Raise your hands if you own one of those nice flat-screen TVs? My hand is up. I replaced my old tube television about six month’s ago, and opted for a large, flat-screen LCD. It turns out these TVs are really bad for the environment in a couple ways.
First, these TVs contain nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), the same environmentally harmful gas found in the new 3G iPhone. This gas is estimated to be 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and there will be about 4,000 tons of it will be produced per year.
In addition, large, flat-screen TVs use much more energy than traditional tube television sets. I was a bit suspicious when I felt the huge amount of heat my LCD TV emitted when compared with my old TV set. Next time you think about getting a new TV, you may want to think twice. I was going to replace another old TV of mine, but now I think I’ll hold off on doing so.
I was pondering how population affects our environment, when I came upon this article in the Yale Environment 360 called, “Too Many People,
Too Much Consumption” by scientists Paul and Anne Ehrlich at Stanford. In it, they argue that we need to reduce our population if we are to solve our enviromental problems. I could not agree more. Once someone is born, they are free to pursue life happiness, a car, a house and the American dream right? It seems obvious that best way to avoid the problem is to have fewer people.
But I read the article, eagerly looking for the part where they talk about how we reduce the population, but found very little. Their suggestion is to do so (I kid you not):
Through a global dialogue in which people discuss the human predicament and decide whether they would like to see a maximum number of people living at a minimum standard of living, or perhaps a much lower population size that gives individuals a broad choice of lifestyles.
Huh? Really? That seems kind of a like a recipe to do nothing.
I think a much more straightforward option is to make sure that women around the world have access to education. Quoting the National Center for Health Statistics study, there was, “a direct relationship between years of education and birth rates, with the highest birth rates among women with the lowest educational attainment.” This means that those of us who feel strongly about the planet should support the efforts of those who are working to educate women around the world. It’s a huge way we can make a difference.
Sorry vegetarians, as this blog post may be offensive to you.
So meat eaters in Australia, there’s a new study out that indicates that if you want to reduce greenhouse gases by grazing livestock, you should switch to eating kangaroos.
Farming kangaroos instead of sheep and cattle in Australia could cut by almost a quarter the greenhouse gases produced by grazing livestock, which account for 11 percent of the nation’s annual emissions, said a new study.
Removing seven million cattle and 36 million sheep by 2020 and replacing them with 175 million kangaroos, to produce the same amount of meat, could lower national greenhouse gases by 3 percent a year, said the University of New South Wales study. [Source]
Unlikely that this will happen though, don’t you think? The mindset shift that would be required to start eating kangaroos seems like too big a barrier.
Not to be outdone by Toyota’s announcement of the plug-in hybrid Prius and Toyota’s Lexus hybrid and the small Toyota iQ, Honda has recently announced a new hybrid. Unlike the Civic hybrid, Honda’s new hybrid will be designed as a hybrid from the ground up. The recently captured spy pictures above show exactly what Honda is going after – Toyota’s popular Prius hybrid.
Honda’s new hybrid appears to be based off the FCX Clarity fuel-cell concept car. Rumors say this new hybrid will replace the Insight, while others claim this will be the new Civic hybrid. Honda is targeting this new hybrid as an entry-level car. Estimates are that Honda will produce 200,000 each year, with half of those sold in the U.S. Some say the price may be as low as $19,000 – no matter what the price is, look for it to be competitive and lower-priced than the Prius. The car will be a five-seater, 4 door hatchback, also similar to the Prius. This new model is not expected to use lithium ion batteries, and gas mileage is expected to be well above 40 mpg. Rumors have the car arriving in the U.S. late 2009. I’m crossing my fingers for it to come even sooner!
If you’re like me, you probably take less public transit than you could – I blame it on transit maps, which are always so freaking hard to figure out! But these days, with gas prices the way they are, and the whole planet melting and all, it’s a good time to find a workaround.
Fortunately Google offers great transit instructions in 50 cities worldwide, including the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, Austria, France, Italy, Poland, Russia, Swizerland and the UK? Just go to Google Transit, and enter your start point and destination!
This link shows the results I get from Google Transit for a trip from my alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley to the Google campus.
You can also get the same transit help on your mobile phone via Google Maps for Mobile (GMM), which is actually a great app that I use all the time. Go to the GMM page to download the app to your phone (works on some phones) or just to learn more. There’s even a video about how it works!
