Essential Skill #11: Bank Online

Every year, we chop down over 400,000 trees just so we can have our phone bills mailed to our homes! Add in our electric bills and credit card bills, and that number must be well into the millions. But our mail damages more than our forests -- it damages our atmosphere.

"The cost in fuel and CO2 for one bill is tiny," writes author David de Rothschild in The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook, "but it adds up." So consider Essential Skill #11:

Bank online.

The United States alone could cut 2.1 million tons of emissions per year if everyone received and paid their bills through the Internet. As de Rothschild suggests, "Look at your bills this month. More than likely, every single one has a paragraph begging you to pay your bill online."

Online banking saves companies money on paper, printing and postage. You save money on checks and stamps. Why not just give in to technological-temptation and save the Earth too?

For more information about banking online, go to ElectronicPayments.org.

Essential Skill #10: Kill Your Phantoms

It's frightening to think of the phantoms haunting your house. They could be anywhere, sucking wasteful, emissions-producing electricity into appliances that aren't even being used. So Essential Skill #10 in the Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook could not come a day too soon:

Kill your phantoms.

"When they're not on, they're still using electricity," author David de Rothschild writes of our household appliances. "It's known as phantom electricity.... The phantom electrical load in the industrialized countries alone accounts for 75 million tons of CO2 emitted and billions of dollars wasted per year."

Do all you can to rid your home of costly, energy-sucking phantom electricity by:

• Plugging your electronics into power strips. With one flip of the switch, you can turn off your TV, VCR, Tivo and stereo ... or your computer, monitor, printer and fax.
• Unplugging your cell phone charger when not in use, as they use a shocking 95% more energy than necessary to actually charge your phone!
• Buying Energy Star appliances, through which phantoms can only suck half the energy of non-Energy Star appliances.

"If one million households halved their phantom power load," adds de Rothschild, "we'd eliminate 150,000 tons of CO2 per year."

Essential Skill #9: Imagine

"One approach to seeing the future is through scenarios," writes author David de Rothschild in The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook, "carefully crafted 'what if?' stories that let us imagine several different outcomes." It's our Essential Skill #9:

Imagine.

That's what more than 100 experts did for the U.N.'s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment -- not simply envisioning ideal situations, but recognizing the real possibilities (ideal or not) based on what we know and where it looks like we're going. Some of the scenarios include:

• Global Orchestration, a future in which we have the means to deal with environmental issues, but do so only in a reactionary capacity (i.e., when we're backed into a corner).
• Order From Strength, a future in which environmental issues takes a backseat to national security issues, creating a situation these experts say would be "unsustainable and ultimately disastrous."
• Adapting Mosaic, a future in which local communities respond most quickly and successfully to environmental challenges (as seen recently in the leadership of U.S. states moving to adopt stricter vehicle emissions regulations than the federal government).
• TechnoGarden, a future in which environmental technology envelopes the entire planet, "a globally connected world relying strongly on technology and on highly managed and often-engineered ecosystems."

It's this imagination that de Rothschild asks all of us to adopt -- the habit of looking at all the "What if's" we see for the world and our own local commuinities. "The goal of scenario planning is not to correctly predict the future," he writes, "but to exercise the imagination so that you're ready when reality strikes."

Essential Skill #8: Buy Carbon Offsets

Four weeks ago, we covered Essential Skill #4: Calculate Your Carbon, from the Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook. Well, now it's time to consider "nuetralizing" some or all of those CO2 emissions with Essential Skill #8:

Buy carbon offsets.

Here's how it works - for every ton of carbon dioxide you pump into the atmosphere, you invest a specified dollar amount into clean energy projects you believe in, such as:

• Wind farms
• Solar plants
• Biomass facilities
• Methane capture
• Energy-efficient housing
• Education programs
• Lobbying initiatives
• Renewable Energy Credits (RECs)
• Reforestation (i.e., planting new trees)

There's just one catch - deciding which of the seemingly countless carbon offset companies to invest in. Handbook author David de Rothschild has some suggestions:

"A key issue is whether offsets demonstrate "additionality." That is, would a particular clean-energy project or emissions-reducing intiative have occurred without your financial contribution? If so, it's really not an offset."

Unless you have hours on end to spend researching all of your carbon offsetting options, it seems to us the wisest choice to go with one (or all) of the three that de Rothschild recommends in the book - NativeEnergy.com, CarbonNeutral.com or CarbonFund.org (where your investment is tax-deductible).

Just remember de Rothschild's "Bottom line" ...

"... carbon offsets should be used to compensate for that last little bit of greenhouse-gas emissions you can't eliminate any other way. They're a supplement to the effort, not a substitute."

Essential Skill #7: Fly Right

There's a new way to fly -- as little as possible. "Trains, buses and even cars are gentler on the atmosphere," explains author David de Rothschild in The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook's Essential Skill #7:

Fly right.

Yes, commercial jets are big emitters of carbon dioxide, but that's not all. "Contrails -- those pretty, white-vapor ribbons in the sky," writes de Rothschild, "trap heat in the atmsophere as efficiently as CO2 does and may also encourage the formation of heat-trapping, high-altitude cirrus clouds."

Trip Tips

• Take a non-stop flight. As much as one quarter of the fuel used during short flights is used at takeoff.
• If your destination is less than 600 miles, consider driving, or taking the bus or train. (Most fuel-efficient flight length: 2,700 miles.)
• Try to book one of the more fuel-efficient jets -- the Airbus A340, Airbus A380, or Boeing B787.
• Buy carbon credits to offset the emissions from your trip.

To calculate the carbon emissions for your next trip -- by plane, car, train or bus -- go NativeEnergy.com/travel. There you can find out how much CO2 your trip will emit and the cost of carbon credits to offset the trip. Best of all, you're given an opportunity to purchase these carbon credits through Native Energy, which invests your dollars into new, renewable energy projects. There you'll also find a video presenting a short, simple explanation for how carbon offsetting works.