned while watching YouTube. "Trees," I said. "I don't know how they do it, but they make paper from trees." After a short pause, she told me that she didn't want to color anymore because coloring on paper would mean that trees would be cut down. But then she qualified it. "Well, I don't want to do a lot of coloring." Her concern for the trees made me smile. I don't think her motivation had anything to do with living greener, but rather was nothing more than a brief feeling of guilt about what happens to a tree in part because she enjoys drawing and coloring. But I like that she thought about it and felt the need to take action.* As I make changes for a greener lifestyle, I've toyed with the ide...

Baby clothes drying on the line. Back in May, I wrote about how my husband, who does the laundry in our house, has been using a clothesline for several years. When I had told him what my post was about that week, he confessed that he hadn't been hanging out as many clothes as he used to. Last year, he was hanging out everything except our unmentionables. This summer, only one load a week got hung out to dry, which made the umbrella-style pop-up clothesline in the background of the photo above unnecessary. He and I both vowed to do better, with me promising to help hang out clothes if he wants. So far, he hasn't asked for me to help, but because he's a man of his word, he took the pop-up clothesline out of the garage recently, stuck it in the ground and went back to hanging out everything but our underwear. Side note: Did you know that if you don't use a pop-up clothesline for a year or so, the ground builds up around the cement hole you made for it? It to...

(Jack Moreh/FreeRangeStock.com) Years ago, my husband and I belonged to a gym. It was a great gym. It had a pool and an indoor walking track, my favorite features. I've always loved swimming, and I like the idea of being able to walk without getting outside in the miserable heat this time of year is known for. But the best part was that it was on our way to and from work. We didn't have to go far out of our way to go there. I miss that gym, but it cost more than we can afford, especially now that we're parents. I've thought about moving to a cheaper gym, but I don't. The cheaper ones take longer to drive to, and in the few months I've been actively trying to minimize my carbon footprint, I've become more reluctant to drive more than necessary, especially to have to commit to doing it several days a week. I could walk outside at the gym or in my neighborhood, but it's darn hot out there, especially this time of year. So these days,...

Working in the cloud ( Jack Moreh / FreeRangeStock.com ) My boss wants us to work as much in the cloud as possible. The more we do virtually, as her thinking goes, the less we spend on paper products. So we don't have wall or desk calendars, and just about all inner-office document sharing is done in Google Docs. I agree with the premise. The more work we can do without wasting paper, the more trees we save, right? Call me old school, but for me, breaking the paper habit is easier said than done. I like being able to glance at my desk calendar as I settle in with  to see what I have scheduled for the day. I like having sticky notes handy for jotting down notes during a phone call. And last but not least, I can edit better on a sheet of paper than I can on a screen. But in the interest of living greener, I've decided to adapt. I've started keeping track of my personal appointments through the calendar function on my phone, and I've started keeping track of...

Can we make the world cool back down? ( Geoffrey Whiteway / FreeRangeStock.com ) On Monday evening, my husband headed out for an exercise walk just as the sun was going down. When he came back home some 45 minutes later, I asked how his walk went. It was fine, he said, except for the damn heat and humidity. I started to tell him that it will get better once the majority of the planet gets on board with greener living, but then I wondered, is that true? If everyone on earth quit burning fossil fuels, began planting more trees than were cut down every year, and halted every other environmentally unfriendly practice, would Earth's temperature begin to cool back down, or would they just stop rising? A web search gave me some insight, but not a lot. According to an undated post on the MIT School of Engineering website, through which visitors are invited to "Ask an Engineer" states that studies have focused more on mitigating the problem than on reversing it. (Re...

For Mother's Day, I took my grandma out to eat at the restaurant of her choice. We talked about what family members we had seen lately, what new body aches we've each begun suffering from and her roommate's TV viewing habits, which drive my grandma nuts. "She has that TV on from the time she gets up until the time she goes to bed," Grandma said. "Sometimes, I just go sit on the porch so I can get some quiet." "Yeah," I said, "I can see how that can get on your nerves." And it's true. I really can see that. However, I am just as guilty of having the TV on more than I should. The only difference is that Grandma's roommate is actually watching it when she turns it on. I often have it on "for noise." No more TV "just for noise." ( Adamophoto / FreeRangeStock.com ) My grandma grew up without TV, and didn't have one in her home until after she and my grandpa married. In those early years, sta...

I cannot shake the hands of everyone who participated in the March for Science on Saturday, April 22, (Earth Day) but I am very heartened by the number who showed up. While the purpose of the march wasn't solely about climate change, it is the science issue that worries me most — and it seems to be the one most under attack. (Image by Stuart Miles/ FreeRangeStock.com) I've accepted that climate change was real from the moment I first heard of it, except for a brief moment at work one day when a co-worker who noticed a story about climate change in the newspaper commented about how stupid people were to concern themselves with it. "It's cyclical!" he added. "Huh," I thought, "how can climate change proponents be so certain it isn't just cyclical?" Though a decade or two had passed since I'd sat in an earth science class, I did recall learning something about natural temperature shifts. It seemed plausible. So I googled it. ...