Just 5% of the world’s population lives in the United States, yet of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, we pump nearly 25% of it into the atmosphere! One reason – our "super-size it" mentality. Yet as you may know from personal experience in countries outside of America, the "bigger-is-better" concept has spread across the globe.
But you don’t have to live in a mansion, drive a Hummer or have a plasma TV in every room to benefit from the lesson of Essential Skill #5 in The Live Earth Global Warming Handbook:
Sub-Size It.
Your House
"From 1970 to 2004, the average new home in the U.S. grew more than 50%" writes author David de Rothschild "even as the average number of people in each household shrunk by 17%." In fact, houses that are 4,000-square-feet or bigger use 40% more energy than houses between 1,500 and 2,000-square-feet.
Your Vehicle
The heavier it is, the more gas it takes getting from A to B. For instance, the Hummer H2 weighs 6,400 pounds, getting between 11 and 14 miles per gallon. On the greener hand, a Smart Car ForTwo weighs just 1,606 pounds, getting more than 58 miles per gallon.
Your Television
Big screen plasma TV’s use twice the energy of LCD’s (and even more than the CRT’s we grew up with).
Of course, none of this means that you have to live in one-bedroom home, drive a car that only seats two or set up your parents’ old black-and-white in the living room. It means only that when you shop (for anything), you take along your sub-size-it mentality.
"Cars and televisions last 10 to 15 years," writes de Rothschild. "Houses can last 100 years or more. The decisions we make now can affect greenhouse-gas pollution for decades."
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Though a Smart Car ForTwo just won't do for our dog-toting family, we do drive a Toyota Corolla - a small, light car that gets around 35 miles per gallon. As for TV's, LCD's over plasma works just fine. But when it comes to living space, we need more room than 1,500-2,000 square feet (suggested in the book as ideal). Though we have been living in a 2,000+ square-foot house for the past 7 years, we work from home and sometimes the walls really start to close in on us -- two peope, two dogs and a cat. Ideal for us would probably be around 3,000-square-feet, but we're okay with that considering all our other energy-conscious ways.
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