Clay and Wattles

We have known for some decades that the climate change we are creating for the twenty-first century was of a similar magnitude to that seen at the end of the last ice age, but that it was occurring thirty times faster. We have known that the Gulf Stream shut down on a least three occasions at the end of the last ice age, that sea levels rose by at least 100 metres, that the Earth’s biosphere was profoundly reorganised, and we have known that agriculture was impossible before the Long Summer of 10,000 years ago. And so there has been little reason for our blindness, except perhaps for an unwillingness to look such horror in the face and say, ‘You are my creation.’

-Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers

I’ll be camping on the tundra of Baffin Island until July 6th. No new posts until then.

I’ll be posting intermittently this week as I am visiting Iqaluit, Nunavut on business (yes, I bought green tags to offset my flight!).

Iqaluit is on beautiful Baffin Island, one of the arctic places most affected by climate change. There is still lots of ice in Frobisher Bay and the lows are just above zero right now. Once I finish working, I’ll be camping on the tundra for five days. I can’t wait!

I’ve been meaning to write more about my Energuide for Houses evaluation, provided by Arctic Energy Alliance. The way it works is that an Energuide expert (John Carr in my case) visits your house and you walk through it together. John used a smoke pencil to show where some of the leaks in my walls were. We looked in the attic and at the furnace. He also gave me a number of other suggestions as we looked around, including ideas to save electricity. John conducted a blower door test, which determines how much air leaks into a building.

When the first visit was complete, John prepared a 22 page evaluation report which gave me all the stats on my house, its insulation, and so on. All of the measurements are boiled down to an energy efficiency rating (just like the Energuide ratings you see on new appliances). According to my evaluation, my house rated 71 points out of 100 (“More energy efficient upgraded old house or typical new house”. The report also contained a long customized list of suggestions for improving my house’s energy efficiency. If I made all the renovations suggested, I could increase my efficiency to 82 points (“Highly efficient new house”)

After I made some changes (added attic insulation, plastic on windows, etc.), John came back and did the whole thing again. This time my rating had increased to 73. That doesn’t sound like much, but it makes a big difference over time. More importantly, it doesn’t measure most of the improvements we have made. We now have a programmable thermostat, a tuned-up furnace, a front-load washer, insulated hot water pipes, and numerous other improvements on our behaviour and infrastructure that aren’t measured by the blower door test. All of these changes add up to hundreds of dollars in savings and will pay for themselves over time and then some.

Getting an Energuide evaluation done is essential for any homeowner. You will save money, reduce your greenhouse gas footprint, and increase the resale value of your home. Before you buy a house, you should have an evaluation done at the same time as your regular house inspection. A cheap low-efficiency home is no bargain in the long run.

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common–this is my symphony.

-William Henry Channing (quoted in Enough Already! Breaking Free in the Second Half of Life by Bruce O’Hara)

I just got another unexpected cheque in the mail. This time it was from the insurance company – they owed us $87 in overpayment of our car insurance. The best part is that we’ll be saving that much monthly from now on. One more car-freedom dividend to go with the $100 we don’t spend monthly on gasoline, the other $100 monthly average we don’t spend on repairs and service, and the $450 we save on car payments. Car-free life is good.

One of the key decisions in our war on climate change is whether to focus our efforts on transport or the electricity grid. Many would argue we must do both, and I would agree, if we had the resources and the time. But when it comes to the really big effort required to stop carbon emissions from one or the other, decarbonising the power grid winds hands down. For with that achieved, we can use the renewable power thus generated to decarbonise transport.

-Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers

I went carnival-crazy this week and submitted posts to several of them. They are all worth checking out:

The Festival of Frugality. I don’t use the word “frugality” too often, but it is exactly the behaviour we need to learn so we can jump off the consumer treadmill and become sustainable. Hosted by Blueprint for Financial Prosperity.

The Carnival of Non-Profit Consultants Yes, I am one and I’m still trying to get the word out about Free and Open Source Software. Carnival hosted by Non-Profit Communications.

The Carnival of Personal Finance. More ways to manage our finances for a sustainable life, hosted by Consumerism Commentary.

and my old favourite:

The Carnival of the Green. Environmental issues and ideas, hosted by Savvy Vegetarian.

Yesterday, I got a call from someone I’m close to (whom I won’t embarrass by naming) who told me that she had just signed the papers on a new vehicle: a late-model Dodge Durango! She knew I would disapprove, so she was ready with her reasons: it seats more people than her existing car (the main reason, due to a recently blended family), it would hold its value better than a van, and it wouldn’t slide around on the road in icy winter conditions like her car used to. She mentioned that she would feel safer in the Durango and that her boyfriend really wanted it.

Another factor was the trade-in: she was afraid to sell her old car privately because she wouldn’t get as much as the trade-in value, so she was stuck going to a dealer. She revealed that payments on the Durango were higher than she’d been paying and were amortized over a longer period of time. I knew she might be able to make the payments, but couldn’t really afford it.

What would you do on hearing news like this from someone you care about? At first, I tried to bite my tongue because it sounded like a done deal. Of course, I couldn’t, especially when I heard that she was still waiting on the financing, so I gave her some of the reasons why it was a bad purchase: SUV’s are expensive to operate and generate more than their share of greenhouse gases; going further into debt is always the wrong direction no matter how much one likes something; SUV’s are not safer because they give the driver a false sense of security (and tend to roll when they go off the road); SUV’s are only better in icy conditions if you use 4-wheel drive all the time, which consumes much more fuel – otherwise, they are actually worse because of rear-wheel drive; and, lastly, that SUV’s may have held their value in the past, but they are white elephants now which will become harder and harder to sell in the future. The trade-in amount is always a scam (unless you are very well informed and a good negotiator – few of us are). The dealership can give any price it wants for the trade-in because the “good trade-in” value is built into the inflated sticker price on the new vehicle.

After I cruelly burst her bubble, she revealed that she hadn’t really wanted to buy the vehicle in the first place. Between the boyfriend and the dealership, she’d been talked into it. I explained that you can almost always get out of such a deal if you make an effort, even though you’ve “already signed the papers” and placed a deposit. I haven’t been able to find any information about the rules here in the NWT, but most jurisdictions have a cooling-off period of a few days during which you can call off a deal on a new vehicle. In this case, it turns out she just had to call the financing agent at the dealership and say thanks but no thanks. She got her deposit back and the deal was called off. The vehicle (or something similar) will still be there in a week or a month if she changes her mind after doing more research.

Environmentalists should be respectful of other people’s decisions. Nobody likes a busybody who constantly criticizes every kind of behaviour. Even so, I think we should help evaluate big, long-term decision like buying SUV’s when our friends tell us about them. Making sustainable decisions, unlike being an Oilers fan or a Jehovah’s Witness, isn’t a lifestyle choice, it is an obligation. When people don’t have the information we do, we have to share it.

(Thanks to eduardo m474 for the photo – Creative Commons License. For more info on Creative Commons, read this post.)

“True security is an internal state of being, not determined by how much money an individual is able to acquire” – Ernie J. Zelinski, The Lazy Person’s Guide to Success