Carbon Neutral Challenge

Have you seen An Inconvenient Truth yet? No? Well, please go see it now. I'll wait.

... ... ...

Oh good, you're back! Wasn't that a fantastic, powerful film? Don't you hope that Al will run again in 2008? Me too! Okay, so here's what I want to talk about: Living a carbon neutral lifestyle.

Al posed the challenge to us, as Americans, to do the right thing and reduce our carbon emissions. I would love to be part of a movement that would make me proud to be an American, so I'm on board. Are you up for the Carbon Neutral Challenge?

Jason and I discussed ways to reduce our household's carbon emissions. Here are the commitments we made:

• Take the Bus To Work/School
• Portland has a great public transportation system. It's one bus from home to my school and two to Jason's work.
  


• Reduce Car Use In General
• Buses go just about everywhere we do. We can even bring the dog.
  
• Walking is nice. Our grocery store is a lovely walk through a forested area away and backpacks filled with groceries make the trip back up the hill a good workout!


• Home Heating & Cooling
• This is probably my biggest problem. I'm all about the fans and the thermostat. We're going to do our best to use neither.
  


• Home Lighting
• Turn off unused lights
  
• Switch to compact fluorescent lightbulbs as our regular lightbulbs go out


• Make More of an Effort to Buy Locally
• New Seasons makes this possible by labeling local products as "homegrown"
  
• Also, we're going to take more advantage of all the great farmer's markets here


• Use Alternative Electricity Sources
  
• My goal is to finish our solar generator by the end of the summer. I estimate that we'll be powering 20% of our household electric appliances with it initially and we'll expand to 100% as funds allow.
• Until then we're also going to purchase electricity through PGE's Green Source program. 50% of our PGE electricity will then come from wind sources, 25% from geothermal and 25% from low-impact hydropower.
  

How are you trying to achieve carbon neutrality?