by KaiserJeep » Mon 25 Aug 2014, 15:10:55
This did not all happen at once, but versus a decade ago, I have:
1) Reduced the miles I personally drive from approximately 15,000 annually to less than 1,500. This is in a 2003 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, a modified 4400lb SUV that gets 11mpg average in the city. The 1,500 miles is divided between 1,100 highway miles on vacation (@ 17mpg) and 400 miles local driving (@ 11mpg). My vacations are all four wheeling, the 13,500 miles saved at 11mpg (i.e. my former commute) is approximately 1230 gallons of regular grade gasoline per year.
My wife still commutes to work and shops with her Jeep, a 2001 Grand Cherokee Limited, which although heavier gets better mileage than the Wrangler. She uses 720 gallons/year.
2) In between the full commute and the full teleworker status, I had several years where I drove the Wrangler about 3500 miles annually while (mostly) commuting by CALTRAIN and Santa Clara Transportation Authority Light Rail. As I have said before, I have NO IDEA how to calculate carbon saved when commuting by rail.
3) As of last month, I have had 2.8kW of solar panels on my roof and in operation as a grid-connected solar PV system for 4 years. The (somewhat suspect) figures my solar vender (Sunrun) gives for my system impacts annually are: 5757 lbs carbon dioxide, or the equivalent of 67 trees planted, or the equivalent of 5977 miles driven (in the USA average 20.4mpg passenger car).
I have made no attempt to calculate the embedded energy in those PV panels. Aluminum frames and mounting rails, stainless steel hardware, silicon mono-crystaline wafers, copper wires, petroleum source plastic insulation and passivating films, all from China. The power Inverter, electrical meter, cellphone modem, and electrical hardware/conduits etc. are all US-made.
4) We have switched to virtually all locally grown organic produce via the local Farmer's Market, the organic chicken/beef/pork and the wild seafood from COSTCO, and get miscellaneous packaged goods - including far too much processed sugars - from a local supermarket.
The wife and I decided to forgo expensive vacations and new cars to expedite paying off the mortgage and moving to (or building) a retirement home in the MidWest. Basically I need to work two years and two weeks from today to qualify for Medicare, the Obamacare alternatives available to highly paid Silicon Valley workers are not attractive. But if I get laid off, I already am past the minimum age for penalty-free access to my 401K. The wife is younger, she needs to work four years and six months to reach the same Medicare availability, and her retirement eligibility is somewhat complex because she has a variety of retirement accounts.
Hoping the economy limps along without imploding for 5-6 years.
KaiserJeep 2.0, Neural Subnode 0010 0000 0001 0110 - 1001 0011 0011, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 0000 0000 0001
Resistance is Futile, YOU will be Assimilated.
Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0