I have been seeing a lot of these “Carbon Footprint” tests and the like online. Quite frankly, a lot of the stuff in them is total bullshit that is not proven to mean anything one way or another, they are just there to make you a) feel guilty or b) think you are doing something when you are not.

Fact: most of what you could do – even if EVERYONE did it – would not make any difference in the realm of “Global Warming” because ultimately Mother Earth and her relationship to the solar system has more to say about it than you do. Earth regulates herself, and trying to screw with that usually does more harm than good.

That is not to say that I don’t think people should treat the planet better. But, honestly, does ruining the economy of any nation to “stop global warming” – be it our advanced industrialized countries or Third-world ones – qualify as anything OTHER than plain stupid? (You do need to keep in mind that there are environmental extremists out there who would happily make the human race extinct in order to “preserve the environment” – and this agenda is beginning to creep closer and closer to the mainstream…)

I usually score “OK” on those quizzes, but never get a spectacular score because they never take into account the MOST important factor in these things: TIME. Just because you suddenly had an environmental epiphany when you watched that Al Gore movie doesn’t mean you did not do more harm to the environment before you clued in than you can solve by changing now. Sorry, folks, you ALREADY screwed it up. It’s like expanding foam, you can’t put it back in the can. So now I am going to get all Holier-than-thou because I am sick of having people act that way toward me.

It is time to toot my own horn a little here, because I am sure there are lots of readers (oh yeah, like I have READERS) who think I am advocating you DON’T do anything when I call things BS, and that is not true. My position is that you should have been doing it all along!!! I ALWAYS say “Stop wasting shit!!!” I have always said, “Don’t buy offsets, INVEST in companies making or researching new technologies.” Remember that companies selling “offsets” are not accountable for what they do with your money, but as an INVESTOR you are a shareholder and they are accountable to you. Even so, the message that comes across and is remembered, the one that gets people all worked up, is when I say the “Climate Crisis is bullshit” – and that leads them to ignore everything else because I am a ‘crackpot’. No, sorry, not a crackpot… I am just not a SHEEP.

We can’t afford a lot, so we can’t (and don’t) buy a lot of the “environmentally-friendly” products that are priced higher than others. Most of the extra you pay goes into the marketing of them more than the production or research, anyway, so even if we had the cash I doubt it would go toward such products. In this house, we must live efficiently and frugally in order to have what we have. My Mac computer, which I got for $200, took about 6 weeks of planning and squeezing the budget to buy and had to be paid for with smaller broken-up payments instead of a lump sum. I have never (even when I was healthy) had the resources to just throw money at a problem to try and make it go away, and that has forced me to think long and hard about every situation and every item over the years. I don’t pretend that I do some things ONLY for environmental reasons, sometimes I do them because they make long-term financial sense, too. That is exactly how governments need to deal with these issues on the large scale, as well. It is often CHEAPER to do it in an environmentally-friendly way because there is less waste.
I have been an environmental advocate for a long time. By long time, I mean since I was very young: 30-odd years or more. And here is what I have done over that time:

• I have always loved cars, but I have done my best to balance what I could afford with efficiency in my vehicles. Every vehicle I have ever owned has had 6 or fewer cylinders (except maybe one we owned in Cape Breton for a month when we could find nothing else). When we needed a family vehicle that could get through snow in the country, instead of buying a huge 8-cylinder 4×4 we bought a much lighter S10 Blazer. It was no Prius, to be sure, but it wasn’t a Suburban either. I have always bought a vehicle that met my needs at the time most efficiently.
• I really enjoyed driving, and sometimes I did it just for pleasure when I was younger. Kind of wasteful, I imagine, but I didn’t do it all the time. We will still sometimes go out for a family drive every now and then, without a specific destination in mind. Other than those occasions, every trip out has to have a good reason. All trips that can be combined into one are combined, and a lot of meticulous planning goes into our monthly travels to the grocery stores and medical appointments. It is not good for me physically to do this these days, but I will NOT make half a dozen inefficient runs to places if I can make 1 trip and combine all the errands.
• When I was healthy and the weather was good, I did most of my grocery shopping and the like by bicycle. I had saddle bags, a book rack, and a backpack to carry things. I didn’t drive if I could bike. If I didn’t need to get there fast, I would walk. That’s changed now because my health situation is different, but that’s how I did things then.
• Before recycling was available, I got on my parent’s case constantly about throwing away items that could be taken someplace for recycling. As a result, they bundled newspapers and conserved things they otherwise would have tossed into landfill. When the voluntary recycling programs started, we were among the first on our street to have a blue box out all the time. My parents, being Baby-Boomers, were very much of that throw-it-away-and-forget-it-existed mentality, and I hope I had SOME influence on changing their behaviour, even if just for a little while.
• I have recycled, frequently at my own inconvenience. When I lived in places that did not have blue-box collection I have stored recyclables and taken them to be recycled at any outlet that would accept them (of course, I was not making special trips out just for this, as I mentioned above). I carry bottles and cans home from the park or conservation area to blue-box them if there is only a garbage can there. I NEVER litter.
• Every place I could manage to do it, including some of the apartments (and I have spent a LOT of time living in different apartments) I have lived in, I have composted everything that is compostable, and used the compost to grow stuff in pots or my garden. In my life I may have put one or two bags of leaves out to the street just because I didn’t have anywhere else to put them – if even that many.
• When I had a dog, I used a composter for the dog poop as well. This is different from the regular composter, but it was worth the investment, in my opinion. Poop gets broken down by the special enzymes you put in the composter. No run-off, no hauling costs to take it to a landfill, no contamination.
• Since the day I got my first apartment, I have used efficient compact-fluorescent lighting. They cost more than $9 a bulb back in 1986, but I have used them everywhere that didn’t require a dimmer or other specific property of a different kind of light bulb. That’s 22+ years that I have been using less electricity and therefore generating less waste and pollution by power plants.
• I have always owned the most efficient appliances I could afford. That does not mean that everything was “EnerGuide EnergyStar Uber-efficient”, but it means that I always chose what I could to make a difference. When I owned a house, I bought a used stove but I bought a new, efficient fridge, because that is what runs all the time. We use a toaster oven and microwave as much as possible because they are more efficient.
• I have always used timers and so on to turn up and down the thermostat (except for this rental house we are in now) or lights. The house I owned in the early 90s had motion sensing lights, timed fixtures and appliances, a set-back automatic thermostat on the furnace, and even though I had no central air I ALSO had a plug-in thermostat/timer for the window-unit air conditioner.
• I have NEVER set a house thermostat over 20° Celsius for heating. I have never set it below about 24° for cooling. “If you are cold, put on a sweater” rings through our house all winter long.
• If there is a choice between an item with excess packaging and an item without, I buy the one without. We buy many things in bulk to reduce waste. If an item has ridiculously excessive packaging, I often write to the manufacturer to suggest they waste less. We always remember that the first R in Reduce, Reuse and Recycle is REDUCE.
• We use reusable shopping bags and minimize the use of plastic bags. We don’t use wrapping paper except on RARE occasions where there is almost no acceptable way around it, eschewing it for reusable gift bags, boxes, and so on. Every bag or package that can be reused is reused again and again until it wears out. We always remember that the second R in Reduce, Reuse and Recycle is REUSE.

I just realized I could probably go on forever – there is so much more I could add.

I always, and have always, balanced the value of what I do on all levels, environmentally and financially. I didn’t just START because of Al Gore – reading his biography, I think I was probably concerned about the environment before he even clued in that an environmental movement existed (he participated in congressional hearings in the late 1970s, and I started before I was 10). I didn’t change my behaviour because ‘the world is going to end’. I didn’t change my behaviour just because I had kids – I was doing as much as I could do back before I ever thought I would have kids.

I am going to leave you with one final thing. I have a dream house. I have planned it out, on paper in the past, on the computer, and in other ways. At one time I had made 3-D models of it. My wife and I have discussed it many times since we met. Is my dream house a mansion? No. However, it is built out of renewable, environmentally friendly materials with highly efficient insulation. It will be self-sufficient, harvesting wind energy and solar energy for electricity, as well as solar heating for hot water and use a substantial number of passive-solar features. It will have a turf roof, a central masonry stove and heat-sink to distribute heat evenly and efficiently. It will have some in-floor hot water heating. It will make highly efficient use of gray-water to recycle water for toilets, and it will have a cistern and a water tower for collecting water for gardening and non-drinking purposes as well. In the last 5 years, I have changed my plans from using dirty storage batteries filled with harmful chemicals and heavy metals to using hydrogen storage and a hydrogen fuel cell for electrical reserves, since that has become an option. My home, if I can ever afford it, will NOT be some wasteful, chemical-filled cookie-cutter real estate agent’s million-dollar wet-dream “Executive Home” built in a subdivision. It will be one that can exist independent of the electrical grid, using wireless communications for connectivity to the outside world, and it will be quietly tucked away someplace where there won’t be a huge need for “impressing the neighbours”-type appearances. No matter what it ends up looking like, it will be beautiful to me, because it really will be a “green” home.

I started planning this home a long time ago, and no part of it is designed to prevent “Global Warming”. The plan existed before the manufactured climate-crisis. I have ALWAYS tried to live green.

Can YOU say the same, Mr(or Ms) I-Just-Bought-A-Hybrid-So-I-Am-Green?