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Summary
Paul,
Alan Booker and some others continue the discussion about
carbon footprint
Paul starts by talking about electric cars. Switching from a gas car to electric reduces your footprint by 2 tons per year. Julia has an electric car and says that it has positive lifetsyle benefits.
The next topic is buildings: most
concrete and cement has a large carbon footprint. However you see LEED Platinum certified concrete buildings.
Alan naturally has input to this. LEED has become a standard for "green" construction, but what it does is to compare buildings with the average in the area. Although LEED has shifted the bar so it's easier to build greener buildings, it doesn't make a big impression on the underlying issues.
Chris comes in with a question: is it better to refurbish an old building, or build a new one?
Alan says refurbishing
should be better but modern buildings are often built to a low standard and only last about 30 years, so although a well built building should last hundreds of years, that often isn't viable: buildings need to be built better so they become long term assets.
Paul wants everyone to have a better quality of life, by installing a
rocket mass heater.
Paul´s next point is food choice. While researching for the Building a Better World book, they calculated the impact of food choice, and arrived at a figure of 10.5 tons per adult per year.
Eating a strict vegan diet can reduce that by 4 tons. But so can growing a garden; if you grow half of one person's food per year that also reduces your footprint by 5 tons. Paul says that on the average US urban plot of a quarter acre you can grow that much without a massive effort. With more effort, even on a quarter acre, you can grow
enough food for one person for a year. If you have an acre, you could easily grow enough for 2 people.
He also points out that if done properly rotational grazing of large animals grown for meat can sequester a lot of carbon.
Alan agrees: it's well established that rotational grazing sequesters carbon. He compares this with industrial scale feed-lots and corn-fed animals, which is an "ecological disaster".
They finish by thinking of some other beneficial things: Alan cites community level projects and Paul mentions drying clothes on a rack, and doing the laundry in cold
water.
Relevant Threads
Building a Better World in your Backyard by Paul Wheaton and Shawn Klassen-Koop
Urban Gardening forum
Rotational Grazing forum
Cider Press forum - for discussions on climate change. Enter at your own risk.
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This podcast was made possible thanks to:
Dr. Hugh Gill Kultur
Kyle Neath
Bill Crim
anonymous
Chris Sugg
Kerry JustTooLazy
Jocelyn Campbell
Bill Erickson
Sasquatch
G Cooper
Dominic Crolius
Penny McLoughlin
Mehron Kugler
Pasquale DeAngelis
havokeachday
Julia Winter, world's slowest mosaic artist
Greg Martin
Mark
Sean Benedict
Rita Bliden
Dana Martin
Candace Dahlk
Keith Kuhnsman
Leanne
Eric Tolbert
Nick DePuy
Nathan Hale
Opalyn
Rose
Polly Jayne Smyth
Todd Gerardot
Katie Young
Ivar Vasara
Brent Lawson
Weston prestage
Candice Crawford
Chris Holtslag
Song Zheng
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