Time Magazine's tip #3: "Change Your Lightbulbs"

Embrace the compact flourescent lamps (CFL's) and ditch the incandescent bulbs. These swirly little glowers give more light with less energy. A CFL of 26 watts equates to your standard 100 watt bulb.

These CFL's use only one quarter of the electricity and last several years longer than incandescent bulbs. But because they contain 5 mg of mercury, you can't throw them out with the rest of the garbage. Instead you should recycle them properly. Even though this is a small scale way to reduce your carbon footprint, if half the country made the switch, we could offset 20,600,000 TONS of carbon emissions per year. That equals 41,250,000,000 pounds of pollutants!

Wind Energy

According to the AWEA (American Wind Energy Association), the number of wind energy turbines (windmills) are at an all time high.

At Yale University a study was conducted by AWEA and they concluded that 9 out of 10 Americans would like more wind energy now.

A single 1.5 MW turbine offsets 13 tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, and more than 1,800 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year. Imagine what we can do with hundreds of these turbines.

Wind energy is a completely renewable energy source that can really affect our carbon footprint for the better. They are a bit expensive right now, but one must prioritize when it comes to the future of our only home, the planet Earth.

An Inconvenient Truth

I saw the documentary An Inconvenient Truth for the first time yesterday and it affected me greatly. I was impressed with the science and research that Al Gore has done and look forward to watching it again.

I was aware of the possibilities that were in front of us, but I never knew the severity of the situation with Global Warming until he showed the science regarding the past, the levels of carbon, and the temperture trends. I am left wondering what can be done.

All that's really left is to take steps to individually change our nation's carbon footprint, and then the world's. This can only be done if there is a paradigm shift in this country, seeing as how we lead the world in carbon emmisions per capita.

Any ideas how to continue the trend Al Gore has started?

Time Magazine

Time magazine came out with an issue that was a special double issue about carbon neutrality. In it there are 51 things we can do to help reduce carbon emmisions and make our planet safer in the name of longevity. As blogmaster I will post some of these findings from Time magazine periodocally (no pun intended).

The Green Blog

Welcome all Green Bloggers. Here is a chance to speak out about how to make the Earth a greener place.

With our addiction to oil and our unfortunate dependency on it, we must develope AND IMPLEMENT plans to change. We need cleaner fuel sources, carbon neutral industry, and "green" focused research and development.

We are seeing an increase in popularity regarding environmentally concious actions. Pepsi just announced that they are going carbon neutral with all aspects of their entire operation, Walmart is working on a chain of green supercenters (which they have already started), and restraunts are coming up with detailed plans for serving carbon neutral diet foods.

Our goal as a blog is to share thoughts and ideas about what one can do to make their world a little greener, and how to motivate and influence others to take the necessary actions to save this oil thirsty world from itself.