Who’d a thunk it?

May 12, 2007

thinkGreentime just tagged me with a Thinking Blogger Award (thanks guys!). The idea is that if you get
this, you should in turn write a post naming five other blogs that make you think, think, think.

But there are so many! Just look at my Blogroll — where do I begin?

*Sigh* Well, here goes nothing:

  1. EnviroWoman, the west coast to my east coast, my fellow Canadian girl, who’s spending one year living plastic-free. She’s totally hardcore, and yet knows the value of a great lipstick. I not only plan on stealing ideas from her, but getting inspiration whenever I stop and question what the heck I’m doing.
  2. Crunchy Chicken, who I’m tagging mostly because she has the coolest name for a blog ever, but also because she’s got everything from fun polls about toilet paper and Diva Cup challenges to a more serious-minded Omnivore’s Dilemma book club and other thought-provoking posts.
  3. The Healthy Cookie, because she’s been one of my bestest friends for 15 years and reminds me to be good to my body as well as the earth, and because she is relentlessly positive in this increasingly negative world.
  4. Confessions of a Closet Environmentalist must get a nod, as Alina is a bit of a kindred spirit. I was actually going to call my blog the Closet Environmentalist, because I’m all about the baby steps, and she backs me up in showing that not all tree-huggers are raging, dreadlocked eco-warriors.
  5. No Impact Man, despite being all famous and one-upping me in just about every way, is a constant source of motivation and encouragement, and proves that there really is no excuse for ignoring our ecological footprint. If he can turn off all his electricity, wash his hair with baking soda and vinegar, do his laundry in the bathtub, compost his own poop and not lose any friends in the process, the rest of us can at least try to switch to recycled paper towels or something.

But I also love all the others out there like Do You Realize? and Visualize Whirled Peas and Small Failures and Ideal Bite and, and, and… ARGH!

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Posted by gettinggreen

Rolling down the windows (Day 73)…

May 12, 2007

There’s nothing worse than sitting in a hot, stuffy car in the middle of summer. Actually, on second thought, there are plenty of things worse than that — but something about the smell of heated upholstery makes me feel sick. It also makes me want to reach for the air-conditioning switch rather than simply roll down the windows.

Of course, this only ends up using more gas, in turn creating more smog, which in turn depletes the ozone layer and makes the planet even hotter — in fact, in my city, we’ve already had our first smog and UV warnings and it’s not yet June.

Now, as this story points out, while using air conditioning can drag down a car’s fuel economy by 10 to 20%, driving with your windows down at 45 mph or faster creates wind drag, which also decreases fuel economy.

So my plan is to not use the a/c in the car if I’m tooting around the city, but to also make sure my windows are up if I’m on the highway (in which case I might turn the air-conditioning on, but keep it at the lowest setting). If it gets unbearably hot, I’m thinking maybe I should invest in one of those hand-held paper fans, or just up my ice cap intake to five per day (there’s only, what, 11 grams of fat in a small one, right?).

4 Comments | car, climate change, energy, environment, global warming, pollution | Permalink
Posted by gettinggreen