Check out this video about global warming / climate change. It’s worth 9 minutes and 33 seconds of your time.
We choose column “A,” although hopefully we can be smart enought to prevent global warming and the economic impact he describes. What do you think? Is his argument wrong? Is column A the right choice?
Hey everyone! Join us Saturday, November 3rd for the “Step It Up National Day of Climate Action.”
Step It Up is a national campaign to increase awareness of Global Warming. Our friend, Randy Vanhoose, organized the Step It Up event near us - at Centennial Square in downtown West Palm Beach from 12pm to 2pm. Click on this link for more information.
If you don’t live in our neck of the woods, please visit http://www.stepitup2007.org/ for events nearest you.
There will be several interesting speakers with diverse backgrounds to talk about things like green buildng, protecting coral reefs and solving environmental problems. For the people that would like to get involved there will be educational booths to help out.
YouMayBeGreen.com will be sharing a booth with Palm Beach Green Drinks, so please stop on by and say hello. Oh, one more thing, show your support by wearing a green shirt. We look forward to seeing you there! Come back next week to see our pictures of the event. (By the way, if you go to a Step It Up event, tell us what you thought and send your photos to us at yourpics@youmaybegreen.com.)
You probably know that transportation is a major source of greenhouse gases, but did you know that in the US about 17% of all carbon dioxide emissions come from people’s homes? According to the EPA, electricity use, heating and waste are the main sources.
Here are some ways to help out (and save money too):
1. Turn off the lights and unplug electric appliances when you don’t need them. The average household carbon dioxide emissions from electricity are approximately 7.4 metric tons per year (about 16,290 lbs).
2. Bundle up or take it off (instead of turning up the heat when it’s cold or the air down when its hot). Most furnaces and boilers burn fossil fuels such as heating oil or natural gas, which emit greenhouse gases.
3. Reuse stuff and recycle. For every person in the U.S., about 1,060 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent comes from the garbage we throw out every year. The average recycling rate for the United States is 30.6%. If the recycling rate increased to 35%, greenhouse gas emissions from waste could be reduced by 67 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent per person.
Also, check out the video below from The Alliance for Climate Protection. We think this will let you see what the carbon dioxide coming out of your house ”looks like.”
May 15th has come and gone, and you have probably received various GAS WAR! emails claiming that a collaborative effort to not buy gas on May 15th will help lower gas prices. Or, maybe you received the new GAS WAR email claming that if you stop buying gas from the 2 top oil companies prices will go down. It’s likely that someone then sent you a follow-up email linking to Snopes, which explains that neither the one-day boycott of gasoline nor the selected boycott of certain oil companies will work. In essence, these efforts won’t work because they don’t actually lower our use and demand for gasoline. So, what can we do?
We searched around for options… Regrettably, much of the advice out there centers on making more gas, drilling for more gas, lowering gas taxes, offering tax breaks to oil refineries, tapping reserves, and building more oil reserves. We’re calling these types of options the “Band-Aid Options,” because they don’t deal with the real issue which is that we are dependent on gas, using gas is bad for our health and the environment, our dependency hurts our national security, we are running out, and we are stuck paying whatever it costs because we need to get around every day. So, we are leaving the Band-Aid Options out.
Instead of forwarding the GAS WAR email to all of your friends, what do you think about these options? (more…)
When it comes to global warming / climate change, we’ve seen reactions ranging from:
“we’re all screwed,” to “the worst stuff isn’t going to happen because we can’t be that stupid.”
What do you think? (more…)
