The primary source of carbon emissions isn’t your pet’s poos, but the production of meat to feed him. One of the best things you, as a person, can do for the environment is to eat less meat. The same goes for pets. If you can afford it, you could give vegetarian pet food a try.

Another alternative to giving up the companionship of the-only-one-in-the-world-other-than-your-mother-who-truly-loves-you-unconditionally is to buy carbon credits to offset the impact of your pet.

It almost goes without saying that you should always get your pets spayed and neutered to prevent more little carbon factories from coming into the world.

Sad as it is to say, it may be time to say so long to Spot.

We’ve suggested before to eat less meat. Cutting out milk and cheese is a great next step towards reducing your carbon footprint.

The folks at AlterNet have compiled a great list of reasons (environmental and otherwise) to say boo to moo.

I can hear our French readers now, “La monde sans fromage? Quelle horreur!” And, certainly, our American readers are wondering how they’re going to manage without that bowl of Cheerios in the morning. It takes some getting used to, but soy and rice milk both make nice alternatives to cow juice for cereal. Soy cheese, yogurt, sour cream, and ice cream are pretty good as well. Especially the ice cream. Mmm, ice cream.

It’s important to note that soy is not a panacea. Do your homework to know which brands are environmentally responsible in the way they source their beans.

Like most things, cutting back is better than doing nothing. If nothing else, next time you’re at Starbucks, make it a soy latte.

“Sometimes, you have to stand up.”
-Greta Browne, quoted in the New York Times

Greta Browne is a 65 year old, Unitarian minister from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She just finished walking more than 1,100 miles (1,770 km) from New Orleans to New York in an effort to raise awareness of global warming. During her time on the road, she survived on her Social Security checks and small donations made by people she met along the way.

Preaching to the choir

It’s easy to forget that many people do not share the same level of commitment to helping the planet. Ms. Browne encountered reactions such as “Oh, you are preaching to the choir. We already recycle.” While important, recycling by itself is not enough to make the kind of change that’s needed.

Standing up doesn’t mean you have to abandon everything and hit the open road armed with nothing but your convictions. It can take the form of talking to people around you about the problem and why it’s important to do something.

If you convince just 1 other person to reduce their impact, you’ve just doubled yours.

So, pull back those curtains, raise those shades, and let the sun light your room!

Bottled water sucks. It’s expensive, the bottles contribute to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and, seriously, it’s usually just filtered tap water.

Wrap your head around these statistics:

• manufacturing and transporting that 1-kg bottle uses 6.74 kg of water
• bottled water costs roughly 2,000 times more than tap water
• 26,000,000,000 bottles of water are sold in the North America each year
• 26,000,000,000 plastic bottles mean that it took 17,000,000 barrels of oil to produce, enough to power 100,000 automobiles for a year
• 26,000,000,000 also means that at least 2,550,000 tons of carbon dioxide were emitted

By her own estimates, 1,456 of those bottles are consumed by Jennifer Aniston alone.

By the way, reusing the bottles probably ain’t the greatest idea, either.

So, get a (safely) reusable bottle and bottle that water yourself!

Some argue that sites like this one are actually harmful because they let people off the hook, making them feel good about making a difference while turning a blind eye to the larger, systemic problems that are the real source of the climate crisis. While a valid point, we believe that small actions by many people can add up to significant change.

For better or worse, most of us are not cut out to be full-time eco-warriors. That doesn’t mean we can’t influence the systems that have the capacity to make the big changes.

In this hyper-connected age, it’s easier than ever to be an armchair activist. All it takes is a few minutes to record your thoughts and a click of the “send” button to make your views known to politicians, newspaper editors, and corporations.

Note: Though the title of this post is “Write a letter”, we advocate contacting decision makers via the internet. The carbon cost of a physical letter is higher than submitting an online form!

Activist Organizations

The following organizations are either focused exclusively on fighting climate change or run global warming campaigns as part of their mission.

• Change.org
• Avaaz.org
• Greenpeace
• Sierra Club
• The Nature Conservancy

Newspapers

Publishing a letter to the editor is still a good way to make your voice heard.

• PublishALetter.com – allows you to send a letter to any of hundreds of news editors around the world
• public@nytimes.com – New York Times
• wsj.ltrs@wsj.com – The Wall Street Journal
• letters@washpost.com – Washington Post
• L.A. Times
• letters@thetimes.co.uk – Times Online
• letters@economist.com – The Economist

Governments

It’s government officials who will make the big decisions, so why not contact them directly?

• President of the United States
• U.S. House of Representatives
• U.S. Senate
• U.S. Envionmental Protection Agency
• European Union
• United Kingdom Parliament
• German Bundestag
• French national Assembly
• Parliament of Canada
• Parliament of Australia
• New Zealand Parliament
• National Congress of Brazil
• United Nations

Do you know of other good sites where you can make your voice heard? Tell us about them in the comments!

Good Magazine (where ITLT’s designer, Su Yin, works) estimates that a year’s worth of hot water laundry plus tumble drying produces 213.3 kg of CO₂ per year. The same number of loads washed in cold water and line dried produces only 16 kg!

In the United States, nearly 6% of residential electricity is consumed by clothes dryers. The good news is that in the last 3 years, the number of Americans who consider a clothes dryer a “necessity” dropped by 17%.

Willing to give it a shot? TipThePlanet lists more different types of clotheslines and drying racks than you ever thought possible.

If you can’t avoid using a dryer, consider purchasing one with an automatic shut-off feature. Also, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy recommends drying similar fabrics together, drying multiple loads in quick succession (to take advantage of residual heat), and making sure to clean the dryer filter after each use.

If you’re reading this, chances are your activities produce more carbon and other greenhouse gases than the average human being. If you don’t know how much more, now’s the time to find out.

The truth shall set you free

The simplest way to calculate your carbon footprint is to use an online calculator. Here are a few of our favorites.

If you live in the United States, one of the best is the Cool Climate Carbon Footprint Calculator by The Berkeley Institute of the Environment. Another excellent calculator for Americans is provided by The Nature Conservancy It takes into account home energy, transportation, diet, and recycling habits. Also USA-centric, Yahoo! offer an easy to use calculator, though it’s perhaps a bit too simplistic.

Our UK readers may want to try the Ecological Footprint Calculator by Best Foot Forward, winners of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development in 2005.

For the rest of us, the calculator at Carbon Footprint lets you choose the country in which you live. It requires entry of specific amounts of different types of energy used to calculate household use, which can be tedious, but should give accurate results.

Resurgence Magazine offer both quick and detailed carbon calculators, developed by Mukti Mitchell, designer of zero-emission yachts. The quick version lets you calculate the carbon produced by your energy use by asking you how much you spent on different types of energy over the past year while the detailed version asks for kilowatt hours used.

We’ve talked before about the importance of eating less meat to the environment. The Low Carbon Diet Calculator helps make our point by showing the relative impact of different kinds of food. (Of note is the fact that tofu is not much better than beef or lamb in terms of carbon produced!)

A quick and easy way to compare the carbon impact of different modes of travel is to use the CO₂ emissions calculator from Transport Direct.

Lastly, if you’re an iPhone user, there are several applications (several of which are free) that can help you calculate and track your carbon emissions, such as Carbon Tracker. Go into iTunes and search for “carbon calculator” for more.

Knowing how much carbon dioxide is produced by what you do every day is the first step towards reducing your impact. Best of all, it’s free to find out.

Do you have a favorite carbon calculator that we missed? Link to it in the comments!

Why not avoid the debate altogether and bring your own bags with you when you shop? Keep a couple of cloth sacks in your car (or better yet in your bike’s panniers!) so you won’t ever again have to answer the dreaded question.

Many grocery stores sell bags you can reuse. For purpose-designed sacks, you can buy online at Reusable Bags. (Note, we have no affiliation with Reusable Bags. We just think it’s a good idea!)

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the world’s leading authority on global warming, recommends cutting back on meat consumption as a “sacrifice that would help tackle climate change.”

Meat production accounts for nearly one-fifth of global greenhouse gas production. In some parts of the world, industrial ranching (particularly beef) compounds the problem by driving deforestation. It takes 3kg of plant protein to produce 1kg of animal protein.

You could try 1 meatless day per week or eating simply until 6 o’clock. Either way, isn’t a little less meat in your diet worth it to help the planet?

Not sure where to start?

If you’ve always made meat the focus of your meals, you might be wondering exactly how to do this. Eating meals without meat doesn’t mean you’re stuck with salad! Popular foodie site Epicurious is one of many with great meat-free recipes.

If you want to go hardcore, you could try eating raw/vegan a few times a week using recipes from Gone Raw or Fatfree Vegan. With gems like pistachio-cilantro pesto, you won’t be suffering. (Thanks to Karen Brown and Stephanie Hedges for the links!)