We'll start with a headline from the Oregonian that jumps out at you: Making your breakfast every morning pumps nearly 200 pounds of CO2 into the air each year. What can you do about it? [no longer available]
Is it my toaster?
Part of the impact of the headline comes from making a switch from "every morning” to “each year.” But still, it’s a fine long article on specific causes of carbon dioxide in our daily lives and how we can cut down.
Run your 1,200-watt hair dryer for 20 minutes? You won't see smoke. But 160 miles away at PGE's Boardman Power Plant, coal is burning, spinning turbines that drive generators that send the juice to your dryer. Output for one blow-dry? A half-pound of carbon dioxide.
But . . . the biggest--and most controllable--share of the typical family's carbon life involves transportation. Getting from place to place pumps out more carbon dioxide than heating and lighting your home. . . .One gallon of gasoline, rich in carbon, starts out weighing 6 pounds. Combusted in your engine, each atom of carbon in the gasoline combines with two atoms of oxygen to produce more than 19 pounds of carbon dioxide--three times the fuel's original weight in the No. 1 greenhouse gas.
Reducing the carbon footprint of residents is central to the planning of Pringle Creek Community. Always, all aspects, everywhere. The hope is to also enhance quality of life, and to be a model for others, add knowledge, add ideas, be a pioneer.
