Professor Nicole Darnall, ASU, outlines what can be done.
At home, we subscribe to the Payson Roundup, our local newspaper, and in the April 10th edition there was a full back-page article written by Pete Ayleshire, Editor, about …. well let me quote from the on-line copy,
ASU professor Nicole Darnall taught a session on living a sustainable lifestyle at the Women’s Wellness Forum. Photo by Pete Aleshire.
Save money.
Get healthy.
Save the planet.
Why wait?
That’s the message Arizona State University professor Nicole Darnall delivered recently to a roomful of savvy planet
Prof. Nicole Darnall
huggers at the Women’s Wellness Forum. The daylong event drew about 240 women to listen to speakers on an array of topics.
Darnall offered a gripping presentation that started with global disaster, but ended with a reassuringly doable list of steps individuals can take to solve the seemingly overwhelming problems.
As I wrote at the end of last Friday’s article on Autism and bees, “I hope to publish a summary of a fascinating presentation given to a local women’s group here in Payson that shows the many obvious and easy steps we can all take to revert back to a resilient life on this planet.”
It’s so easy to be overwhelmed by the barrage of ‘doom and gloom’ stories that abound and, make no mistake, if each of us do nothing, the future does look ‘interesting’!
I don’t know about you but the degree of awareness of the changes we all need to make is huge and growing. So Prof. Darnall was right on the button when she spoke to that women’s forum. For instance,
“Livestock generates more greenhouse gases than all the planes, trains and automobiles on the planet,” said Darnall. In part, that’s because the methane from, well, the other end of cows, has 21 times the greenhouse gas warming effect as carbon dioxide.
Darnall’s solution? Meatless Mondays — to start curving that scary trend line.
A few paragraphs later,
The average person generates 4.5 pounds of trash daily. Of that, 75 percent can be recycled — but less than 30 percent actually ends up recycled.
Worse yet, we discard half of the food we produce, which works out to 474 pounds of wasted food per person.
Once again: The answer lies surprisingly close to home.
Start a composting bin: That would reduce discarded trash by about one-third — while increasing the health of your garden, not to mention averting the production of chemical fertilizers.
Then there’s this …..
Quit buying the plastic water bottles that add 25 million items to the waste stream every day. After all, tap water must meet higher health and purity standards than bottled water.
And not forgetting …..
Worried about all the bleach and other chemicals used in household cleaning products? No problem, said Darnall — before offering up a recipe for environmentally friendly scouring involving vinegar and baking soda. You can also ditch the ammonia in the window cleaner, with a mixture of corn starch — great for smudged mirrors and spots in the carpet.
Then this touched the spot for this part of Arizona with this year’s rainfall already far below the 30-year average.
Worried about the reckless use of fresh water, with predictions of longer deeper droughts well established?
Shorter showers can save 150 gallons each time — and a low-flow shower head can save 175 gallons a month. Get rid of the lawn, cut the water bill by 60 percent.
Rounding off by …..
But here’s the kicker, she said — you can save your wallet by saving the planet.
Make your cleaning products and you not only protect streams you also save money.
Change over to LED lights, you not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions — you save money.
Install solar tubes and you reduce greenhouse gases — and save money.
Eat less meat and reduce global warming — and also lose weight.
And heck: You might even make the cows happy.
Delightful close to the article that is Pete Ayleshire all over. (Pete teaches the creative writing class at the local extension college that Jean and I have been attending for two terms.)
It seems to me that one of the many lucky aspects of living in Payson is having the Arizona State University (ASU) School of Sustainability in the area and being able to draw on the expertise of people such as Prof. Darnall.
So look around and see what small steps you can take to make a difference, and start those small changes. As in the words of an old saying from my England days, ‘By the inch, it’s a cinch, by the yard it’s hard!‘
7 thoughts on “Helping the planet and the pocket.”
But all that said, it still surprises me, almost on a daily basis, how often those who express to be the most worried about the environment, and who therefore, in a world of scarce financial resources, should be the ones the most concerned with making the environment saving investments as cost effective as possible, seem to concern themselves the least with that.
Per, when you write “how often those who express to be the most worried about the environment” I’m not clear what group you have in mind under the heading of ‘those’? Paul
CO2 DENIER HIDES BEHIND CH4!
Fascinating. I saw I read everything from the CO2 deniers, but this reaches new heights of perversity! Thanks to Paul to bring this new angle of the fossil fuel mafia to light.
Prof. Darnall claims that:
“Livestock generates more greenhouse gases than all the planes, trains and automobiles on the planet,” said Darnall. In part, that’s because the methane from, well, the other end of cows, has 21 times the greenhouse gas warming effect as carbon dioxide.”
Whatever. Prof Darnall does not even know her own propaganda well. The Global Warming Potential (GWP) of methane, CH4, over 20 years, is actually seventy-two times that of CO2, and twenty-five times over 100 years. However its global Global Warming effect may be as little as 25% that of CO2.
Methane from herding may have spared us a re-glaciation, 7,000 years ago, some scientists say. The good prod rides on that notion all the way to hell.
There is crushing evidence that what the good professor says about cows is NOT correct. And it’s easy to show. Why? Because the CO2 went from 280 ppm (1800 CE) to 395 ppm, but only up to 460 ppm in CO2 equivalent (see Radiative Forcing, below).
So even if all the supplementary CO2 like gases were all methane, CH4 (and they are not), one would get a methane contribution of only 30%, over the 1800 base.
The good prof should have said that one could cut off all greenhouse gases of industrial origin. Some have 32,000 times the Greenhouse Warming Potential of CO2. One easy way to mitigate the greenhouse would be to outlaw them all. Their Radiative Forcing is about two-third that of methane, itself a third of CO2.
So I would dare to say that the good prof’s discourse is corrupt. She looks cute like that, but she is out to seduce the big industrial interests. Obviously. It’s all about small people not doing enough, she says. They just eat too much of the bad stuff.
Instead I say: rise energy taxes colossally, force professors, bankers and politicians to video-conference, instead of jetting around. I am myself jetting around right now, but it’s for (literally, vital family reasons). I have known professors who go around the world all the time, as if frequent flier miles were all they were really after, thanks to taxpayers’ ever more colossal generosity (does not beat Obama sending an army around his 13 year old to play solo student in Mexico, or Sarkozy recovering his bad belly adult son in Ukraine with one of the French republic’s fast jets).
I have not eaten much meat in my life (last time was a few months ago), so my defense of meat is altruistic. I know that in vast swathes of the planet, meat is the ONLY source of protein. Lack of proteins is a huge problem in Black African children, cattle and bush meat their salvation. We are far from arugula salad there. Cattle is also an important export and source of livelihood in the Third World.
There is probably more cattle in Africa than in the Americas. So not so good prof is saying millions of African children should go around with enormously distended bellies, and the poor there, getting poorer.
I am presently generating lots of CO2 myself, as I travel around the planet, so my answers may be intermittent… http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Patrice, a double, if not treble, ‘thank you’ for your comment. Firstly, for finding the time to comment on Learning from Dogs when, as I already knew, you were ‘up to your neck’ travelling. Secondly, for leaving such a long and erudite reply, and lastly for highlighting possible scientific errors in Prof. Darnall’s teachings. I will do my best to elicit a reply from the good Dr. but would like to point out to you and other LfD readers that there is a further Post tomorrow that also raises some important questions on today’s article.
I’m a lucky old fellow to have among my so many readers, people of such a calibre as yourself. You and your son travel safely. Paul
I understand the reasons why eating meat is so bad for the planet but, is it anticipated that all farmers just switch to non-livestock farming; and has anyone worked out if this is feasible? Livestock are often raised on land on which crops cannot be grown.
Learning from Dogs 
But all that said, it still surprises me, almost on a daily basis, how often those who express to be the most worried about the environment, and who therefore, in a world of scarce financial resources, should be the ones the most concerned with making the environment saving investments as cost effective as possible, seem to concern themselves the least with that.
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Per, when you write “how often those who express to be the most worried about the environment” I’m not clear what group you have in mind under the heading of ‘those’? Paul
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The group of “often those who express to be the most worried about the environment” 🙂
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Guess I asked for that!
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CO2 DENIER HIDES BEHIND CH4!
Fascinating. I saw I read everything from the CO2 deniers, but this reaches new heights of perversity! Thanks to Paul to bring this new angle of the fossil fuel mafia to light.
Prof. Darnall claims that:
“Livestock generates more greenhouse gases than all the planes, trains and automobiles on the planet,” said Darnall. In part, that’s because the methane from, well, the other end of cows, has 21 times the greenhouse gas warming effect as carbon dioxide.”
Whatever. Prof Darnall does not even know her own propaganda well. The Global Warming Potential (GWP) of methane, CH4, over 20 years, is actually seventy-two times that of CO2, and twenty-five times over 100 years. However its global Global Warming effect may be as little as 25% that of CO2.
Methane from herding may have spared us a re-glaciation, 7,000 years ago, some scientists say. The good prod rides on that notion all the way to hell.
There is crushing evidence that what the good professor says about cows is NOT correct. And it’s easy to show. Why? Because the CO2 went from 280 ppm (1800 CE) to 395 ppm, but only up to 460 ppm in CO2 equivalent (see Radiative Forcing, below).
So even if all the supplementary CO2 like gases were all methane, CH4 (and they are not), one would get a methane contribution of only 30%, over the 1800 base.
The good prof should have said that one could cut off all greenhouse gases of industrial origin. Some have 32,000 times the Greenhouse Warming Potential of CO2. One easy way to mitigate the greenhouse would be to outlaw them all. Their Radiative Forcing is about two-third that of methane, itself a third of CO2.
So I would dare to say that the good prof’s discourse is corrupt. She looks cute like that, but she is out to seduce the big industrial interests. Obviously. It’s all about small people not doing enough, she says. They just eat too much of the bad stuff.
Instead I say: rise energy taxes colossally, force professors, bankers and politicians to video-conference, instead of jetting around. I am myself jetting around right now, but it’s for (literally, vital family reasons). I have known professors who go around the world all the time, as if frequent flier miles were all they were really after, thanks to taxpayers’ ever more colossal generosity (does not beat Obama sending an army around his 13 year old to play solo student in Mexico, or Sarkozy recovering his bad belly adult son in Ukraine with one of the French republic’s fast jets).
I have not eaten much meat in my life (last time was a few months ago), so my defense of meat is altruistic. I know that in vast swathes of the planet, meat is the ONLY source of protein. Lack of proteins is a huge problem in Black African children, cattle and bush meat their salvation. We are far from arugula salad there. Cattle is also an important export and source of livelihood in the Third World.
There is probably more cattle in Africa than in the Americas. So not so good prof is saying millions of African children should go around with enormously distended bellies, and the poor there, getting poorer.
I am presently generating lots of CO2 myself, as I travel around the planet, so my answers may be intermittent…
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
LikeLike
Patrice, a double, if not treble, ‘thank you’ for your comment. Firstly, for finding the time to comment on Learning from Dogs when, as I already knew, you were ‘up to your neck’ travelling. Secondly, for leaving such a long and erudite reply, and lastly for highlighting possible scientific errors in Prof. Darnall’s teachings. I will do my best to elicit a reply from the good Dr. but would like to point out to you and other LfD readers that there is a further Post tomorrow that also raises some important questions on today’s article.
I’m a lucky old fellow to have among my so many readers, people of such a calibre as yourself. You and your son travel safely. Paul
LikeLike
I understand the reasons why eating meat is so bad for the planet but, is it anticipated that all farmers just switch to non-livestock farming; and has anyone worked out if this is feasible? Livestock are often raised on land on which crops cannot be grown.
LikeLike