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1. links for 2008-05-28
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2. Cutting the carbon from your diet
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3. ScanGauge review
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4. The march of progress?
links for 2008-05-28
Links
- Let’s get vertical. High-rise farms provide food and other eco-services.
Cutting the carbon from your diet
I’ve been digging more deeply into the question of what you should eat if you’re looking to lower your carbon footprint. I’ll have a few posts on this topic coming up, because it’s one of those vexed issues with lots of tradeoffs and corner cases and tricky considerations. But let’s start off by keeping it simple: eat less red meat and dairy.
A lot of people, myself included, happen to enjoy eating meat and dairy. Take solace in fact that “less meat” isn’t necessarily the same as “no meat.” Take further solace in the fact that chicken, fish, and eggs aren’t nearly as problematic as beef. In some future posts, I’ll try to ease the pain with practical tips. For now, though, let’s look at the data.
A recent study dug into the “food miles” debate with a more a comprehensive analysis of the climate impact of food production and transportation, based on the consumption of a typical U.S. household. The results were surprising: although food travels on average over 1,000 miles from farm to plate, this transportation accounts for only 4% of the carbon impact of the average American meal. In other words, even in the ideal scenario that you lived on a farm, you’d only be shaving 4% off your food footprint by eating locally — the rough equivalent of driving 1,000 miles less per year.
On the other hand, shifting just one day per week of red meat consumption to chicken, fish, or eggs achieves a reduction equivalent to 760 miles of driving. Shifting one day of red meat per week to fruits and veggies is the equivalent of 1,160 miles of driving. Swapping red meat entirely for other meats reduces the equivalent of 5,340 miles of driving. And going fully vegetarian is practically like giving up a car: 8,100 miles of driving. And when you think about it, this is good news for most of us. Cutting down food miles can actually be rather difficult. Cutting back on meat is fairly simple.
It’s worth unpacking the study a bit further. First, some perspective: local food devotees have motivations beyond just greenhouse gas emissions. There are plenty of good environmental, economic, social, and culinary reasons for favoring food grown nearby. Likewise, many considerations beyond climate change affect people’s personal decisions around meat consumption. Food can’t be reduced to a single issue.
And now some subtler considerations:
- The study considered the case of the average American household. If you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance you’re not the average American household. You may already take steps to green your consumption choices, in which case the savings available to you from cutting meat consumption are smaller. Still, reducing your intake of beef and dairy is one of the simplest ways to shed CO2 from your diet.
- The study looks at aggregate food groups, which is entirely unhelpful if you’re trying to figure out how the organic raspberries from Chile compare to the conventionally grown peaches from California; or how the grass-fed, pasture-raised beef compares to that farmed salmon. Needless to say, there is considerable variation in production techniques within food groups. On the other hand, most of us aren’t cooking most of our meals, so the broad rules of thumb are still generally quite useful.
- Beef is even worse than the study makes it appear. The life cycle analysis doesn’t account for land use changes from beef production. A lot of rain forest gets chopped down to make way for cows.
- Consider skipping the soda. The beverage category isn’t a huge source of emissions, but I suspect it’s one of the easiest to cut. (And of course you’ve already given up the bottled water, right?)
- The study contains some unintentional weight-loss advice. Dairy (milk, butter, and cheese) is CO2-intensive and also quite energy dense. Shifting dollars into fruits and vegetables will cut not just carbon but calories from your diet.
- If you’re already a vegetarian, considerations such as food miles and organic farming techniques become proportionately more important. The absolute amount of carbon reductions available don’t change, but the relative importance of these factors increases.
- Globalization of the food supply doesn’t appear to be the big deal you might think, because trucking is so much worse, from an emissions perspective, than ocean shipping. (Planes, of course, are dreadful.)
ScanGauge review
The ScanGauge can be installed many places with a Velcro kit. I chose the center of the dash, for easy access to the real time mpg data.
I’ve always been jealous of the miles per gallon readings in friend’s Prius, but my wife and I don’t really drive enough to warrant a new car purchase. So I took a chance on installing the ScanGauge into our ‘99 Outback as soon as it was in stock. We’ve had it installed for two weeks now, and it’s totally changed the way we drive. We now compete to see who can get the best mileage stats.
The ScanGauge installation is simple. Start by locating the OBD-II port. In this Subaru, it’s on the left-hand side under the steering wheel.
Installation was a breeze, actually so simple that I had to check the manual to make sure I hadn’t missed something. Subaru owners take note: you have to adjust a setting in the menu to prevent the device from falling asleep. My only other quibble is that the real-time gauges don’t give you trip average mpg, which would be a useful stat. If you are a gearhead, you’ll find lots of other data available, as well at error codes useful for diagnosing that pesky check engine light.
The ScanGauge does everything I’ve seen in the Prius, plus shows you fuel cost and trip cost. Many others have reported that a real time mpg gauge dramatically changed their driving style, and I have to say it’s true. A Saturday trip had me at a mellow 60 on the interstate, trying to goose the mpg higher. Perhaps the novelty will wear off, but in the era of $4 gas, the real-time feedback makes you think twice before flooring it.
Then simply plug in the ScanGauge cable. It is really that simple. I had to check the manual to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, and spent longer arranging the cable than anything else.
We still haven’t gassed up since installing the ScanGauge, so I haven’t yet tested the fuel calibration features, but I’ll report back on the fuel cost features when we do.
Overall I was impressed. A great buy and really effective reminder of your footprint when you have to drive. A note to my father: please stop reading now. Really.
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Ok, so the other thing, between you and me, is the ScanGauge is just about the coolest Father’s Day gift around. It’s nifty, smart and economical, and involves a project that is on the one hand really easy, and on other hand will win points with Mom (for being smart and economical).
The march of progress?
[Meet Erin, one of the geniuses on our carbon team, and a devoted, if occasionally frustrated conservationist. This post is the first in an occasional series highlighting her triumphs and trials as a green consumer and homeowner.]
I don’t buy new things very often. I’m cheap to a fault and a serial procrastinator. However, I replace things that break with uncommon speed, using the purchase as an excuse to modernize my possessions. I try to upgrade with the planet in mind. But as my son would say, this effort is a work in process.
Take, for example, the television. We have a second television in the back room where my son does homework and watches Mythbusters (never at the same time, of course). A few weeks ago that TV decided it preferred an impressionist picture style over today’s uncompromising realism, and began producing jittery images. Though my son likes Monet as much as the next 15-year-old, it was time to replace the TV.
At first, I was optimistic that I could make an environmentally responsible choice while indulging in a bit of decadence: trading my 21-inch cathode ray tube for a comparably-sized high-definition LCD flat panel had to be an environmental win; they use LCDs on laptops, they’ve got to be efficient.
But then I got out a tape measure. You see, comparably sized is tricky with new TVs. My 21” diagonal CRT screen is about 13” tall. The closest match among flat panels is a 26” model, measuring 24” wide and 14.5” tall — a 30% increase in total viewing area. Worse, 26” TVs are for chumps in the HDTV space. You can find a few, but they don’t have great contrast ratios or input variety, and they look so small in the store. So at the urging of my shopping partner (the aforementioned 15-year-old), I upgraded to a 32” model. Energy Star-rated, of course.
After a few ecstatic weeks where we marveled at all the pores on people’s faces, I started to wonder about my efficiency assumption. Was it my excitement keeping me warm or was that screen giving off quite a bit of heat? With a tinge of anxiety, I plugged it into my Kill-a-Watt. The verdict: about 115 watts. That didn’t seem too bad. Then I spotted the old TV sitting in the corner. I plugged it in: 53 watts. Dang.
The LCD is a great TV of course, beautiful and all. But suffice it to say I won’t be replacing the living room TV any time soon.
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