Blog Action Day: Climate Change

GiveThemRoots is participating, along with over 9,000 other blogs today to help spread the word about Climate Change during Blog Action Day 2009! Climate Change is a subject that many people find themselves in debate about; there's no real proof, everything runs in cycles, Al Gore is a nut that made it up, etc. I've heard it ALL from the non-believers... but here's my question to you: Regardless of what you believe about climate change, what would it hurt to make a few simple changes that could potentially benefit your children, grandchildren, and the generations to come?

There's a Chinese Proverb that I love, "One generation plants the tree, another gets the shade.". What you do today directly impacts the next generation. Here are 10 simple things you can do that could be big changes for the future. These are suggested by Together.com a fabulous site that I know you'll want to check out.

1. Paper or Plastic? Choose neither! Bring your own reusable bags. 500 billion plastic bags are used each year. 1% get recycled. Added benefit, many stores are offering money savings if you bring your own bag. Target = 5 cent per bag you bring!


2. Tap into your own water. Stop buying plastic bottles and start using your own tap water! It's cheaper to buy water filters & filter tap water into reusable bottles than it is to buy prepackaged water every time you need to quench your thirst!


3. Try going vegetarian a few days a week. Get this: if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week (just ONE) and substituted vegetarian foods instead it would be the equivalent of taking more than half a million cars of the US roads. (info provided by the Environmental Defense).


4. Say NO! to ATM receipts. If all the ATM users in the U.S. stopped printing receipts for one year the receipt paper saved would be enough to wrap around the equator FIFTEEN times... that's over two billion feet worth of paper.


5. Don't let your money go down the drain. Water is one of the biggest energy consumers because it needs to be collected, treated, pumped and heated for use. According to the EPA more than 1 trillion gallons of water leak from U.S. homes each year. FIX YOUR LEAKS! Cut down on shower time, turn off the water when you aren't using it (ie. brushing teeth), and try water saving solutions like putting a brick in your toilet tank to flush with less water!


6. Heat and cool more efficiently. If every American reduced their thermostat temperature 2 degrees in the winter and raised it 2 degrees in the summer the energy savings would be $10 billion dollars a year... hundreds of those dollars would still be in your pocket!


7. Switch to energy saving light bulbs. CFL light bulbs use 75% less energy and last 10 times longer than traditional incandescent bulbs. Just changing 5 bulbs will put $150 of energy savings in your pocket. It would also reduce CO2 emissions equal to 800,000 cars if everyone used this tip.


8. Unplug. According to the Department of Energy 75% of the energy used by home electronics occurs when the units are turned off but still plugged in! Easy tip, plug your electronics into a power saving strip with an off/on switch. You can turn the power off to them all with one quick flip of the switch and most strips double as surge protectors!


9. Wash your clothes in cold water. 10% of the energy used by a typical washing machine is used by the motor. The other 90% is used to heat water!!! If everyone switched to cold water wash cycles this would save 100,000 barrels of oil each day.


10. Activate your computer's power management settings. Here's how: Turn off the screen saver and turn on the sleep settings. This will allow your monitor and hard drive to go into sleep mode when it's not being used and the system will be in standby. This saves approximately $75 in energy cost and half a ton of CO2 each year.

What do you think? Pretty easy stuff, right? I'll stress it again, even if you aren't a believer in climate change what would it hurt? If doesn't save the planet then it at least saves YOU some money.

I'd like to encourage you to take a peek around http://www.blogactionday.org/ and see what other bloggers are saying today! Did you find an article or another blog that you love? Come back and share it with your fellow Rooties!