You can also reduce your carbon footprint by using less petrol/gas. I mow our grass using a manual reel mower. You also get the added benefit of good exercise from doing this. Our grassed area is not too big - about 500 square metres. Most of it is in the front of the house - so I need to be clothed for this, but the bits round the back are generally ok. By not using the petrol/gas mowers you also reduce emissions. Did you know that running one of those petrol/gas mowers for an hour is equivalent to driving your average car for 320 kilometres?
Years ago, maybe 35, maybe 40, I was involved with a group who invented a geothermal home heating/cooling system.
It used about 1/10 the energy of conventional systems at the time, and is still far more energy efficient ( measured in dollars ) than anything out there today. It worked exactly the same, anywhere on the planet.
The government said absolutely not !!
The government said geothermal was ONLY technology that used volcanic heat, and not the quiesent heat available anywhere on the planet.
A guy in Finland invented a way to fine tune an automotive engine dynamically, improving efficiency something like 8-13 percent.
I invented a way to adapt his technology to ANY gasoline engine. It didn't work. After some communication with Dr. Erikson, we concluded that government mandated additives, those that reduce emmissions in 1% of motor vehicles by 10% or so, killed the technology for ALL motor vehicles. In fact, killed the technology for any and all gasoline engines everywhere.
Around 45 years ago, an uncle and myself invented a neuclear powered motor vehicle. Not really practical in an everyday sense, but quite possible.
The government said no ! The government said WHEN ( not if ) such a vehicle was involved in an accident, there was a small possibility of some small amount of neuclear fall-out. Not definite, but remotely possible, under rare and unique circumstances. Further, such technology would completely negate gasoline taxes, so no.
Around 25 years ago, my brother and I were looking into compressed natural gas powered vehicles. Again, the government, for purely tax reasons, chose to tax energy independence as such to make the technology 20% more costly than gasoline.
About 45 years ago, my friend Scott ( now deceased ) and I, but mostly him, invented a true "100 MPG carburettor." Would it really get 100 MPG ? No, but it could get 50 in that day, when 15 was considered great.
Again, the government said that WHEN ( not if ) a wreck occured, there was a small possibility that it could cause a fire, so no. Also, legal challenges from Detroit quickly killed our incentive.
Today, I have a design for a thermal-neuclear ( NOT thermo-neuclear ) powered vehicle. It would need refuled approximately once in 25000 years, and the same technology can power a private home for roughly the same time period.
Unfortunately, the efficiency ( measured in dollars ) is quite poor, and the government with irrelevant concerns about anything with the word "neuclear" anywhere in it's design or operation....
After all of this, and a bit more, I've concluded that "green technology" is merely lip-service to a political idea. No one is seriously interested in a scale that could really matter.
A few individuals are, but not enough to make a serious difference. Typically, they do their own thing, and do live in solar powered houses and such. More power to 'em, I say !
Maybe some day governments will get out of the way. Not likely in my lifetime.
How did AlBore get into the thread? A: he invented that preposterous, utterly meaningless term, "carbon footprint". As for the liar's personal "carbon footprint" have y'all heard of how dangerous to Gaia flat-screen TVs and monitors are? And what does that flaming hypocrite use for transportation? A Gulfstream 2B, one of the most fuel-inefficient private aircrafts on the planet. And ask him about his SUVs. Re electric vehicles, aside from their extremely limited range and their outrageous cost, they exist so that ecowackos can be trendy and "greener then thou". When there are fifty million of those shiteboxes on the road (a thoroughly preposterous notion because consumers don't want them), how the hell will we be generating all that electricity to charge them? A: more coal-fired power plants, since the enviromorons have paralyzed nuclear power. Ah, but I forget, we'll be using that "green" technology, wind power. Question: of these two, which one is "greener"? There is a political agenda behind the "green" bullshit. It was bluntly expressed by two of the guiding darks of the "small is beautiful" cult. "It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we might do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that don't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to each other." -- Amory Lovins, Mother Earth News, 11-12/77 "In fact, giving society cheap abundant energy at this point would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun." -- Paul Erlich, Not Man Apart (Friends of The Earth), Vol 5, No. 18, Sept 1975 They don't want clean, safe, abundant, affordable energy. They want political power, not electrical power. They want a chronic shortage of energy with them as the arbiters of who gets energy and how much they will be allowed. There is nothing noble about them. They are control freaks. And if they get their way, these will be our only options for transportation in the near future. We have two choices: an energy-rich, prosperous nation or a third-world craphole run by elitist pricks who have dragged us back to medieval subsistence living. I am 100% in favor of exploiting every energy resource at our disposal, including those egregiously overrated "alternatives". However, none of those greenie sources can replace conventional base-load power generation by coal and nuclear plants. Solar panels don't work at night. Windmills are useless unless the wind is blowing. And electricity demand is 24/7/365. Use them all, but be practical. Idealism never accomplished anything.
How quickly a post to use energy wisely and save what we can turned into a political diatribe and attack. How sad.
I'm hoping President Obama makes a diffenece, I know he can.
Obama make a difference. What a joke. Why did he make it so GE does not have to pay taxs. Because the are working on making things green. Bull, how much is Obama going to get for this deal?
"Most of us are unwilling to give up our motor vehicles or flat screens..."
Even without giving up these things, we can still do our bit to help. An LCD tv or monitor uses a lot less electricity to run it that a CRT or a Plasma and some cars are very economical to run which lowers emissions greatly. New models are also designed for low-carbon manufacture and maximum recyclability so they have minimal environmental impact at the end of their lives.
I'm a disabled driver with a mobility problem so I don't have the option of giving up my car to go by bike and I live in a tiny village so walking into town is not an option: I can't even walk as far as the bus stop to get a bus into town. But my car emissions are so low that it's in the lowest road tax band, (here in the UK we have to pay an annual road tax if we want to drive on the roads. The greater your car's emissions, the more tax you have to pay). I also have a low enery LCD monitor on my pc and a low energy LCD tv and the use next to nothing to run which saves money as well as lowering my carbon footprint.
There are things we can all do to help, even if we want to maintain a 'hi-tech' lifestyle.
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