Stepping Toward Greener Pastures
Stepping Toward Greener Pastures: Part two of BC family's 'carbon diet' focuses on transportation
DEBORAH JONES, The Globe and Mail, Mar 30 07
Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070330.BCGREENDIET30/TPStory/?query=carbon
VANCOUVER -- At 7:30 a.m. on a cold March day, I am peering through the morning gloom for a glimpse of the No. 32 bus on Dunbar Street. It's week two of my family's "carbon diet" -- a Globe and Mail assignment to see how my family of four adults can cut its greenhouse-gas emissions to match the provincial goal of a 33-per-cent reduction -- and I've turned down the offer of a car ride downtown, intending to take the bus to an 8 a.m. work event.
By 7:45 a dozen of us commuters from the West Side are huddled in our winter coats, still waiting for the No. 32.
"Sometimes it doesn't come at all," shrugs a woman in a business suit beside me. Finally everyone gives up on the No. 32 and boards the next No. 7. It deposits me downtown several blocks from my destination, already 15 minutes late.
I'm monitoring my bus travel as part of a diet recommended by two experts who've agreed to "carbon coach" our family: architect Helen Goodland, executive director of the non-profit Light House Sustainable Building Centre, and Ian Bruce, an engineer and climate-change expert with the David Suzuki Foundation. Greenhouse gases emitted by residents on B.C.'s South Coast are 40 per cent from transportation, 40 per cent from running households and 20 per cent from consuming goods and services.
We've already made progress over a seven-year period. My family has cut non-airline emissions to 11.7 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year from 22 tonnes by moving into an urban home near bus stops and within walking distance of most services, and running one car instead of two.
We're now well below the national average of five tonnes per person, but there's lots to trim, said Mr. Bruce and Ms. Goodland. The place we should start, they said, is further reducing the use of our car (which pumps 4.2 tonnes a year into the atmosphere).
But when it comes to buses, and as Kermit the Frog famously sang, it's not easy bein' green. My experience with the No. 32 bus that didn't come was, alas, not unusual. My husband and I, and our two young-adult sons, have discovered that bus schedules (on Vancouver's West Side) are so erratic that each trip requires an extra 30 minutes.
With one car, our family's transportation is about as lean and mean as it's going to get.
Still, the 7.2 tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions that Mr. Bruce estimates we pump out from our single-family Vancouver household offers room to cut.
Mr. Bruce suggests eating less meat (we consume two or three meat-based meals per week) and installing high-efficiency lighting. Ms. Goodland, who previously ran a green-building program for the Greater Vancouver Regional District, has a more ambitious program in mind for our older, five-bedroom Vancouver "character" house.
Our forced-air natural gas heating system is far less efficient than using hot water for radiant heat, our windows are single-pane glass, our appliances are old and inefficient, and our wood-burning fireplace leaks hot air even when not in use with the vent closed. I expect her to recommend a complete replacement -- but that would be the worst thing we could do, she said, partly because the manufacture and transport of new building materials and appliances would erase any improvement in greenhouse-gas emissions from operations. Instead, she suggested, we should replace items as they wear out, and ensure all equipment, including the furnace, is running as efficiently as possible.
In the meantime, we are taking small steps: we have cut our household garbage to one small bag per week, and we have three backyard compost bins. We hang most laundry to dry in the basement or outside.
But looming over all these measures is our dirty greenhouse-gas secret: my family members travel in airplanes for work, education, conferences and pleasure. Mr. Bruce calculated that our four return air trips to Europe and numerous hops across Canada will pump a whopping 35.8 tonnes of greenhouse gases into the world's atmosphere, making our efforts to hang up laundry or even walk to the grocery store seem pathetic.
It turns out that it would be extremely easy for my family to reduce our carbon emissions -- adding in airline travel, our filthy footprint will be some 47.6 tonnes in 2007 -- to match the provincial goal. All that's required is replacing flights for work with video-conferencing and a willingness to give up a family wedding in Scotland, a planned European tour, several educational courses elsewhere in Canada.
And that's the rub: if we are to reduce our carbon footprint, we can't have it all.
