7gen Bloc

Summer is coming to an end (obviously) and with summer's end, so ends the summer internship program. Brittany interned with me this summer. She worked hard, was innovative and questioning and downright forthright in helping our carbon reduction program find wings.

1.My goal is to get down to 100 kW usage a month by conventional means. I hope to incorporate solar photo-voltaic and small wind turbines for lighting from batteries at some point. 2. Shaving Deb’s head – if we do this soon, we’ll save a polar bear a month by eliminating the hair dryer and styling wand thingamajig. 3. Get rid of the TV, because there’s nothing on anyway. 4. Purchase a vehicle that gets 100+ mpg. 5. Make a still – that Irish whiskey will be missed by all! 6. Adding a solar outdoor shower stall.

Music drifts into our back yard from the benefit party almost one mile away and it’s only 5:00 pm. This is the land of benefits; almost every Democratic candidate for President comes to the Hampton’s in the summer to raise money. Last night we attended two parties: one we were invited, the other we were not.

What’s you’re ‘lawn carbon footprint’? I started thinking about how much time was being spent mowing and how bad lawn mowers are for emissions. Some lawn mowers spew out as much CO2 as thirty cars. So I stopped mowing! The grass got really tall and I decided to make hay bales out of it. I bought a manual push mower to do around the house, and we hay the rest of the old lawn with a slightly used New Holland baler.

When I first moved in, the propane dealer estimated that we would need a 500 gallon tank, and that we would fill it two or three times a year. I looked at the three delivery charges for the year and we were using over a 1000 gallons of propane! The next spring we put in a chimney and bought a wood stove. I had a log load delivered and cut and split seven cords, sold three for the price of the whole load. A few weekends of sawing and splitting = free wood heat!

We want to continue to support the Focus the Nation initiative. Here is Eban Goodstein and Jon Isham rapping about how to get started. WR

Van Jones (the executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, California) recently wrote in Alternet :

And by the way, I also reduced my carbon footprint! I got my electric bill for January of 2006, and was shocked at the usage! 798 kW for one month! Then I did some research and found out that the average ( read – normal ) American uses 1300 kW a month, and the average Vermonter uses about half. That seemed excessive and wasteful to me. I got it in my head that I was going to do something about the energy I use, and reduce it significantly.

I’m staying on the anti-bisphenol-A bandwagon for at least one more post here. There are a lot of people jumping on, and it’s nice to finally have some company. Tons of stuff coming over the wires about this chemical. Last Thursday, a group of several dozen scientists issued a statement saying bisphenol-A was causing serious health problems in people.