How to fight climate change... for reals.

[woodgeek]

I drink local milk. From cows. No water issues here.

"Pea milk"? Sheesh. Just shoot me, when it comes to that.

I have a dream... I am working in my yard with my lithium powered string trimmer, and working up a sweat. I go inside and pour a a tall glass of pea milk, and gulp it down in my kitchen, while standing in the high-CRI light of chinese LED filament bulbs. Ahhhh.....

@Ashful WAKES UP SCREAMING, in a cold sweat.

 

[begreen]

The list can be summed up with Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rethink. I like buy less, grow and buy local too.

One helpful step is to cut down or eliminate commercial content coming into one's eyes and ears. We have not watched commercial content in over two decades and even before that the standing house rule was that commercials get muted. (The mute button was the most worn on the remote). We also cut back dramatically on magazine subscriptions and try to support commercial free ventures. Stopping the endless flow of marketing helps reset the mind.

16. recyclable diapers, a step up from disposables without the maintenance of cloth diapers.

Where are these recycled? In our county, they are definitely not, regardless of what the mfg. wants to sell them as. This is mostly greenwashing from what I can tell. Compost facilities typically are not set up to deal with human waste.

Are Diapers Biodegradable? Here Are the Most Sustainable Diaper Options

Are diapers biodegradable? Here's your guide to keeping diaper time eco-friendly.

www.greenmatters.com

 

[woodgeek]

Yeah, water (for me in PA) is not a big deal.

I was curious about land use, bc I DO care about that too... and the units in the figure I found didn't make sense. So I looked up the original paper, here:

https://r.jordan.im/download/environmentalism/poore2018.pdf

It says the units is m^2*year, not m^2. That makes sense, not how many liters of milk can some farm area make period, but in a year?

And the answer is a liter of soy milk (my proxy for pea milk) takes 0.7 m^2*years of farmland to produce. A liter of dairy milk takes 8.9 m^2*years.

Bottom line, is that my swapping 3 liters per week, is 150 liters per year. 150 liter/year * 8 m^2 * year = 1200 m^2 of farmland that is available for another use, or to be returned to natural habitat.

That works out to 0.3 ACRES of productive land, previously wholly dedicated just to whitening my (decaf) coffee, wet my breakfast cereal, and largely go down the drain!!

Wow.

 

[begreen]

When one looks at dairy farming's environmental impact, it's not trivial. As they forage, they eliminate many native species of plants and the habitat they support. This is highly disruptive to the local ecology. Sheep farming is even worse. But this is true of most human activity. We don't factor environmental impact into GDP in spite of the ever-increasing costs of these disruptions.

 

[tlc1976]

I’ve mostly gone to a plant based diet, because it really helps my digestive issues. Mostly got rid of sugar, meat, bread, and dairy, and things with high sodium. Lots of plant based options out there and some are pretty good. I particularly like the Morning Star veggie burgers and link sausages, and the Arctic Zero ice cream. I also eat a lot of oatmeal. I eat a lot of the canned vegetables that have no sodium added. I prefer the canned food because I can stock up, minimizing trips to the store, and it won’t go bad, plus the steel cans are recyclable so it doesn’t add to my trash. I usually just drink water, but if I want something different it’s either a Powerade zero or a sugar free drink mix packet. I also lost some weight and now wear the same pants size as I did in high school.

 

[stoveliker]

I find the morning star veggie burgers to be *very* salty, though.

 

[peakbagger]

I actually like the Morning Star burgers. Not sure of the current balance but for a period the soy solids were effectively a waste product of soybean oil production. Kellogg owns Morning Star and they are going to splitting the company into three brands as the soybean side is far more profitable than the cereal side.

I will take a Morning Star burger over the new Beyond Meat burgers. The BM burgers are very greasy to me. I really could not tell the difference with the Burger King versions. I pile on the toppings on burgers, so the actual patty is not the primary taste. Due to the e coli scares, commercial burgers are overcooked anyhow so the patties all tend to taste overcooked. What beef I buy is from the local farmers market, raised local and grass fed. The number of actual beef cuts I buy per year are not many. Mostly a chicken person.

 

[stoveliker]

Morning Star Garden veggie burgers have 300 mg of sodium per burger. The ones called chicken patties have 320 mg per patty.

It's a lot.
But we eat this brand often - have cut our meat consumption with 2/3 or so. No vegetarians, but at least decreased our footprint there.

 

[Highbeam]

Is that true? I'm pretty sure most sub divisions and neighborhoods are very well planned with n-s and e-w roads, thereby making the houses oriented to the cardinal directions, for the most part.

I plat lots of land into lots and absolutely zero effort is placed in orienting the roads n/s or e/w. It's all about maximizing lot count and minimizing utility length.

 

[peakbagger]

Avoid HOAs, they typically want to enforce uniformity and many have major restrictions on solar or even minimizing grass to save water.

 

[stoveliker]

I'm all for minimizing grass. Either let it grow (in places w/o HOA) into a wildflower meadow, or put ground cover plants and bushes etc. down. Much more insects, birds, and water and CO2 capture capacity than the home-owners shaved monoculture that people call grass.
(Once the kids are not playing on the, ahem, by now yellow field anymore, it's gone. Big garden and stuff actually growing then.)

 

[begreen]

We have not eaten beef in over 50 years. Lunch today was a tomato & swiss sandwich. Homemade whole wheat bread (flour from WA state), tomato, lettuce, cucumber and onion slices from the garden, homemade mayo, and Swiss cheese from Oregon. Delicious.

 

[stoveliker]

Swiss cheese from Oregon... Blasphemy.

 

[Poindexter]

If my wife and I each take half credit for the house, my carbon footprint for the year ending 07-01-2022 was 8.72 metric tons.

Clearly the best thing I have done was put in the wood stove and drop annual oil consumption from 1400-1500 gallons annually down to now 800-1000 gallons annually. This year the oil thermostats are going even lower, probably about 55dF to keep the pipes from freezing, and the wood stove will be raging.

If I had the garage space it would make sense to buy a small EV for seasonal summertime use if minimizing my carbon footprint was my only life goal.

I am going to miss my two cycle string trimmer, but I also want to do my bit to leave a habitable planet for my grandkids and your grandkids.

 

[tlc1976]

Morning Star Garden veggie burgers have 300 mg of sodium per burger. The ones called chicken patties have 320 mg per patty.

It's a lot.
But we eat this brand often - have cut our meat consumption with 2/3 or so. No vegetarians, but at least decreased our footprint there.

In a way it’s a lot. But 1 or 2 and not much other sodium for the day is pretty reasonable for me, considering a small can of soup is around 2000 mg of sodium even before adding crackers. I can’t do that anymore, I get sick from some kind of sodium shock. Same thing with a bag of salty snacks.

Avoid HOAs, they typically want to enforce uniformity and many have major restrictions on solar or even minimizing grass to save water.

Yes for sure. My old HOA would fine you $100 if your grass got over 6” tall. Required much more mowing than necessary. Here I mow on the tallest setting and let it go 2 weeks around the house and a month for the large front area. Or longer if I wish. Just like to keep the ticks down. The old HOA also banned clotheslines and TV antennas and a bunch of other things. My satellite dish was kinda grandfathered in since it was there when I moved in, but they still always whined about it. I took it with me before selling the house and use it at my current house every day. Free TV with no internet required. I was too poor to even attempt solar but I doubt that was allowed either. Too bad because I had an A frame with the 33 ft x 20 ft roof/wall facing south.

 

[Ashful]

LOL... the prior HOA in my neighborhood prevented the building of any home with less than 3 garage bays, and any lot subdivision under 6 acres. I think there was a minimum square footage requirement (5000 ft2?) as well, haven't looked at it in a long time and it's now defunct, but the goal was to not allow the construction of anything that would lessen the value of other homes in the neighborhood.

As to mowing, I've been converting more and more of my property from lawn back into wooded space, as large lawns are wasteful, expensive, time-consuming, and really not necessary. An acre or two around the house for the kids to play and the dog to poop, with visibility from the road if you want it, is really all you need. More un-kept woods between houses just means a bit more privacy when the leaves come down in winter.

Are 2-stroke string trimmers really that bad? I'd guess the average residential usage of string trimmers amounts to less than 20 minutes per week, although I have no data to back that up. But my initial point on them was that string trimmers and chainsaws are the one place where you could make a legitimate argument that gasoline will remain superior to battery, as power/weight ratio is so critical on these two implements.

Do note also that, while there are EV zero-turn mowers on the market today, they still have some major issues to resolve. The two most critical are: 1) weight, and 2) cost.

 

[SpaceBus]

I know the thread has gone a bit into the weeds, but a great thread nonetheless for seeing what people are *actually* doing in the real world in regards to reducing carbon.

 

[Ashful]

I know the thread has gone a bit into the weeds, but a great thread nonetheless for seeing what people are *actually* doing in the real world in regards to reducing carbon.

It was 95F outside, with a heat index around 105F, when @woodgeek penned the op. Hard to talk about stoves or wood burning, when it’s that stinking hot outside.

 

[SpaceBus]

So two stroke engines are kind of a weird one. They don't emit a ton of carbon, but what they do emit is pretty harmful for human health. An easy comparison since there aren't any current two stroke on road vehicles would be the now defunct Mazda RX-8 with Wankel (oil is added to the intake charge like a two stroke) engine to the 3.5 n/a V6 F150. The Mazda only displaces 1.3l (depending on how you measure), but emits roughly 430 grams of carbon per mile, but a 2018 3.5 (n/a) 2018 F150 is about 442 g/mile of carbon while making considerably more HP, torque, and better fuel economy. While the two strokes "on paper" look great in an emissions light, they also make a lot of air pollution that affects human health, but not so much the average global temperature. The only reason the carbon emissions are so low is due to the tiny size of most of these engines. Even assuming that a two stroke makes about 100% more power/displacement than a four stroke engine if you scaled one up, especially without any emissions controls, the smog and CO2 would be significantly worse than a equivalent output four stroke, probably worse than even a four stroke making more power. The rotary engine is actually cleaner than most piston two strokes due to the very high exhaust gas temperature (EGT) similar to that of diesel engines. NOx becomes a problem at these high exhaust temps, but that's what SCR and DPF are for, and Mazda actually had a pretty slick cat on those RX8's to make them emissions legal.

 

[EbS-P]

Yeah, water (for me in PA) is not a big deal.

I was curious about land use, bc I DO care about that too... and the units in the figure I found didn't make sense. So I looked up the original paper, here:

https://r.jordan.im/download/environmentalism/poore2018.pdf

It says the units is m^2*year, not m^2. That makes sense, not how many liters of milk can some farm area make period, but in a year?

And the answer is a liter of soy milk (my proxy for pea milk) takes 0.7 m^2*years of farmland to produce. A liter of dairy milk takes 8.9 m^2*years.

Bottom line, is that my swapping 3 liters per week, is 150 liters per year. 150 liter/year * 8 m^2 * year = 1200 m^2 of farmland that is available for another use, or to be returned to natural habitat.

That works out to 0.3 ACRES of productive land, previously wholly dedicated just to whitening my (decaf) coffee, wet my breakfast cereal, and largely go down the drain!!

Wow.

How much water and carbon do you save if you make your own??? One would guess the peas are grown in the same location but if you could get localish not from CA Central Valley or other far away places, you would save a lot in transportation costs.

Homemade Pea Milk - SO VEGAN

Yes, homemade pea milk. How times have changed. And yes, our version doesn't split in tea! Result.

www.wearesovegan.com

 

[SpaceBus]

How much water and carbon do you save if you make your own??? One would guess the peas are grown in the same location but if you could get localish not from CA Central Valley or other far away places, you would save a lot in transportation costs.

Homemade Pea Milk - SO VEGAN

Yes, homemade pea milk. How times have changed. And yes, our version doesn't split in tea! Result.

www.wearesovegan.com

I've made peanut "milk" and it was pretty good and very easy to make. I bet pea "milk" is probably just as easy. Peas are also easy to grow, so could even do it all at home.

 

[Ctwoodtick]

I'm all for minimizing grass. Either let it grow (in places w/o HOA) into a wildflower meadow, or put ground cover plants and bushes etc. down. Much more insects, birds, and water and CO2 capture capacity than the home-owners shaved monoculture that people call grass.
(Once the kids are not playing on the, ahem, by now yellow field anymore, it's gone. Big garden and stuff actually growing then.)

I agree I’m with this in the case that people go the traditional “lawn care” route. If done properly, you can have some terrific grass by going organic or mostly organic. Top dressing the grass, aerating, dethatching go a long way. Doing this will also make the lawn more drought resistant, using much less water due to better health of the grass. I’m not a lawn expert, but know someone who does this. Very little watering inspite of our Bad drought.
That said, This probably is only feasible on smaller lawns.

 

[woodgeek]

I've made my own fresh almond milk.

Really simple, I followed this great instructional video:

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[stoveliker]

I agree I’m with this in the case that people go the traditional “lawn care” route. If done properly, you can have some terrific grass by going organic or mostly organic. Top dressing the grass, aerating, dethatching go a long way. Doing this will also make the lawn more drought resistant, using much less water due to better health of the grass. I’m not a lawn expert, but know someone who does this. Very little watering inspite of our Bad drought.
That said, This probably is only feasible on smaller lawns.

I don't water my lawn. Period. Yes, it's yellow now, but I am not comfortable watering grass with a resource that is of crucial importance for humans own wellbeing.

 

[begreen]

7. Voting. Adoption curve again. I have been registered either independent or libertarian for, gosh, 30 years at least. I think this is the same as adopting the technology curve again. If you keep voting for the same SOBs, that is what you will have to choose from next time around. On the one hand we all want our vote to count, but if people are voting for the greens or the whites instead of just choosing between the reds and the blues the white and green parties (I just made up white. If it is a thing like the official party of the KKK please accept my apologies in advance) - anyroad when the greens and the whites are getting some votes they are going to get bigger and more sophisticated.

The accrued list is great. These are all steps we as individuals and families can take. But it's going to take more than individual actions. Of this list, #7 is the most important. We need serious change. The fossils millionaire club in DC is not going to achieve this. Vote for getting the money out of our political system. We are not going to turn around climate change without a sea change in legislatures across the country. So vote, like your lives and children's lives depend on it. They do.