Earth Day 2023

[Willbridge]

SNCF sent a lengthy e-mail, of which I'm including the "front page" reduced in size.

 

[MARC Rider]

If you really want to go green, check out this:

https://www.footprintnetwork.org/
https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en
You might get a little discouraged, though. My score was that it took 3.2 earths to maintain my lifestyle. The average for the US is 8 point something. The averages for the western European countries are in the range of 4-5. The average for China was 2.8. Obviously, we can't all be using up resources like that.

 

[Old MM]

Thanks for sharing that. Don't be too discouraged though, there are some inherent flaws/assumptions in the questionnaire.

 

[jis]

An interesting question is ... if you are going to live in the US, realistically what is the best you can do given that you do not plan to relocate to the swamps of Louisiana living in a tent and eating local vegetation in the extreme? How far are you willing to go? Personally I am at present not willing to change much of anything at all, honestly speaking. I score around 4 on that test.

 

[Trollopian]

"...what is the best you can do given that you do not plan to relocate to the swamps of Louisiana living in a tent and eating local vegetation in the extreme?"

Cheer up, I think you can also eat alligators and snakes and muskrats and crawdads.

 

[jis]

Cheer up, I think you can also eat alligators and snakes and muskrats and crawdads.

In that questionnaire one assumption appears to be that any non-veg is more expensive in terms of earths than grass. I won't be giving up fish and eggs. I don't eat much meat anyway.

 

[Mystic River Dragon]

Thanks for sharing that. Don't be too discouraged though, there are some inherent flaws/assumptions in the questionnaire.

I completely agree. I scored 2.5, but there is no “I don’t have a car” option. Plus, I eat eggs every day—but organic free range—and salmon if I go out to eat, have cut way back on chicken, and don’t touch red meat. But they are all lumped together in one question.

So I think I might have done even better if the questions matched my lifestyle more.

 

[jis]

I completely agree. I scored 2.5, but there is no “I don’t have a car” option. Plus, I eat eggs every day—but organic free range—and salmon if I go out to eat, have cut way back on chicken, and don’t touch red meat. But they are all lumped together in one question.

Did you miss the provide details button. You can specify what kind of non-veg you consume.

 

[Mystic River Dragon]

Did you miss the provide details button. You can specify what kind of non-veg you consume.

Thanks—yes, I did miss that. I’ll go back and try it again.

 

[Mystic River Dragon]

Brought myself down from 2.5 earths to 1.3 earths by answering the more-detailed questions.

Before you all start clapping, I realize I would have scored much worse if they had questions like “How often do you go with a friend in her car out to eat at a diner?” and “Do you ever use paper plates because you just don’t feel like doing dishes?”

 

[jis]

The whole business of energy used for HVAC and its source is quite inadequately covered. It is my second biggest energy sink, after the electric car. The source of that energy should make a significant difference. Also even when you have Solar or Wind power, the source of the base load which you trade back and forth with the power utility, should have a significant impact, unless of course you are truly off grid based on battery or whatever, which very few are. Most use net metering to get base load support when the Sun ain't shining or the Wind ain't blowing. So in my reckoning, for the sake of simplicity it misses a huge chunk of the equation.

 

[Brian Battuello]

We have a rental property in Westchester county, NY. Years ago I signed up for a community energy purchase plan, where the county puts together a large group of customers to negotiate a better price. I had the choice to join the renewable group or the standard fossil group, and chose the renewable. I just received a very nice detailed letter from the county thanking me for my choice, but wanting to let me know that the cost of renewable had risen to $.15/kwh and the cost of fossil had fallen to $.10/kwh. They hoped we would stay in the program but wanted to be upfront about the price changes, and provided a webpage for changing options.

It happens that I pass the energy cost on to the tenant (we never bothered to change the billing) so feel like I should ask them.

 

[Willbridge]

Back in the early 90's my auto insurance company investigated us for not driving enough. We were paying the lowest rate. I had to explain that even with just one car we couldn't put on enough mileage because I commuted on transit, and my wife worked nearby. A Safeway store, our church, and our son's schools were within walking distance. Since then, that neighborhood has become trendy, and were I to want to live there I couldn't afford it. As an effect of gentrification, transit service there had begun a decline even before Covid.

I'm a resident in Independent Living now, so I have limited control over my energy and food consumption choices, but I chose the location for its transit service and a short walk to Natural Grocers. However, there are people here who drive to that grocery.

So far, that's worked out for me. I learned, however, while working as a transit planner that it's hard for people to organize a lower energy lifestyle over the years when they are up against development patterns, the constant reshuffling of grocery and retail chains, and employer whims. I have talked with customers who were literally in tears because their employer had suddenly moved to a suburban office park or other anti-pedestrian areas.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Brought myself down from 2.5 earths to 1.3 earths by answering the more-detailed questions.

Before you all start clapping, I realize I would have scored much worse if they had questions like “How often do you go with a friend in her car out to eat at a diner?” and “Do you ever use paper plates because you just don’t feel like doing dishes?”

I can relate to this!!!

 

[cirdan]

I had 2.9 which I think is far too high.

For example there was no question about my actual home electric consumption (which is very low) or about the degree wo which I grow my own fruit and veg.

 

[MARC Rider]

I had 2.9 which I think is far too high.

For example there was no question about my actual home electric consumption (which is very low) or about the degree wo which I grow my own fruit and veg.

I think they have more documentation of how they do the calculations:

https://www.footprintnetwork.org/resources/publications/
You might want to suggest to them that they have an optional input to allow users who are sufficiently detail-oriented to collect data such as actual electric and gas use or consumption of motor fuels to include that data, though I suspect that the footprint they calculate includes some things that people don't directly consume, but are embodied the activity. For example, resources are needed to build vehicles and infrastructure, so they need to know more than just how much electricity of gasoline you use.

 

[jis]

You might want to suggest to them that they have an optional input to allow users who are sufficiently detail-oriented to collect data such as actual electric and gas use or consumption of motor fuels to include that data, though I suspect that the footprint they calculate includes some things that people don't directly consume, but are embodied the activity. For example, resources are needed to build vehicles and infrastructure, so they need to know more than just how much electricity of gasoline you use.

Of course one could go for progressively more details, but it is relatively easy to get actual electricity and gasoline consumption data.

The stuff about infrastructure and manufacture of automobiles remains to an extent a matter of conjecture with too many variables feeding into it. They suffer from the same problem that Amtrak's financial accounting does in using allocation from aggregate data, but often that is the best one can do.

At the end of the day one does what one can realistically achieve even though it might miss a few things. It is useful to try to get ballpark idea of what is being missed so as to be able to verify whether it is all that significant or not.

 

[Brian Battuello]

Got an update from one of my aviation boards about an interesting new plane design from a company called JetZero. They have been working on a flying wing project, or as they call it a BWB, for Blended Wing Body. What stood out was that they are estimating that their plane, if successful, will use half the fuel of the most efficient current jet. That is a huge improvement for an industry trying to get one or two percent more out of a 50+ year old design. It is particularly interesting is that they will do it with existing off the shelf engines. They are called JetZero because they are planning ahead to later convert their design into hydrogen powered aircraft. Check out their webpage at JetZero, and take the time to watch their video (not currently on YouTube, and not to be confused with ZeroJet).