FAQ

What can the everyday person, such as myself, do right now to help stop global warming? Conservation is the main thing that you can do. There are a few other things, too, but a lot of them in any form are in this list.

1. Turn off the lights when you leave a room. 2. Use only the necessary lighting when you are in a room. For example, use dimmers. Also, if there are two or more sets of lights in a room, try to use only one. 3. Wrap your water heater in a blanket for insulation. 4. Get solar panels or a small windmill on your house. 5. Buy a high mileage car, hybrid (comes with environmental consequences, though), or diesel. Diesels burn cleaner than hybrids and get similar mileage and can be run on vegetable oil. 6. Wash your hands in cold water. 7. Take slightly colder and shorter showers. 8. Recycle. 9. Reuse items around the house. 10. Hang-dry your clothes on a clothes line. If you are uncomfortable with that idea, just try it when the weather is warmer for a few loads every week. 11. Eat less meat. About 18% of GHGs come from agriculture and most of that is from livestock. The worst GHG producer is beef, so even replacing ground beef with ground turkey or something like that will help. Not to mention, vegetables are healthier and don't come from factory farms. According to TIME, if you become a vegetarian you will stop 1500 lbs of GHG from entering the atmosphere every year and buying a hybrid only prevents 1000 lbs every year. 12. Turn off and unplug appliances when not using them. 13. Unplug chargers (i.e. cell phones, iPods, etc.) when not using them. 14. Use recycled products and recycle them. 15. Become informed about where your products come from and put that to use. A good start is www.knowmore.org. 16. Help save the rainforest. A good way to start that is at http://www.therainforestsite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=4. 17. If your power company offers it, buy a percentage of your power from green sources. 18. Buy carbon offsets. While this does not reduce your personal footprint, it can help fund things that reduce other peoples' such as green energy. 19. Buy organic and local food. 20. If something is in walking distance, walk to it. If something is within biking distance, bike to it. Drive as little as possible. 21. Move from the suburbs to the city to help control sprawl and limit the distances that you need to travel to get to places. 22. Insulate your home. 23. Turn your heat down a few degrees and AC up a few degrees. 24. Get rid of a 2nd refrigerator if it is not absolutely necessary. 25. Buy a laptop if you are getting a new computer and use them more often than you use desktops. They use 1/4th of the energy of a desktop computer. 26. Make the margins on papers that you print out smaller, so it takes up less pages. 27. Live in a smaller house. It takes less energy to operate. 28. Grow some of your own food. That way, you know it's organic and you don't waste fuel or time by going to a store. 29. Buy things that have less packaging than other similar products. 30. Take only what you need of anything you use. 31. Change your light bulbs to CFLs. They use less energy over about seven years than a normal bulb uses in less than one year. 32. Change your light bulbs to LEDs (these are very expensive for now, but the price will drop in a few years). They use less energy over about fifty years than a normal bulb uses in less than a year and a CFL uses in about seven years. 33. Bring your own bags to the supermarket. Plastic bags are usually not recycled and are environmentally costly to produce and paper bags are always made from new trees. 34. Fly as little as possible. I know from experience that after a few times a 15 hour drive really doesn't seem like that much. 35. Don't be afraid to borrow things from people that you know. This will save you money and reduce the demand for producing completely new products. 36. Check out books from the library instead of buying your own. That has the same affect as 35. 37. Along the same lines is Car Share if you live in the city. The cars are usually efficient, too. This is when there is a fleet of cars that the city offers to its citizens to rent for a day or a few at a time. Philadelphia has a fleet of Priuses. 38. If it's not necessary, don't do Car Share. Just walk.

These tips will give you great popularity among those at a social gathering.