Carbon Footprint

So there is a circular reasoning here. One of the reasons (among many) that I gave up a career (I won't say "my career" because I was in transition, it's not as if I walked away from a tenured position in astronomy) is that I calculated our carbon footprint. Michael was commuting 75 miles one way, four days a week, so that I could work in Albuquerque. We drive fuel efficient vehicles, recycle everything curbside pickup will take, but frankly, we could hang from the trees with flowers sprouting our of our ears and it wouldn't make a difference -- commuting 150 miles a day does us in.

House      2.58 tonnes of CO2
Flights    4.58 tonnes of CO2
Car       13.32 tonnes of CO2
Secondary  5.08 tonnes of CO2
Total =   25.56 tonnes of CO2

So our carbon footprint now looks like:

House     2.39 tonnes of CO2
Flights   4.58 tonnes of CO2
Car       7.35 tonnes of CO2
Secondary 5.47 tonnes of CO2 
Total =  19.79 tonnes of CO2
line drying 80% of laundry 
Total =  19.29 tonnes of CO2

We also save half a ton a year by drying 80% of our laundry on the line (as Bridget put it "You live in a dryer").

By moving to a location where we can walk to the store, farmer's market, and all the events that happen in Socorro's plaza I hope we can trim our driving by another third to 4.9 tonnes a year.

By installing solar hot water we could cut half a tonne a year. By installing photovoltaics and a two-way electricity meter we could reduce the house electricity by 90%, to a quarter of a tonne a year.

Recycling in Socorro is a pain. Newspaper is picked up one weekend a month from one location in town. Aluminum cans are picked up a different weekend a month from another location. You can pay 20$ a month for someone to pick up your recycling.

Goal:

House     0.25 tonnes of CO2
Flights   4.58 tonnes of CO2
Car       4.90 tonnes of CO2
Secondary 4.25 tonnes of CO2 
Total =  13.89 tonnes of CO2
line drying 80% of laundry 
Total =  13.39 tonnes of CO2

Hey that's a 47% reduction. Not bad.