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The Sign in Carolyn's EV-1
We noticed that about 20% of people
walking past the EV-1 would peer intently inside the car. So
we created this little primer that we placed in the back window.
Welcome to my General Motors
Saturn EV-1!
YES! This is a totally cool &completely
ELECTRIC car!
Some Frequently Asked Questions:
Why do I have this car?
 I am
experimenting with what one individual can do to reduce their
household contribution to the problems of global warming, air
pollution and energy consumption.
It turns
out that the #1 thing that a household can do, is to replace
their gasoline-powered cars with electric cars. The EV-1 is the
#1 greenest car available today according to the 1999 Green
Guide to Cars & Trucks. Though it's not yet suitable
for all patterns of driving, it's the best choice for a household's
second car.
I'm
going to write about my "exploits" in the San Diego
Earth Times (www.sdearthtimes.com) and the San Diego Daily
Transcript (www.sddt.com) and for the Sierra Club Global
Warming Program.
How's
the performance?
Because
electric motors have higher torque at low speeds than gasoline
engines, it accelerates like a bat-out-of-hell! like the "Rocket
Rods" at Disneyland.
How
do you charge it?
The
charger is the narrow slot at the front of the car. The car comes
with a charging system that allows you to just plug it in.
How
long does it take to charge?
1-2
hours from a station charger. 12 hours via the emergency charger.
I'm learning to just plug-it-in when I park it, and I leave it
on the charger overnight. So every morning you wake up with a
full charge.
How
far does it go on a charge?
The
answer to this question varies greatly depending on how you drive
it and where you drive it. This car is getting up to 40-41 miles
from a full charge. The range will be less when you do a lot
of hilly driving like I do around Pacific Beach and Clairemont.
How
much does it cost?
You
cannot buy a car outright, they are only available via a lease
agreement. You pay a monthly fee of $400-500/month, depending
on the model, and that includes 24-hour emergency service for
those special occasions when you might miscalculate and run out
of juice and you don't have a long enough extension cord!
Why
is this a greener car?
When
burned, the carbon in a gallon of gasoline combines with oxygen
from the air to produce about 19 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2).
Counting the energy that went into making and distributing the
gas, the total global warming impact equals 30 pounds of CO2
emissions per gallon. The emissions from an EV-1 are significantly
lower.
CO2
is the most important "greenhouse gas," which are the
emissions that trap heat in the atmosphere and contribute to
global warming.
American
vehicles account for more fossil fuel CO2 emission than the total
nationwide emissions of all but three other COUNTRIES in the
world. Pollution from gas-vehicle tailpipes, emitted at ground
level, directly in city streets, exposes more people to higher
concentrations of pollutants than do the power plants that charge
this car.
You
can now change your energy company to green power providers such
as Commonwealth or Green Mountain and be part of the marketplace
demanding and using greener power systems. An EV-1 can be powered
by geothermal or solar power!
Miscellaneous
This
is a COOL CAR! VERY FUN to drive and more than a little odd in
some ways. For instance, it has the world biggest dashboard and
no glove compartment!
There
is no ignition system or exhaust of any kind. You push buttons
to turn it on and go. It's so quiet, they have it make a sound
when you shift into reverse so people can hear something coming.
It's much more responsive than driving regular cars. You recharge
the batteries every time you go downhill or use the brakes, so
you get instant feedback about your energy use.
The
car is designed to work without keys, i.e., the locks are electric.
The only key with the car is a small "valet key" for
when you want to let someone in to drive it without giving them
the security codes. But if you run out of juice and you've forgotten
your key - because you don't use valet parking anyway - and this
car doesn't "need keys," you can't get into the car!
Oh well. These are the types of design lessons you learn from
anytime you are using new technologies.
Thank you for your interest. To receive stories of my exploits, send email to:  or visit our website at www.sdearth times.com
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 he
old U-Haul slogan "Adventures in Moving" always made
me think that the U-Haul folks at least had a sense of humor
about their business. Adventure is about the last thing I like
to cultivate when moving.
The same could
be said about driving. Driving is an activity where you want
to enjoy it as much as you can and get yourself from point A
to point B with a minimum of hassle and expense.
But since
I decided that my love affair with the car has to evolve there
I was at the GM Saturn dealership, picking up the most environmentally-friendly
car ever offered to American consumers. I was about to take the
entirely electric EV-1 for an extended test drive. The EV-1 has
a "Green Score" of 57 in the Green Guide to Cars
and Trucks. For a point of comparison, the Green Score of
the highest scoring conventional vehicle is the Chevy Metro with
a 38. This is the best there is "almost in the marketplace"
at this time.
What do I
mean by "almost in the marketplace"? My husband and
I had taken the regular test drive: you drive it around for a
half an hour and see if you like it. We liked it enough to ask
about leasing one. That's when we discovered there is a waiting
list. How long? "Hundreds of folks." I wondered, what
gives? I'm an American. I've got cash on the barrel head. Lease
me a car! How can the green marketplace work if you can't even
get what you want when you try and buy it with money? If I wanted
a Lexus I could have it tomorrow or at least within a week.
According
to Jaci, the regional sales representative, I "sounded REALLY
disappointed" that I couldn't get a car. Wouldn't you be?
It's not exactly a small decision or a small amount of money
or commitment involved. Besides, this is a major component of
my personal quest to reduce our household's contribution to global
warming. I had identified it as the #1 thing that a person of
my means could do. I had a dream: to get an electric car, switch
to green power and break my extreme dependency on fossil fuels
in this area of my life. Furthermore, I was looking forward to
writing about it; I could tell from one short drive that there
would be plenty of things to write about.
After thinking
about this for about a week, I called Jaci back to whine. I guess
I got her attention. A week later, I went into my dealer for
an extended test drive and there it was: my new green car. And
I'm not just talking about the fact that's it's a ZEV (zero-emissions
vehicle). My new "green" car was also actually painted
green.
Loco-motion
Transportation
affects the environment in many ways. Impacts begin with mineral
extraction and refinement of the raw materials that go into the
parts of the car. But due to exhaust pollution (plus the pollution
associated with supplying the fuel in the first place), most
of the impacts occur when vehicles are driven. Nearly two-thirds
of America's overall global-warming contributions come from cars,
trucks and sport utility vehicles. Half of the oil used in the
United States is consumed by cars, trucks and buses. Cars also
create an indisputable land use pressure. In the United States,
automobile-dedicated land use consumes close to half of the land
area of cities; in Los Angeles, the figure approaches two-thirds.
According
to the Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices:
Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists (Three
Rivers Press, April 1999, www.ucsusa.org), household uses of
transportation, ranging from recreational boating to cars to
passenger air travel, is responsible for 28 to 51 percent of
air pollution and greenhouse gases and 23 percent of toxic water
pollution. Our use of vehicles even poses a significant threat
to wildlife through the fragmentation of habitat and use of land
for roads and highways. "Urban sprawl" is development
designed with cars in mind.
Speaking at
UCSD in early July, Hal Harvey, Executive Director of The Energy
Foundation, noted that, "The average car is only about 18
percent efficient. It's pathetic. It's an insult, not only to
the environment, but also to human ingenuity. With a few intelligent
things, we could come close to doubling the efficiency of existing
motors. If you increase the efficiency of the whole package through
other design changes to decrease drag and improve materials use,
there's no reason we can't get further increases. Energy waste
could be reduced by 80 percent in the transportation sector."
So, for those
of us who are car-dependent, the biggest single thing we can
do to reduce our contribution to air pollution, toxics pollution
and global warming is to target and reduce our vehicle-related
impacts. For many, this would mean replacing their second car
with an electric or other alternative-fuel vehicle. Many can
find ways to reduce trips altogether. (For more detailed info
on the environmental and health impacts of cars and ratings,
see Green Guide to Cars and Trucks published by the American
Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, http://aceee.org)
I had already
made a lot of progress on the trip reduction front. My husband
and I both work at home and although we still own two vehicles,
both are now driven less than 10,000 miles/year. So our next
step was clear: get into an electric car.
Taking it to the streets
For
the most part, the EV-1 looks like a lot like a regular car unless
of course you pay attention to cars. To folks who care about
cars, it's recognizable right away. For others, the only giveaway
to it's special nature is the small and tasteful silver lettering
on the back right-hand tail that says "ELECTRIC." The
other major difference is it's low-profile teardrop design, where
the top of the tear shape is at the tail (it's shaped kind of
like a big bicycle helmet). For most people, it's too subtle
to really stand out, but this is just one of many small differences
that require getting used to. It's an odd combination of the
familiar and the new. The first response from my husband was
that it seemed a bit too "Buck Rogerish."
The owner's
manual warns you about some of the important differences that
you run into with an evolutionary design in a world full of habits
in tune with older designs.
For example,
it turns out that people have been trained to adjust their side
mirrors by lining them up with the back corner of their cars,
not by aligning them with the traffic lanes on either side. If
you align the left and right side mirrors on a EV-1 with the
back corners of the car, because of the car's extreme teardrop
shape, you will not see oncoming cars in other lanes. As the
car's manual so eloquently puts it, "You could hit another
vehicle when changing lanes, and you or others could be injured."
Electric cars
are also very quiet, so the EV-1 makes special sounds to let
people know you are coming. In addition to a regular horn, it
makes a "back-up noise" - like trucks do when they
are backing up. When your punch into reverse, it bleats. There
is also an intermediate chirping noise that you can make to get
a pedestrian's attention when they don't hear you coming, in
lieu of blasting them with the regular horn.
Completely
computer-controlled, the EV-1 is also a different kind of car
in another interesting way. It has a top speed of 80 m.p.h. Now,
you don't really think about this initially because it's a strange
concept when you're used to the freedom of being able to break
the law at will. I didn't really "get it" until I tried
it out. Turns out when you hit 80, it stops accelerating. That's
it. No more juice can be applied. I can hear the libertarians
screaming now. I would hasten to point out that this is not strictly
a feature of electric cars. I was informed by a local expert
that new truck engines on the market today can now be programmed
with a top speed. My computer-engineering husband wryly observed
that there will be a market for "fixer kits," allowing
folks to reprogram around this little feature.
Deja new
You
never really notice how trained you are by the specific design
of the technology around you until it changes - and then watch
out. More than once I caught myself pulling out my key ring to
open or start the car - but this car is keyless. You punch in
your security code, once to unlock it and again to start it.
You don't have an ignition key. Like a big blender, you just
push buttons to turn it on or off.
There were
a dozen other subtle things to get used to, and not all the changes
are related to its electric power source. Why would they design
a car with no glove compartment? I felt they also "over-amped"
on the use of electricity. I guess since its an electric car,
they decided that everything merited the power treatment.
I didn't like
the electrification of things I was used to doing manually, including
the windows, locks and parking brake.
Just about
everything that could be powered was. This could lead to some
unpleasant side effects. When picking up the car, Andrew shared
a "little tip" with me. Make sure to keep the "valet
key" so you can get into the car if you run out of power.
It turns out that if you run out of juice, you're out luck if
you've forgotten your key. And you might not remember your key,
because the car is "keyless." Okay I thought. Isn't
new technology fun? The truth is, for most people evidently,
it's not.
According
to Andrew, my local sales rep, "Most people are afraid of
new technology." Well, I thought, not me. I'm going to embrace
it and cope with it and deal with it and master it. The EV-1
comes with 24-hour emergency service. So the worst thing that
can happen is it costs you about an hour if you get stuck somewhere.
And you do have to pay attention to not getting stuck somewhere.
On the other hand, there is a kind of majestic freedom when cruising
past gas stations. No more money to you! I'm going home to plug-in
to geothermal power. Yikes! Could green cars be trip-inducing?
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Thinking Locally:
San Diego's Energy Profile
The San Diego region is heavily dependent
upon a relatively small mix of resources, almost all of which
are imported into the region. Refined petroleum and natural gas
account for 75% of the supplies.
48%
comes from California-refined oil
33%
comes from Canadian/Rocky Mountain natural gas
10%
come from uranium mined in the Southwest, used at San Onofre
6% is
electricity imported across the grid from the southwest - most
often hydropower
1% is
electricity imported across the grid from California or the northwest
- most often hydropower
1% is
electricity imported across the grid from Mexico
1% is
generated in the region from miscellaneous sources
The
residential, commercial and industrial sectors consume about
40% of the region's energy and account for more than $1.5 billion
in energy costs.
There
is tremendous potential for improving energy efficiency in all
sectors. Two-thirds of the region's annual energy consumption
is lost through the distribution and conversion process. Almost
$3 billion is spent annually toward only about $1 billion of
productive end-use.
This
equates to a weaker economy and degraded environment.
For
more info see the San Diego Regional Energy Plan available at
the Regional Energy Office website: www.sdenergy.org
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Thinking Nationally :
National Sources of Energy Consumed
53% from burning coal
18% nuclear fission
14% natural gas
10% hydroelectric
3% oil
2% renewables (wind*, geothermal, solar, biomass)
* Wind is the fastest growing
segment of the energy market today and market prices are now
competitive with coal and oil.
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My very
first trip in the car was to the recycling center at the Miramar
Landfill. I had barely parked it when a guy driving a fork lift
stopped traffic to ask me about it. A few minutes later, the
weighmaster came over to peer inside. I was quickly learning
the rap and what the most common questions are (see sidebar,
page 3).
As I drove
south on Convoy, I had the first of many driving encounters.
This is where someone has noticed it's a electric car and they
find a way to get your attention and ask about it.
This first
encounter was with a group of guys in a late 70s van who can
only be described as "rednecks." They drove up alongside
me and the man on the passenger side - in a white t-shirts with
a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve - asked me what
kind of car it was. Was it really electric? We ran through the
list of questions as we paralleled for two blocks. How does it
run? How to you charge it? How much does it cost? "Cool"
they said. They accelerated to pass me, belching clouds of filthy,
black exhaust. Holy irony! I almost couldn't contain myself.
Maybe there is hope.
Next were
two teenage girls, looking barely sixteen. They honked and whistled
off my right side. They were smiling and waving and giggling
and shrieked at me, "Hey what a cool car! It's electric,
right? Is it all electric?" "Yup." "Awesome!
Does it run like a real car?" "Yup." "Cool,
totally awesome. Right on!"
My two weeks
was full of close encounters and test drives. The last one was
a bit too close. One of the unrealized secrets of electric cars
is their superior acceleration. An electric motor will toast
a gasoline engine going from zero to 60. I discovered this little
feature when I was able to easily beat out an SUV who attempted
to cut me off while changing lanes. It's a waste of energy to
lead-foot any car, but it's nice when you need it.
In two weeks
of use, the only negative comment I got was the slightly wry
observation about having scored "a $40,000 golf cart."
I invited him to step up to the line and I would be happy to
show him what my "golf cart" could do.
Car Tech
So the
consensus about this car is that's it's cool. I've talked to
more people about cars and global warming in the last few days
than in the last six months! People want to do something and
they love the concept of this car. The other fact about it is
that it's not for everyone. Aside from the high price (leases
are $395 to $495/month) and the waiting list, the driving range
is limited. If you have more than a daily 40-mile commute, it
probably wouldn't work for you (though employers are beginning
to install chargers in their lots, which would effectively double
the range).
This is a
car with an "attitude." What I mean to say is that
you need to have the right attitude to love it. But that being
said, it doesn't take much. Like all new technology, there will
be glitches and issues with things you wish they would have done
differently. But as my husband pointed out, we swim in technology
every day and have always worked with new computers, new software
and been parts of teams working to improve the initial versions
of new products. "Beta test" something? Not quite ready
for prime time - let us see it. After a while, you develop both
the coping and preventative skills to deal with the failures
and discover fixes. You understand the role of pioneering and
take it on. From this perspective, it's thrilling to drive this
car. What could be a big pain in the patoot for many is simply
what's needed to make progress so that someday it will reach
the point of being a car for everyone.
One of the
most amazing things about the EV-1 is that there isn't much to
an electric car! I would guess the real parts costs are significantly
below conventional vehicles: no exhaust system, no ignition,
carburetor, transmission, etc. It's not much beyond a set of
batteries and motor on a drive train with some amenities. And
it drives great!
The EV-1 provides
a little energy consumption consciousness raising as well. Driving
in a regular car, you don't realize how insulated you are from
the excesses of fuel consumption. The only feedback you have
is an inaccurate gas gauge, estimating from full to empty. The
EV-1, on the other hand, has instant and continuous feedback
of how much energy you are using. Given that your total driving
range may be only 40-50 miles, you find yourself paying close
attention to the displays on the dash that tell you how much
power you're using right now, and how many miles you can go before
you need a recharge. It becomes a kind of interesting little
game: how can I keep up with the traffic and use as little power
as possible while traveling the most number of miles.
Another pleasing
thing: when you're stopped in traffic, the display shows you
how much energy you're using - zero, zip, none. An electric car
doesn't "idle." Whenever you're just sitting, coasting
on a level road or going downhill, your energy consumption is
zero.
In fact, it
even gets better than that. About the coolest thing about electric
cars is your ability to recharge them when you drive. Whenever
you use the brakes, the motor turns into a generator, slowing
the car and putting energy back into the batteries. You don't
recover all the energy from breaking, but it can be significant.
We live at the top of a hill. If the battery capacity meter says
30 miles at the top of our hill, it might say 32 by the time
we reach the bottom.
When you park
it, you just plug it in. With the charger they install when you
lease one, recharge time is less than one hour.
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In 1994,
the United States emitted 5.32 tons of carbon dioxide per person
into the atmosphere. With only 4 percent of the world's population,
we alone account for a quarter of world carbon-dioxide emissions.
Other developed countries, such as Japan and Germany, emit half
as much carbon dioxide per capita as the United States. Developing
countries contribute comparatively little to the problem. China
emitted 0.7 tons per capita in 1994, and Bangladesh 0.04 tons
per person.
The
United States uses about 90 quadrillion BTU for 0.27 billion
people. That's about 360 mmbtu/capita. In terms of gasoline equivalent,
this is a bit less than 3,000 gallons a year each.
A gallon
of gas weighs just over 6 pounds. When burned, the carbon in
it combines with oxygen from the air to produce about 19 pounds
of CO2. Counting the energy that went into making and distributing
the fuel, the total global warming impact equals 30 pounds of
CO2 emissions per gallon.
To truly
address the climate crisis we need to embark now on large-scale
energy efficiency and conservation programs. Ultimately, we need
a global project to replace coal-burning power plants, oil-burning
furnaces and gas-burning cars with low-carbon and renewable energy.
A meaningful
regulatory response would remove barriers to free energy competition,
especially protections for dirty, utility coal-burning plants.
There are about 50-100 dirty plants in the United States that
were built in the Eisenhower era. It is unconscionable that we
are letting them continue to operate under pollution exemptions.
The
United States spends $20 billion a year subsidizing fossil fuels;
globally, the figure is about $300 billion. If those subsidies
were diverted to renewable energy (with a portion set aside to
retrain coal miners), it would create a big incentive for oil
companies to develop solar, wind and hydrogen technologies and
establish a progressively more stringent fossil fuel efficiency
standard
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It is
surely a special strain of hubris to consider that individuals
could really make an impact on global warming! Give me a break.
We can barely explain the weather next week, much less impact
changes in the global climate. I mean, global climate change
is a natural phenomena, right? Scientists tell us that, in the
past, the world has been much colder (ice ages) and a lot warmer
(dinosaur world). And without some global warming (i.e., the
greenhouse effect), there would be no life of earth, as least
not as we know it.
The question
at this moment in time is how the activities of humankind are
contributing to the cycle and what kind of influence we really
can have. Everyone agrees, at least, that the systems are complex,
and just about all independent natural scientists agree that
the earth is indeed warming. A key point here is that even if
the changes are not significantly man-made, we had better figure
out some kind of effective suite of responses. Even if it's natural,
the impact of entering an era of warming will be immense.
The list of
concerns now being noted include: melting glaciers/rising sea
levels, warming seas, early spring, longer summers and worldwide
coral bleaching. The list of consequential impacts is long. All
of these also represent potential keystone changes for ecosystems.
For instance, persistently warmer ocean waters devastate coral
reefs and ice shelves that house species that include algae,
plankton and crustaceans, cutting the food supply to larger animals,
including whales, penguins and sea lions. If the seas continue
to rise, Keys residents could be faced with elevating roads and
further elevating homes - and deciding how to handle encroachments
on coastlines at rates seldom seen before.
The New
York Times reported in late June:
"In
one study, Dr. Camille Parmesan, a biologist at the National
Center for Ecological Analysis in Santa Barbara, Calif., and
12 colleagues analyzed distribution patterns of 35 species of
European butterflies. They found that for two-thirds of the species,
their range of habitat had shifted northward by 22 to 150 miles
coincidentally with Europe's warming trend.
In
another study, Humphrey Q. B. Crick of the British Trust for
Ornithology and Timothy H. Sparks of the Institute of Terrestrial
Ecology in Cambridgeshire, England, analyzed the nesting habits
of 20 species of birds in Britain. They found that, again coincident
with a recent warming trend, the birds were laying their eggs
earlier in the spring.
This is the
latest in a series of studies indicating that meteorological
spring is coming earlier in the Northern Hemisphere. Some have
also shown that fall is coming later.
A third study
in Nature last month reported, on the basis of bubbles
of atmospheric gas contained in ice cores extracted from the
Antarctic ice sheet, that present-day atmospheric levels of heat-trapping
carbon dioxide were higher than at any other time in the last
420,000 years. At 360 parts per million, they are 20 percent
higher than in any previous warm period between ice ages, and
double the typical concentrations during an ice age.
The United
Nations scientific panel studying this issue has consistently
said that if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, atmospheric
concentrations will continue to rise and warm the earth further.
Atmospheric
global warming may be new to the mass media (and thus to the
general public), but the science and theory has a long history.
Among the first references to carbon dioxide and atmosphere using
a hothouse metaphor appeared in a French journal in 1827 in an
article by physicist-mathematician Baron Jean-Baptiste Joseph
Fourier. He maintained that the atmosphere acts like the glass
of a greenhouse, letting through the "light" rays of
the sun, but retaining the "dark" rays from the ground
(Fourier, 1827). The claim was repeated in a book on the analytic
theory of heat and led eventually to coining the name "greenhouse
effect" as a metaphor for describing global warming.
One of the
first contemporary scientists to study the impacts of man-made
contributions to the carbon cycle was Dr. Roger Revelle, founder
of the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), who observed
in a paper in 1957, "Human beings are now carrying out a
large-scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have
happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future. Within
a few centuries, we are returning to the air and oceans the concentrated
organic carbon stored over hundreds of millions of years."
Dr. Mark Thiemens,
the current Chair of the UCSD Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry,
noted this June that "I can sit here as someone who measures
greenhouse gases and tell you that the smartest thing we can
do is remove all man-made carbon dioxide. That would be nice.
But is it economically feasible? Is it politically feasible?
If a statement or an idea like that is going to be useful, you
need to know what impact it is making and how it could be strategically
incorporated."
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Ten Ways to help curb global
warming
1. Reduce your home energy bill. You can save up to 40% by purchasing products that
display the ENERGY STAR label.
2. Switch to "green power."
With the deregulation of energy
markets, several companies are offering options for green power
where investments will be made in renewable energy sources.
3. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Buying products that feature reusable, recyclable
and reduced packaging save the energy required to manufacture
and consume new materials.
4. Buy or lease a fuel-smart car. Purchase the energy efficient vehicle and see if
alternative fuel models fit your needs.
5. Reduce your driving. Consolidate trips. Telecommute, carpool, bicycle,
walk and consider if public transportation is a viable alternative.
6. Home tune-up. Insulate
using ENERGY STAR guidelines, caulk windows and doors and tune
up your heaters and air-conditioners.
7. Plant trees appropriate to your area.
Trees absorb carbon dioxide, reduce
local "heat islands" and beautify any community.
8. Get involved at work. Your company can save money by investing in energy
efficiency. With an average return-on-investment of 200%, many
programs pay back in 6 months and become more profitable over
time.
9. Encourage your city to do their parts.
Cities can also change their power
providers. With significant facilities, energy efficiency improvements
save taxpayer dollars.
10. Educate others and endorse the Earth Day Clean Energy Agenda. Let friends and family know about the practical,
energy-saving steps they can take to save money and help protect
the environment.
For more info and tips visit www.epa.gov/globalwarming
www.toowarm.org
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Which
brings me to my little personal cooling project.
According
to recent polls, "most Americans" support funding for
renewable energy sources and efficiency measures. A large majority,
78 percent, want renewable sources to be mandated for electricity
generation. Fifty-nine percent would support a surcharge on utility
bills of less than three percent to fund various energy programs.
Eight-three percent support tax incentives to spur the purchase
of new homes that are at least 30 percent more energy efficient
than the average new home, either strongly (51 percent) or at
least somewhat (32 percent). An equal number of those polled
believe tax incentives should be available to encourage the purchase
of home heating and cooling systems that are at least 30 percent
more energy-efficient than traditional equipment.
Under an international
treaty forged in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, the United States and
other industrialized nations agreed to reducing their greenhouse-gas
emissions by 6 percent no later than 2012.
Scientific
research states unambiguously that to stabilize the climate requires
cuts of 60 to 70 percent in emissions.
What is our
federal government's response? Congress cut the renewable energy
budget last month and a rider has recently been introduced to
override President Clinton's recent executive order directing
his own federal agencies to reduce their energy consumption by
35 percent from 1985 levels by 2010. Republicans, backed by the
oil and coal industry, have blocked and ridiculed the basic premises
of global warming. Some Democrats do as well.
So what if
polls show people support mandates for good practices? It's simply
not enough. Campaigns are only poll-driven to a certain extent.
They first have to raise the money to pay for the polls. The
Congress, and almost everyone else, is part of the fossil fuel
civilization. When it comes to energy politics, the more things
change, the more things stay the same. Entrenchment is almost
always the response of the powerful and wealthy.
We are so
addicted to fossil fuels and the political power they represent
that no Congress can take action without a serious movement coming
from the American people themselves. And it has to go beyond
just polls and post cards.
What's the
endgame for an age? For an oil company, it's making the transition
to being an energy company. How we will get over our oil addiction
and its lengthy hangover? At some point, the oil will run out
and a transition will have to be made. The question becomes:
is it difficult or easy, and on who and when?
Unfortunately,
being a young country, part of our culture is a big commitment
to drink until the keg is empty. Our cultural norm is still very
much: full throttle ahead, hunt down and suck every last drop
out of the earth - regardless of the consequences. Why? Because
it's convenient to do so. It's the way we've always done things.
It fulfills what each of us conceives of as part of our personal
freedom. And while polls tell us that very high percentages of
American support renewable energy, they also wisely support mandates
because they know they never will be able to get it done without
having someone else help enforce the discipline.
What will
it take for real change? It's hokey, but it takes leadership.
And this one's going to take more than individual action as well.
It will require both personal and political changes.
Anyone who
pays attention to politics for any length of time will appreciate
the fact that politicians mostly do not lead, but follow their
constituent pressures. If the people lead, the leaders will,
eventually, have to follow. So, with this silly but historical
little premise, I'm setting out to see what I can do. After all,
as a wealthy first world consumer, there is no question that
my actions are disproportionately contributing to global warming.
So I'm going to see what I can do with the hope that, by confronting
my own personal complicity in this process, I can inspire both
myself and others. Movements begin with individuals and thousands
of innovators and entrepreneurs experimenting and proving to
others what can be done. Let it begin with me. I invite you and
yours to join me. 
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