Counting calories

Summer driving weather is upon us, acres of unmown grass lie before us, and gasoline prices have busted through $3 per gallon on their way to $4. With these incentives to phase out fossil fuel use, the timing couldn’t be better for us to update The River Reporter Climate Change Challenge issued on April 19.

In that challenge, we announced our intention to reduce our carbon emissions 20 percent in seven years, and an invitation to everyone in our readership area to join with us. To give that challenge muscle, we also promised an online worksheet that would allow all of us to move toward our goal in a concrete, measurable way. That worksheet—or rather, those worksheets, as we found it necessary to create separate ones for households and businesses—are now on line at riverreporter.com/climatechallenge/household.html and riverreporter.com/climatechallenge/business.html.

Opinion polls show a huge majority of Americans not only thinks that global warming is a matter of urgent concern, but supports action to address it. Eighty percent, for example, say they are behind the McCain-Lieberman legislation (Climate Stewardship Act) that calls for large companies to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010 and to 1990 levels by 2020. Two-thirds say they favor the legislation even if there are significant increases in the cost of energy.

But if you’re part of that 80 percent, you might want to consider holding not just big business, but yourself, accountable. That’s why having a system that measures where we stand and can keep track of our progress is so important. Everyone who has ever dieted knows that just turning down the occasional cheeseburger and switching to food labeled “low-fat” at the supermarket isn’t necessarily going to produce results. You need to count calories, increase your exercise, use the scale and move toward a specific goal. To make changes in your habits and your life, you need to be able to collect the facts and look them in the face. That’s what these worksheets are about.

Most emission calculators you will find online are designed to make a rough annual estimate, so that you can calculate and purchase a carbon offset and then walk away. Our worksheets are more precise, more comprehensive, and are designed to be used every month for years going forward, to let us assess progress toward our goal. The monthly frequency makes sense because that’s how often most bills are received, and much of the data we need to enter can be gleaned from bills.

However, before we can move forward on our seven-year reduction program, we need to test and refine these draft worksheets. That’s where you come in. Please visit them, try them out, and then let us know what’s not working, or what could work better, by emailing climatechallenge@riverreporter.com.

First, we need feedback about practical problems in using the worksheets. But we could also use input from any readers who have special expertise with regard to categories we should have included but didn’t, or conversion factors more accurate than the ones we were able to come up with through internet research.

Creating the business worksheet was a particular problem, as different types of business make very different types of purchases, and therefore ideally should have a wide variety of worksheets. We can’t address all of these ahead of time, but we would be happy to work with any particular businesses that would like to develop information appropriate to their operations.

One point business owners may object to is the fact that we have ascribed commuting gasoline to the business, not the household. We did this because the computer era has given at least some businesses a measure of control over this factor. Software exists that allows employees to connect to their office computers from home and use them exactly as though they were at the office. An office business that enabled each of its employees to work from home one day a week could create a 20 percent reduction in this major category overnight—never mind the seven years.

More details of the decisions we made in constructing the worksheets are outlined on the sheets themselves. We invite you to experiment with them, join the discussion, and help us to get the climate challenge show on the road. In addition to emailing us at climatechallenge@riverreporter.com, you can go to riverreporter.com/cgi-bin/cutecast/cutecast.pl and join the Climate Challenge forum.

After your comments have been incorporated into the worksheets, we will put up finalized versions, and the starting gun will go off. Like dieters stepping on a scale, we will be able to measure where we stand now and how far we have to go. And if you join with us, we will be able to support each other in getting there.

Dr. Punnybone

Have a Nice Ever-Expanding Universe!