How to Carry a Big Wallet and Leave a Small Footprint.
One of the biggest causes of my optimism for humanity’s future is something I call the Rise of the Benevolent Billionaire Nerds.
See, in the olden days, it seems that the people who rose to great power were the most aggressive ones. Warlords and Imperialists. Then the steel and railroad titans, the Mafia, and more recently publishing and oil and military tycoons. While the level of violence and corruption varied, these kingpins of the old guard were all good at converting low-wage manual labor into power and high-profit products. But often their rise was boosted through a mixture of ruthless business practices, suppressing opposing views, political connections and bribery. In colloquial terms, the billionaires were often the men with the biggest balls.
Nowadays, I notice a different trend. The Internet has eliminated the ability to suppress information – the stuff wants to be free. It has also opened the incredible trillion dollar treasure chest of the technology industry: a game you can only win by employing a large number of the most brilliant minds.
This game has different rules: you make a lot more money by honestly providing great technology (Google, Tesla) than by crafting misleading introductory offers and buying elections in an attempt to sell more of your mediocre stuff (my local cable company). To create such complex companies, you need not only brilliant workers, but exceptionally bright founders and CEOs too. This means the new billionaires are the women and men with the biggest brains.
This leads us to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – the most powerful and efficient World-Saving Machine that has ever been dreamed up by humans up to this point in history. The 1400-strong group is a sort of a Do-gooder Engineer’s Dream Team – a combination of some of the world’s most effective minds, honed by business experience and powered by roughly $40,000,000,000.00 of money that was made mostly in private enterprise and then donated for the betterment of the world.
A fortune like this could be used to buy governments and build nuclear bombs, but instead Gates and company seem to be following roughly this logical path:
Start by helping the poorest people with the most urgent health crises Provide better access to education, which drastically reduces poverty Once on this stronger, happier footing, people choose to have far fewer babies You now have much less misery and more equality in the world.
Bill is also highly interested in climate change since rising sea levels, storms, droughts and floods all hit the poorest countries the hardest. Here in the US, we can afford to move or reinforce our coastal cities and redesign our farms. But in poverty-stricken regions, floods and epidemics tend to kill thousands or millions of people.
In short, it’s a great plan designed and backed by some of the world’s greatest brains. But where I dare to diverge from the Gates Foundation, just a little, is in this equation that Bill explained in a recent video:
He rightly states that our total Carbon emissions are a multiple of four (really three) things:
(Population) x (Energy Burned Per Person) x (How Dirty our Energy is).
Population is still on the rise, for now. The world’s poorest people will gradually move up to having refrigerators and indoor housing, so the number of “Services” will rise. But my challenge is in the “E” part. He says that we can maybe reduce that part by half over the next 30 years. I claim that we can EASILY reduce that by 75% immediately, because right now almost all of the energy used by the rich world is wasted.
For example, consider the average American, driving a car 15 miles each way to work. They burn a gallon of gas per day, which would be 33 kilowatt-hours if you could convert this to electricity with no loss. Those who choose to commute in trucks are at double that figure.
Meanwhile, an electric bike does this trip for about 0.6 kilowatt hours at roughly the same average speed in typical traffic conditions, meaning about 98% of that car’s energy was wasted, compared to the superior alternative of the bike. Using our cars less often reduces the need to build and replace cars, which cuts the energy and steel use at the factory, and so on down the chain.
I’ve visited houses where people set their air conditioning at 72 degrees F in the summer, on days when the outdoor temperature is only 80F. This decision alone can burn 6 kilowatt hours of energy per day. Since the human body is capable of being perfectly comfortable at 80F, 100% of this energy is being wasted! Our irrational self-defeating addiction to convenience and soft flabby TV-absorbing laziness increases our energy use while making our lives less enjoyable.
You could go on to list hundreds of tiny, easy optimizations like this which affect every part of the rich world’s energy consumption, and indeed, I have done exactly this over the last five years. And through a happy mathematical coincidence, reducing your energy use by 75% tends to bring your spending down by a similar amount, which puts you on the path to being financially independent in less than a decade.
But ideas like this don’t show up on Bill’s equation, because his is focused more on technology rather than Badassity . Technology helps us make a more energy-efficient car or air conditioner. Badassity is much more powerful because it helps us build a more efficient Human.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love technology. Its byproducts include computers, which led to the Internet, which I feel is the biggest long-term gift the human race has invented to this point.
Technology can help us burn less energy – with one click you can buy 6 beautiful LED bulbs for your recessed can lights, which burn 85% less energy than the old kind while delivering much nicer light. One $40 purchase saves you over $750 per decade, which is a win/win. This giant LED monitor on my desk burns 75% less energy than the boat-anchor glass screens that were the norm when I started writing software in the early ’90s, while giving me four times the resolution.
But sometimes technology is just used to facilitate more consumption. In 1982, my dad bought a Mustang with a 5.0 liter V-8 engine. That schoolbus-sized powerplant cranked out 157 horsepower, which was a lot for those days. Nowadays you can get that amount of power from a 1-liter engine, but instead of losing weight to benefit from the new technology the Mustang has ballooned to 3700 pounds and 435 horsepower.
Without a change in attitude, ever-cheaper renewable energy might just lead us to build houses that hover on noisy drone fans so we can take our entire dwellings with us on vacation. (If you look at the preposterous RV trend here in the US, you can see we’re already on that path).
As the wise Dr. Seuss Himself said in 1971 with odd prescience:
“ Unless Someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
Halting the decline of our ecosystem would be ridiculously easy to do right now . We simply need to start giving a shit.
We just need get through to people who say things like, “It’s nobody’s business what I do with my money. I earned it, so I can spend it however I want.” The statement is almost true – you should be free to spend your own money. But you should be aware, and not in denial, of when that spending hurts other people.
But I’m not Perfect – What about Consumption that Really Makes My Life Better?
Many people get angry at Mr. Money Mustache’s eco-rants, and Binary Options shout out that I’m not perfect myself. How can I judge you , when I regularly fly to another continent, eat a non-vegan diet, voluntarily had a child, and generally live a life of American luxury myself?
The answer is that I’m not judging you. I’m asking you to judge yourself. Just as I judge myself every day. I’m very aware that my actions cause harm to other people:
My return plane ticket to Ecuador blasted out about one metric ton of CO2 – about the same as driving 3,000 miles. I eat roughly 150 pounds of meat and a thousand eggs per year – less than the 270lb US meat average but still enough to emit another thousand pounds of CO2.
CO2 production for various meats – Image source: Treehugger.
My life involves all sorts of gluttonous consumption. But the point is that I’m aware of it, so I can work to chop away any part of it that doesn’t bring me great joy.
Having a grilled pork chop alongside my olive-oil-drenched salad and spiced sweet potato fries for dinner is a true joy and my body runs extremely well on the low carbohydrate diet. I would be more ethical and virtuous as a vegetarian or vegan, but I’ve tried both and this is the happier one for me – for now at least. Similarly, I’d save a shitload of pollution by just canceling the annual Ecuador retreat. But those weeks have been some of the best experiences of my life. To me, it was worth the pollution I created.
On the other hand, I get no joy from driving a car 3 miles to do something I could easily accomplish by bike. The energy boost and physical fitness far outweigh the convenience of traveling passively in a climate-controlled bubble. And I’m not particularly fond of sitting in airplanes, so while I have so far accepted the invitations to Ecuador, I have still had the pleasure of declining free trips to China, Thailand, Australia, England, and Italy. In exchange, I got to enjoy more time with my family here in Colorado, and the world benefited as well. Win/win.
I also get no joy from energy-inefficient light fixtures or furnaces, or from machine-drying my clothes instead of hanging them out in the fresh sunshine of my parkside back yard. These simple pleasures let my family use about 80% less gasoline and 80% less electricity than the typical US household. The comparison is even better if we compare ourselves to similarly high income US households. No virtue or sacrifice required – I get a life that is more fun, much wealthier, and happens to cause less harm to other people.
But What About the Rest of It?
If you’re like me, you’ve made some improvements over the average rich world resident, but your life is still plenty gluttonous, and unsustainable if everyone on the planet lived that way. What can you do? You can erase your footprint with a few clicks.
Companies like TerraPass and CarbonFund have popped up to efficiently channel money into projects that soak up or prevent CO2 emissions. Preserving or planting forests, or building wind farms, catching and burning methane from cow manure for power generation instead of dumping it into the air, and plenty more interesting stuff.
Since most people don’t care about this stuff yet, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit to be had. Planting a single tree can sequester a ton of CO2 for a century, yet a single person can plant hundreds of trees in a day. One of my sisters lives on a 50 acre farm that was deforested a century ago, then eventually the farming side of it was decommissioned. It’s not great farmland, but the forests in the area do just fine. So with the help of an environmental fund she is planting over 4000 trees to reforest the land, with a net cost to her of less than a thousand bucks. An entire lifetime of carbon absorbed (and a beautiful new woodland for future generations of kids to grow up running through) for the price of a set of truck tires.
Hey, I can do this right NOW.
Heading to CarbonFund.org, I am filling up a shopping cart with the energy use from my household. Wow, that’s cheap, $37 to offset all my household carbon? When I add in 2000 miles in my Scion xA, there is another $5.
But then there’s our annual flight for 3 people to Canada to visit family: about $17 total. Wow, does $17 really offset three plane tickets? Not bad at all.
We might as well throw in an offset for all the meat and dairy eating my whole family does. Call it 2 tons of carbon and add 20 bucks – it’s only ten dollars a ton.
How about my trip to Ecuador? Absorbing the carbon for that entire trip is only $12. But really, that was the third annual trip, and I played a large part in inviting the other 24 people who attended each year, alongside my co-conspirator Jim Collins. I doubt that the other attendees took the time to offset their own carbon. Let’s chalk my responsibility up as 75 roundtrip flights , or $900.
I’m going add all of that up to get final bill: $37 + $5+ $17 + $20 + $900. $979 to erase not only my own family’s footprint, but the equivalent of an entire human lifetime of trips to the equator.
That is about the amount of money this article will earn from people using that Amazon Affiliate link to buy energy efficient light bulbs to save themselves money. This is a win/win situation.
(Update from a reader: get these even cheaper ones if you don’t need the recessed light style)
I can (and will) buy solar panels to power my entire household with electricity to spare, for about $3,000. Free electricity for life, for three grand. I fail to see the “lose” in this win/win.
I can swap my gas-powered car for a nearly-new Nissan Leaf, which you can get on Craigslist these days for under ten grand. The car will charge from my solar panels or from my city’s wind-powered electric program, to which I’ve been subscribed for the past 10 years.
A decade or more of high-powered luxury electric driving, never having to buy gas (or change the oil, or replace a muffler) again, for ten grand. The car is silent on the highway and brings you Zen-like joy in traffic jams. This is not a sacrifice, it’s just another win/win.
The money we pour into supporting these new projects and technologies, and divert away from drilling holes in the ground and manufacturing disposable gas-powered vehicles, will create billions of new, better jobs. When we invest in productive infrastructure rather than temporary toys for ourselves, society’s wealth grows much more rapidly.
It’s all really easy, and a lot of fun, if we just give the slightest bit of a shit. So I think Bill Gates can update his equation.
Here’s my final checkout and the cute certificates they emailed me as receipts, Photoshopped together for blog-friendliness:
So, no more complaints or worries about climate change – only action.
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aleksey March 20, 2016, 5:06 pm.
Love this article! Keep it up man!
On my trips to america i’m often just shocked by the amount of “stuff” people have. And then they complain about the recession… The amount of waste is just mind blowing.. Just purely from a self-sustaining financial point of view, but when you factor the environmental impact its just terrifying.
Jim Wang March 21, 2016, 11:25 am.
It is almost like people think with two minds – the one in the ivory tower and the one firmly planted in their own life. Very rarely will the ivory tower ever meet the firmly planted in life mind.
It’s like they talk about how they can’t save enough for retirement but demand the latest gadgets, stuff they will use for six months and then drop in a box in the closet. I’m not as far as MMM on the anti-consumption spectrum but sometimes it boggles the mind what people knowingly waste their money on!
Stockbeard March 29, 2016, 4:28 pm.
Sadly it’s difficult to even engage on that topic with some people. I have a colleague who pretty much denies that any of his actions have a significant impact on the environment. He cranks up the A/C all the time and believes global warming is a scam. What can you do…
Aaron March 31, 2016, 11:40 am.
Talking to someone directly about something (especially if it sounds preachy, such as diet/carbon footprint/etc) is usually a good way to get them to tune out. I’ve found success by having someone ask you about it instead. There are lots of way to do that, but it all depends on the individual. For myself, I’ve been Paleo for years. I talked it up so much at first, but it seemed to always fall on deaf ears. More recently my family’s been getting onboard with it and they’ve become paleo evangelists. I think it’s funny, because they talk about how their friends tune them out when they did the exact same thing to me for years!
Human psychology is involved here. I’m not an expert, but if you can somehow pique the person’s interest or get them to think it was their idea by planting ideas here and there, then you might be able to talk to your colleague without it falling on deaf ears.
DA March 20, 2016, 5:11 pm.
It is great information. I didn’t know about carbonfund.org before. My family is not using the car unnecessarily. Stopped the use of paper towels at home recently. I love the badassity of doing things. Wish i learned to ride a bike when i was young. Walking and planning errands carefully is working for us now.
Simply March 21, 2016, 9:26 am.
It’s never too late to learn! I’m 30 and have taken a few courses to learn how. I’m not quite there yet, but I plan to go out and practice this weekend. Search for a local bike group in your city, they may offer adult learn to ride classes. I’m also starting swim classes next month.
Jim Wang March 21, 2016, 11:26 am.
When I first started lifting weights, I’d do exercises that targeted a single muscle group. As I’ve educated myself, I’ve learned that there are better exercises to do because you can target multiple muscle groups with one motion – giving you more economy.
A bike is like that. Transportation AND exercise AND less fuel/waste, one action with multiple downstream benefits.
SisterX March 21, 2016, 11:17 pm.
Good for you. You’re never too old to learn life skills, but many people feel that education is for childhood and once they’re adults, they just stop bothering to learn as if they’re static. So, way to fight that mentality.
lurker March 25, 2016, 10:24 am.
never rode a bike until I was 15 and now I ride every day…..it is really fun and worth learning at any age I think……great way to get around and stay in shape…..and as badass as you want to make it or as you happen to feel on that given day. cheers.
FianceClever March 23, 2016, 7:46 pm.
Never too late to learn indeed! My wife “learned” when she was 25 (not too old but not too young either). The first few times she rode her bike to work I had to go with her because she was terrified to ride at the beginning. Fast forward to today, her badassity has increased to the point to where she rides to work and back, by herself, pretty much every day.
Dan March 20, 2016, 5:28 pm.
Ugh. More carbon footprint crap. Is there any way we can stick to financial stuff? Please!
Sure Dan, you can go to the rectangular box at the top of your web browser and type a URL that is not mrmoneymustache.com.
There are loads of finance websites out there with no interest in the bigger picture of what the human race is up to. But this has never been, and will never never be, one of them. Bye!
Troy Rank March 20, 2016, 9:34 pm.
Thank you Pete. Making money and becoming rich really isn’t that complicated. You’re financial posts have served to educate many people and that is not without profound merit. However, the whole system approach is what keeps me up at night. How can we solve the general problem case.? This is exactly what this article illustrates, numerically. Thank you for teaching me how to maximize my badassity on all fronts.
Jim Wang March 21, 2016, 11:28 am.
MMM – I was hoping you would simply suggest clicking the X button. :)
Eric M March 22, 2016, 7:01 am.
Howdy Troy! Big fan of yours :) Jim and MMM – these posts need thumbs up because I wanted to second what both of you just said.
Ms Blaise March 22, 2016, 6:10 pm.
That is such a good reply. How I laughed. I figure the site is about your life and values and educating and inspiring others to take up the challenge in their own lives. Write about whatever you like. I’ve just started reading it over the last month, here in New Zealand, and am really loving it. I thought I was a savvy saver ( living on one income and saving the other etc), but now we are starting to change our whole approach to our money. I think we are at 60% savings now, but need to run the numbers. You’ll be pleased to know that reading your blog has stopped me from selling our lovely modest home and buying a “McMansion” so our one child to have more playing room ( What was I thinking!). A real estate agent had actually convinced me that our 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom house “would not work for the teenage years”. New plan. We are going to enjoy living in our house and enjoy its access to the green belt, native bird sanctuary and walking distance to every amenity as well as great neighbours. We also cancelled our expensive backyard “landscaping”, and my man is taking annual leave and working as a labourer with the builder on a much more modest plan. Thanks MMM. Love your work.
Kyle March 23, 2016, 10:04 am.
You are the man. For those of us already on the same page with finances and lifestyle, I think this is the best article you’ve written. I will be financing some carbon sequestration today and consequently enjoy my life even more.
Greg December 3, 2016, 5:37 pm.
OMG MMM, this! Outstanding (and appropriately respectful) direct and to-the-point perfect response. Bam!
Josh March 21, 2016, 4:48 am.
Two comments that come up frequently I wanted to critique. 1) The one on ‘sticking to the financial stuff’: Interesting people do not balk at other less-directly-financial posts, it just this one. This is evidence to me that that is due to the emotional trigger this issue brings up, not how relevant this article is to finance. 2) The one on ‘stepping out of your field against scientific consensus’: We read this blog to listen to an non-financial-degreed blogger go against the mainstream thoughts of financially-degreed experts. Finances are different than the physical sciences, however, there are valid biases any expert consensus can fall to. Again, I think the driver for binary options this argument is more the emotional trigger this issue brings up, less that people believe we should only listen to consensus from experts.
Chris March 21, 2016, 10:29 am.
Eric March 23, 2016, 1:51 am.
If there’s anything that should be a universal bipartisan goal, it should be making it so that our coastal cities (including the capitol) don’t end up underwater. Too bad that requires large scale coordination to pull off, and a large number of people distrust the government to the extent that they can’t believe the overwhelming scientific consensus, because believing it would also suggest that we might need to do something that doesn’t fit nicely with their idea of the form that government should take.
Eric March 23, 2016, 1:53 am.
Not to mention the potential for a mass extinction event which could wreck the massive and complex food chain upon which we rely.
Matt March 21, 2016, 8:16 am.
This is all still financial, since all that carbon people waste is wasted money as well. Pretend the headline is “Get Rich With: Carbon Reduction” if it makes you feel better.
Zephyr911 March 21, 2016, 9:33 am.
Well said. I’ve been making money from solar, wind, and efficiency for years. Passive income from renewable PPAs and cost savings via reduced consumption figure large in my FIRE strategy.
Jonathan March 21, 2016, 9:53 am.
Here’s some financial stuff for you. I live in New York, as I’m sure you know we recently were hit with a pretty devastating hurricane, the effects of which were augmented by rising sea levels and overall global climate change.
Estimates of immediate damages hover in the tens of billions, but there is also the long-term economic impacts that have gone woefully overlooked, including the plan to shut down the “L-train” connecting bedroom communities in Brooklyn with Manhattan in order to repair the damages caused by the flooding in Sandy. This train delivers just shy of 100,000 commuters to their offices EVERY DAY. Offices owned by companies you no doubt have prudently invested in (to speak nothing of all the folks relying on the trains to get to Wall St. to manage and grow YOUR MONEY). All the money to repair the system isn’t just appearing out of thin air, either. Even if you don’t live in New York, the federal government has been heavily subsidizing these repair projects, thanks to the enormously generous disaster package passed by Congress in 2013.
So, just to recap, climate change is directly: 1. impacting your profits by disrupting the economic engine contributing to your stock holdings 2. forcing you to spend more money just to get number 1 back on track 3. speeding up that financial treadmill pulling you backwards as you scramble just to recover lost gains, and all that opportunity for further growth squandered just to get back to where we were in 2012.
Think before you whine.
ALJ March 21, 2016, 10:26 am.
Julia March 21, 2016, 4:30 pm.
Thank you Jonathan!
isaac March 21, 2016, 7:28 pm.
Couple things, you can’t positively contribute any single event to global warming. At best you can say “it probably would not of been as bad if it weren’t for global warming”, but that is about it.
Hurricane Sandy wasn’t that big, it just hit at high tide and in the time since the last hurricane has hit NYC, they’d paved over most of the marshland that acts as a buffer against incoming storm systems.
Jonathan March 24, 2016, 9:10 am.
I pretty explicitly stated the effects were *augmented* by global warming, not exclusively caused. A tropical storm that strong, that late in October was helped in part by atypically warm ocean surface temps. Further, according to NOAA (http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html), since 1992 the oceans have risen about 2.4 inches (0.12 in. per year). Not in itself all that much, BUT, when added to the additional 9.2 inches estimated since 1900, the effect becomes pronounced.
The astronomical high tide usually adds about 2-3 feet to a typical high tide, yes, but without the additional foot of global-warming-induced sea level, there simply would have been far less water flooding Lower Manhattan, and much less of a chance for breaching the subway system. (Not to mention, lower-sea-level would also have correlated with a much cooler sea-surface, meaning Sandy would have weakened much more rapidly in its trek north and been far less devastating on the whole.)
And the hurricane immediately prior to Sandy that hit New York was in 2011: Irene. Even if you stretch it back to 1999 (Floyd) or 1985 (Gloria), you’ll find that a lot of the area that flooded out had been paved over for a period of time measuring in centuries. Especially in FiDi.
TxPaladin July 7, 2016, 8:31 am.
I don’t know whether climate change exists or not. If it does, I don’t trust the people in my government to make hard decisions. So, I pretend like climate change is a fable. But since I still believe in “leave it better than you found it” I still am working to reduce my impact. Energy, food, waste, clothes, fuel, whatever. Less is more. I save money, I use less, and end up being more environmentally friendly while simultaneously thinking both political sides are trying to piss on my head.
Brandon Curtis March 20, 2016, 5:39 pm.
Haters: addressed. Advice: actionable.
Carbon offset and renewable energy certificates seem really inexpensive, and I’ve always wondered if they’re real. In a similar vein, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) now offers a Solar Choice program, which only increases your cost per kW•hr by about 20%: http://www.pge.com/solarchoice. Some regions have access to community solar subscriptions and power purchase agreements.
How much do programs like these actually encourage development of new solar resources? I’d love to hear from an environmental engineer or policy person who studies this stuff!
Gina March 21, 2016, 8:59 am.
I know that my electric company offers the ability to buy wind power for something like an additional 20% through the ‘Blue Sky’ program. The specifics of the the regulations governing the utilities determines how much good it does. Here in Albuquerque, it used to be that you would pay extra for wind power that the electric company would use to meet it’s regulatory requirements. They would have had to pay for it either way, but instead you were paying for them! However, regulations changed and now the Blue Sky program needs to provide renewable energy above and beyond the regulatory requirements.
Brent March 22, 2016, 12:59 pm.
Also in Albuquerque, The PNM “Sky Blue” program can only count for up to 85% of your usage and does not guarantee that they are above regulatory standards for wind/solar. It does get calculated into the rates when increasing the standards though so there is some good from it (but not as much as it sounds on the surface). Doing solar panels would be far more than the program if you have the ability.
DanProv March 21, 2016, 9:20 am.
Thanks for the info on PG&E solar. I just signed up for 100% solar!
LennStar March 21, 2016, 10:45 am.
When the global carbon cap-and-trade scheme was introduced, the price was thought – by scientist – to be around 70 EURO to be effective. That price is a function of how many carbon certificates are out there. Then the countries started – Surprise!! – giving their contries industry more free certificates then intended. The price plummeted to 7 Euro and is not far away from this today.
I dont know if the certificates you buy are real, I dont know the companies, but the price, unfortunately, is.
JC March 21, 2016, 2:15 pm.
I self-installed 3KW of grid-tied solar PV on my roof 10 years ago. For most of those years, I’ve contracted to sell the Solar Renewable Energy Certificates (SREC) generated by the system – as I live in a state with Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) legislation. The SRECs can be sold a variety of ways, such as on the spot market, at auction, or by negotiating long-term contracts. I’ve sold for $70-200/Mwh.
What this means – I’m working the carbon offset game MMM described above, in reverse. That is, I sell the "benefits" of my electricity to power companies that are not meeting legislated requirements for clean energy on their grids. So, while I’m not able to claim that I’m carbon neutral for my power use – someone else bought that "right" – I am responsible for supplying.
3Mwh of clean energy every year to the region, and getting payed to do so until the rest of grid catches up.
Now that my city has smart meters installed, and can track power flow in both directions (@ 15min intervals) – I am anticipating time-of-use billing structures to emerge. That is, charging more $ for power at peak use periods when it is most costly to produce & supply. Peak use correlates nicely with solar power generation (sunny summer afternoons) so that surplus power I sell back into the grid will be worth multiples above the base rate – and effectively zero-out my power bill.
Glen March 23, 2016, 7:46 pm.
Your investor-owned utility is required to meet a certain percentage of renewable generation in its portfolio, but it has no incentive to buy additional renewables since they are more expensive = less profitable. Signing up for the solar billing option pays the differential cost between solar and conventional sources, so they can sign contracts for additional solar generation without losing money. I believe this will encourage new solar development. I recently signed up for the Green Rate offered by my local utility, Southern California Edison, which also happens to be my employer. I believe they offer two levels: 50% or 100% which would correspond to an increase in your monthly bill of 10% or 20%. Disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Southern California Edison.
Mike March 25, 2016, 11:14 am.
This is increasingly not the case, particularly in Colorado. If we look at the last bulk renewable energy purchase by the largest regulated utility in Colorado, Xcel Energy (aka Public Service Company of Colorado), they attempted to purchase 200 MW more wind and 50 MW more solar than initially intended, and more than required to by Colorado’s RPS. This was an “all sources solicitation” where wind and solar were being compared side by side with gas-fired generators in an effort to select the lowest cost portfolio; most previous solicitations for renewables have been in special solicitations where only wind, solar, and certain other “renewable” technologies were allowed to bid. Xcel found that the lowest cost portfolio contained more wind and solar than initially envisioned; the PUC expressed concern that Xcel wanted to significantly change the energy mix late in the game, so disallowed the preferred portfolio and directed Xcel to select a portfolio with less wind and solar and more gas – a more expensive generation mix.
Examples abound; in Texas, which alone in the US operates a de-regulated “energy only” power market, wind is the cheapest source by far. In Southern California, SDG&E exceeded their mandated energy storage purchase when bids came in far cheaper than expected, making utility scale batteries in certain locations more economical than a gas-fired peaker.
Yes, these examples are based on subsidized prices. However, as anyone who is honest about the power industry will tell you, all power generation technologies are subsidized one way or another by federal and, in some cases, state policy. If you want to know which sources would be cheaper sans policy support, look at Department of Energy LCOE calculations, (Levelized Cost of Energy).
I think we may be seeing the point now where the market starts to take over from government policy where energy is concerned. Once we pass that point, there’s really no going back.
Tyler March 20, 2016, 5:45 pm.
I really enjoyed the contrast you created to Bill Gates. It created a very powerful argument, for me at least, that made good ol’ common sense. I started here 1 year ago because of the financials, and frankly, I’ve stayed because everything you have written resonates so, so strongly with me.
Thank you so much for everything you’ve done and made available to me and more importantly to the public, and thank you so much for everything you will do.
Carl March 20, 2016, 5:50 pm.
Here! Here! on 80 degrees indoors in the summer.
It’s insane that we expect people to dress up as if we were in a cool maritime climate (England) in the summer in the U.S. where it actually gets hot in the summer once away from the Pacific coast.
On the other hand, a sweater or tweed jacket makes sense in the winter. The reason for turning down the temp in the winter is less to save energy than to reduce skin drying.
If you want more people to take up your bike instead of drive philosophy, you need to address the crime problem that persists in this country. End the drug war and replace welfare (and the progressive tax system) with a citizen dividend, and crime will drop enough that riding a bike in the old grid streets will feel safe. And the impetus for bike/pedestrian unfriendly cul-de-sac mazes will be less.
Andres March 20, 2016, 6:48 pm.
Actually, the main thing that needs to be addressed is lack of safety from cars. Over and over again, polls and research shows that the main reason why most people don’t bike is due to not feeling safe on our roadways when sharing space with cars.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/why-women-dont-cycle/ – “79 percent of the women cited ‘distracted driving’ as the biggest barrier to them cycling.”
http://road.cc/content/news/28431-road-danger-biggest-barrier-cycling-says-research-commissioned-dft – “Six in ten people in England who are able to ride a bicycle are deterred from cycling to work because they believe that ‘it’s too dangerous for me to cycle on the roads,’ and half say that they would cycle, or would do so more often, if there were greater provision of cycle paths”
http://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2012_Dill-and-McNeil_Four-Types-of-Cyclists-Testing-a-Typology-to-Better-Understand-Behavior-and-Potential.pdf – “A majority (56%) of the region’s population fit in the Interested but Concerned category – thought to be the key target market for increasing cycling for transportation. The analysis indicates that reducing traffic speeds and increasing separation between bicycles and motor vehicles, such as through cycle tracks, may increase levels of comfort and cycling rates.”
That’s not to say the things you mentioned aren’t issues, but we get the best bang for our buck by building safe biking infrastructure everywhere.
Carl March 20, 2016, 8:00 pm.
These are bigger factors in suburban areas, where you cannot get anywhere without getting on or at least crossing major thoroughfares. It’s also a huge factor on country roads where I live — which is why I don’t ride a bike.
In old grid neighborhoods, the traffic is naturally slow — close to bike speeds. In much of the country such neighborhoods are associated with danger from criminals. Sometimes this danger is real; sometimes merely assumed.
Andres March 20, 2016, 8:52 pm.
Nope. Guess where I’ve gotten hit riding my bike? It wasn’t on suburban country roads, it was in east coast grid cities that were part of the original 13 colonies. Boston, NYC.. perception there is that roads are unsafe to bike on unless they include bike lanes (NYC in particular has come a long way since I was there 10 years ago, but that’s because of building separated infrastructure. We’re talking about perceived safety, here. Let’s not forget about the stress of riding next to trucks and SUVs, aggressive drivers, etc.
Now, when we talk about actual safety – yes, those old grid neighborhoods are actually pretty safe. If you get hit on your bike there, you’re pretty likely to walk away from it (unless you’re pulled under the wheels of a right-turning truck, which happened to someone last year in the Boston/Cambridge area). That’s because vehicle speeds are slower. However, if you get hit in the suburbs while riding, you’re more likely to die thanks to the higher speeds involved.
wild wendella April 6, 2016, 12:18 pm.
It’s really upsetting. I also live three miles from work, have biked in a few times, but feel the risk is absolutely not worth it. I just got back from Switzerland where I saw lots of people biking, without helmets mind you. The cars were driving slower and I heard no one honking. I live in the tri-state area (of NYC) and every regular cyclist I know has been hit at least once.
Liz March 20, 2016, 10:00 pm.
I would love to bike to work since one of my buildings is only a couple miles away but am terrified due to the traffic around here. I’ve never been a confident bike rider and I’d probably end up walking my bike half the time! I also live on a mountain that gets quite icy in the winter and is a big challenge to walk up also. I guess I’d get in good shape quickly! Heck, event the thought of riding a bike around here make my heart race, lol. We need big-ass bike lanes!! I’m pretty sure my little helmet will not be much of a match for one of the thousands of SUV’s in good old upstate NY.
brent March 21, 2016, 9:07 am.
I’d love to ride my bike around town again. If there were no cars on the road due to some Twilight Zone-like episode I would be happy as a clam.
Unfortunately, when I tried a few years ago I had 3 near-accidents. Driver’s fault. Scared the crap out of me.
Distracted or even aggressive driving behavior persists in my little college town in the Southeastern US. Every article in our local paper (online) receives dozens of hate-filled comments directed at cyclists. A lot of this, I’m sure, is brought on by the very irresponsible cycling habits of college kids who routinely break traffic rules. The rest of the law-abiding cyclists pay the price.
When I drive and sit in traffic, or at intersections, or view oncoming drivers, I see maybe 5/10 drivers with a phone at their ear or even worse, texting. I see them routinely doing last-minute swerving out of the way to avoid hitting cyclists as well as pedestrians. Why would I want to get back on my bike?
If we had separate and safe lanes, little bike highways, with barriers, etc. I would we be all over it. Until then, I’ll happily drive and stay out of the hospital. Mountain biking only for me.
gj March 22, 2016, 7:11 am.
reading these post makes me sad. We should have so much more infrastructure for cyclists! Also, is there no policing in your town to reduce people using their phones in the car?
The orange/red asphalt are bike lanes, and the big recessed area is not a parking garage for cars but for bikes. Over here, most roads have a bike path apart from the road, unless it is in very low-speed conditions (<20 miles/hour or 30 km/h)
Ralph2 March 24, 2016, 9:09 pm.
In OZ we have some areas with good bike facilities and some that would be suicidal bike facilities. Where I am the local big city has excellent bike paths etc, but to get there I need to navigate an 80-90kph zone for 18km which has 7 high speed crossing areas that many do not indicate to use, decide to change and turn at the last moment or overtake and cut across just as the access finishes. There have been many vehicle accidents etc where people needed to be cut out of the car, a person on a pushbike would be in serious trouble. My suburb is not too bad though.
JT March 27, 2016, 1:24 am.
I dream of such facilities in the UK! Similar in Germany, I believe. I’ve visited Karlesruhe where cyclists, cars and pedestrians are all treated equally and there are plenty of police( on bicycles) to ticket transgressors! Might have to move to the Netherlands!
Bliss88 March 20, 2016, 5:53 pm.
Thanks much for the great article linking badassity/early retirement-promoting frugal habits with ecological sustainability.
Quick q: I must have missed the post describing that you do own a car (I had assumed your family is car-free). Can you pls share why you went w the Scion Xa?
I am in the market for a car (mostly w-e trips out of the city and drives to regional parks). I had a Prius which smushed like a soda can in a front end collision. So looking for a 4-door field efficient hatchback that drives w a little better power than the Prius did.
Blisseth – we currently have two mostly-unnecessary cars: a Scion xA (2005) and a giant luxury Honda Odyssey van (1999). You will have to search my old articles to find the whole story, but start by searching for “top 10 cars for smart people”
A Prius is still one of the safest cars with more than enough power – I’d just start searching Craigslist for a replacement if you drive a fair amount.
Also, for those considering SUVs and other 4WD trucks for on-road use, a Prius (or even my Scion) with snow tires will do great in those conditions. All wheel drive does not make you safer: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/12/01/all-wheel-drive-does-not-make-you-safer/
Huck March 21, 2016, 12:32 pm.
I have a prius. What the heck is wrong with the power in it?? Does it go 80+ mph on the highway? Yes. Does it get me to work faster than horse and buggy? yes. Then what’s the problem?
Javahead March 21, 2016, 3:48 pm.
“Smushed like a soda can” is actually a *good* thing – modern cars are designed to crumple and absorb the shock of impact so that their passengers experience less.
Unless you’re driving something as heavy and durable as an army tank or a big rig, hitting another vehicle will still result in your coming to a sudden, high-G-force, stop. Designing a car with crumple zones does more damage to the car by slowing the deceleration the passengers experience. So that yes, the car may look worse – but the passengers have a much better chance of walking away without major injuries.
This is one area where I’m quite willing to accept “lower damage resistance” in a product.
Gwen March 20, 2016, 5:58 pm.
Ooh Pete’s getting snarky and I like it. As someone who has taken one of those trips to Ecuador, thanks for covering my flight. Remind me to get you a beer next time we hang out.
Sweet! That’s about a third of my carbon offset spending refunded right there, and with good company too! Thanks Gwen.
Wade March 21, 2016, 2:54 pm.
Who ends up getting the “carbon offset” money? I’m curious what percentage of each $1 goes to offset.
Brian March 31, 2016, 2:30 pm.
95.5%, according to Charity Navigator. Carbonfund.org gets 4 stars through Charity Navigator, which is a good rating.
MamaKate March 20, 2016, 6:21 pm.
Agree with your overall premise here, and also believe we’re moving in the right direction Asa society overall. But, I’m not sure Bill Gates & his foundation are as evolved from their wealthy predecessors as you suggest. I am most familiar with the Gates Foundation work in education. In this area they’ve consistently used their financial power to undermine public schools and replace them with mediocre charters. The only “improvement” this offers is for the wealthy and powerful, who redirect public dollars, earmarked for education, towards private enterprise focused on the bottom line, rather than students. Look at how this has played out in Chicago for some glaring examples that would fit right into your paragraph 2…
I’m sure they make mistakes like any humans.. but as an immigrant from Canada I find this US charter school system to be a pretty neat idea.
If we set aside the idea of existing public schools (and the careers therein) being sacred, couldn’t the disruption of charter schools prove to be a great experimental testing ground? After all, complacency is the enemy of competence in any system involving lots of people. And it’s better to make mistakes than to be afraid to make changes.
I really don’t know much about the issue, so this is just a question rather than an ideology. Do you find that these charter schools in your area are actually focused on making a profit? I thought that unlike private schools, they had to be run on a non-profit basis?
A. Guest March 20, 2016, 8:29 pm.
There are for-profit and non-profit charters. The for-profit ones tend to be worse about things like overworking Teach-for-America grads and suspending/expelling disruptive or disabled students to raise test scores and graduation rates. Even the non-profit charters funnel public funds to the educational industrial complex: a network of consultants, curriculum providers, online platforms, and faux advocacy groups.
Their effect on urban public school systems has been pernicious: racial resegregation, backpack funding, neighborhood school closures, and children subjected to harsh and demeaning disciplinary structures.
Also, when you say “experimental testing ground” . . . unlike software development, kids only get a window of a few years to learn reading or algebra. Failed experiments are unethical in education.
There is a reason you don’t find charter schools in affluent suburbs.
Katie March 21, 2016, 5:54 am.
The affluent suburbs around me have charter schools. They are all Montessori based and people love them.
Marcia March 21, 2016, 1:33 pm.
My affluent suburb has charter schools.
Commenter March 22, 2016, 6:21 pm.
My affluent suburb has a Montessori Charter school. Just put my kids in it. Saves me 15k a year! STEM Charters are the other option. Charters are popping up all over my affluent suburb.
SpaarWalvis March 22, 2016, 7:20 pm.
In my semi-kinda-affluent suburb, charters are just about the only highly rated schools (think 8 on GreatSchools instead of 3-4).
reader in the rockies March 22, 2016, 9:58 pm.
My very affluent suburb has charter schools. My kids went to the regular public schools and I was sadly unimpressed. They got “processed” more than educated. The educational level was pathetic. It is all about teacher’s unions and preserving the status quo. Kids’ education seemed barely in the picture. Speaking of an experiement! Now that’s what I call unethical. Sorry to be so blunt but that was my experience in an affluent suburb. I can’t even imagine an inner city school district.
A Guest March 23, 2016, 6:53 am.
Ok, you guys! Other states must have different arrangements, or perhaps you are confusing charters and magnets. What we’ve got in my area is urban charter chains right in town, and the powers-that-be are stacking the deck in their favor. I still somehow doubt suburban parents would put up with the harsh and humiliating disciplinary practices of KIP and Success (making students sit on the floor until they “earn the right” to a chair, e.g.) or accept their kids being taught by Teach for America grads with only a couple of weeks’ training.
A Guest March 23, 2016, 6:59 am.
ps — my kids are in an urban MAGNET high school and are getting a fantastic education. My daughter is a junior taking three AP’s (one as a guided independent study), an advanced engineering class (digital electronics), 3D modeling and animation, and taking a class at the local Ivy for free after school. The school culture is supportive and positive. I really have no complaints except that it all seems fragile based on the budget.
MamaKate March 20, 2016, 8:35 pm.
In theory charters are a good idea, and they began their lives that way. However, in practice, they helped lead to the “discovery” that education can exist as a profit center. Since that discovery, many charter networks have become predatory, particularly in low SES urban areas (such as parts of Chicago). Not all charters are bad (and not all public schools are good…), but the charter movement has “jumped the shark.” What started as an incubator for innovation has now become home to many corporate “networks” that promote the lowest common denominator of educational theory (drill and kill, teaching to the test, authoritarian brain washing, etc). They are also highly politicized, with contracts to open schools in high profit areas (low ses/ many students receiving free lunch federal funds) often traded for political favors or financial kickbacks. I know this isn’t the topic of your post so I won’t take too much time on my soapbox about the topic… I hope you’re right that this is a lapse in judgement by the Gates Foundation. But if you follow the money in education, it appears they may be as tied up in the world of political connections and bribery as the publishing and oil barons they’ve replaced…
MamaKate March 20, 2016, 8:40 pm.
Also, just wanted to add in response to your question. Yes… charters are run as non-profits for tax purposes. There is still plenty of money to be had under that umbrella.
Edifi March 20, 2016, 9:29 pm.
This mistake is well documented. Statisticians have done studies suggesting Gates missed the math. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-07-15/bill-gates-school-crusade.
MamaKate March 20, 2016, 9:47 pm.
Edifi, Perhaps Gates missed the math. Perhaps he had goals that were not as altruistic as it might seem. I honestly don’t know which, but watching this unfold over the last decade has made it very clear that there are many people out there who seek to profit at the expense of disadvantaged children.
Tara March 21, 2016, 6:58 am.
Charters have made segregation worse in urban environments. In areas around Philadelphia and New York City, charters target motivated kids and kids without learning disabilities, forcing public schools to end up with kids with more learning and emotional problems–this is why charter schools “test better” they don’t have an “equal experiment” to begin with. Success Academy Charter (a chain of NYC charters), who pays their head over $400k a year (NYC public school head doesn’t even get half that) has been in the New York Times as of late for these practices.
In Philadelphia area schools, charter schools get more funding per kid than the state gives public schools, so already poor performing schools like Chester, PA schools (worst in state) get drained of money they desperately need for their higher rates of special need kids (who don’t get accepted into charter schools).
steve March 21, 2016, 8:07 pm.
While Bill is very intelligent and ambitious, I’m not convinced that Gates is some born-again hero. He bought DOS, then created a monopoly driving out better innovative companies (i.e. IE copying and forcing out netscape, excel replacing lotus, etc). Microsoft lost that 1999 lawsuit but it was too late for netscape.
Now good ‘ol Bill is teaming up with Monsanto to unleash GMO seeds on poor countries. Yes, farmer Bill is “helping” small farmers increase their mono-culture yield (GMO seeds allow them to spray the hell out of crops with Roundup). And roundup must be safe because Monsanto says so as do their former employees at the FDA. FDA is a revolving door of Big Ag execs. http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/OfficeofFoods/ucm196721.htm hmmm…. vice president for public policy, Monsanto Company…nice… he must be unbiased, right http://ecowatch.com/2015/10/12/monsanto-glyphosate/
Govt regulation is a joke – how long did it take for cigarettes to be banned….
As far as charters schools, around here you have to actually apply to be accepted – so in poorer areas, the parents that give a damn send their kids to charters, and the public schools are left with more of the parents that don’t or kids who didn’t win the charter school “lottery”.
Gates in education, crop production, etc is like Zuck literally wasting $100M in Newark. I appreciate the efforts and thoughts, but money does not solve problems alone and I’m not convinced one entity should yield so much power. I recall a TED talk about a guy who was in the peace corp or an organization like that – they were helping Africans plant tomatoes and they were so excited but the Africans were not interested and we’re trying to explain it wouldn’t work – right before the tomatoes were ready, a pack of rhinos came and ate all the plants.
MMM, efforts like yours, to spread knowledge and hope, are far more effective than throwing around money like a billionaire trying to atone for prior conquests.
Viren March 27, 2016, 11:37 pm.
I’d like to offer a counter-point, that I often bring up when Bill Gates gets discussed. My mother works for the WHO as a finance officer, and according to her, before the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, WHO funding was about 80% governments and 20% private. Since they’ve come on the scene, that ratio has become reversed.
In addition, because Gates is a hard-nosed numbers guy, the *kind* of data collection that he forces WHO to have on hand has made the whole organization much more efficient than previously.
Also, as an Indian guy, the work that WHO and indeed the Gates Foundation have done towards public health, isn’t something that can be dismissed out of hand. Polio has been effectively eradicated in this massive country of 1 billion people. It’s a great achievement.
Finally, I LOVE what Microsoft has given me. Excel was objectively better than Lotus by the time it replaced it. Microsoft promised to put a computer on every desk, and they did it. As a mechanical engineer, a Macintosh is useless for me because many software that my (niche) specialization uses are only available for Windows (admittedly, only because Windows is ubiquitous). And now, I love my Surface Pro 3 which is super portable, and yet does everything a heavier laptop would do.
Sure, it wasn’t a daisies and unicorns pure pursuit of egalitarianism that got us here, and Microsoft spent years ignoring UX design, and making us suffer through a decade of horrible beige boxes. The counter-point here, and something Joel Spolsky talks a lot about on his blog, is that Microsoft, since Day 1, has been super-focused on developers. To the point that they’d have engineers working on modifying the code of the OS just to ensure that *one* particular software would work with the newer edition. That’s the reason they succeeded. They knew that an OS is a platform for developers, and therefore, developers are king.
So, yes, Bill Gates might not be our messiah or our savior. But, compared to fucktards like Soros, or worse, Koch brothers, I’ll take Mr. Gates any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Thirty Something March 29, 2016, 10:57 am.
That was a great TED talk – I thought the veggies got eaten by hippos. But proves your point either way.
The Professor March 22, 2016, 9:54 pm.
As one who has spent considerable time in education I have to agree with MamaKate on this one. Some charter schools are probably doing a good job but I’ve seen many that exist that are focused on for profits. Follow the money trail. The teachers in those schools may be doing a good job but the backers do not have the altruistic intentions that one would like to believe. Charter schools like private schools can be “selective” in their students while the public schools have to take whatever walks through their doors. Is there a lot that can be done to improve the public schools? Yes but the negative sentiment and public bashing (pushed by the wealthy benefactors of (some) charter schools doesn’t help. Maybe that’s a topic for another day though.
Enjoyed your post. I’m a big bike advocate in southern CA. car Armageddon land out here. Sadly my 10 yr. old daughter is not as enthusiastic about taking the bike to school every day.
Donna March 27, 2016, 2:46 am.
This is the first year Charter schools have been alowed in Western Washington State. We voted “Yes” for them. Now the State is hell bent on shutting them down. My opinion is that they are giving the kids a much better education. One-on-one interaction and attention, as the class sizes are much smaller. They are not, in my opinion, simply focused on making money.
They are interested in the best interest of the kids and they do work. I also noticed they are fair to all and offer grants and/or financial assistance for lower income families.
I hope they do not close the Charter schools here. They really do seem to be working and give the kids a much better education.
Rebecca B April 11, 2016, 9:48 pm.
The objection that many Washingtonians have to charter schools is that they are run as a business, with privately chosen administrators, but they do it all on taxpayers’ money. In public schools a school board who is elected by the people are held accountable for how taxes are used to educate students. In a charter school, the public has no say. The Washington state supreme Court also declared charter schools unconstitutional for this reason, because those who spend tax dollars must (theoretically) answer to the taxpayers.
vmthunder March 21, 2016, 11:12 am.
And, here’s Anthony Cody’s book challenging the Gates Foundation’s educational initiatives. Cody not just wrote the book, he spearheaded a massive campaign against the foundation’s policies: http://amzn.to/1pvHMam.
Laura March 21, 2016, 12:21 pm.
Let me chime in here as well. MMM, I’m glad that you called the Gates out on some of the BS that undermines their philanthropic philosophy, but I’m afraid that there’s a lot more controversy to their strategy than even this thread about education. Here’s a good article to start off: http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Levich-2015-American_Journal_of_Economics_and_Sociology.pdf.
In the philanthropic/nonprofit world, where I come from, a lot of people are justifiably skeptical and even distrustful of the Gates Foundation and other major philanthropic institutions simply because of the amount of power they yield–and their ability to control entire systems of addressing problems. There’s no shortage of opinions on how to solve the world’s problems, as I’m sure you know. But concentrated power, even in a supposedly “charitable” place, can be dangerous. And as you’ve said, the Gates Foundation believes that technology is the means to solving the world’s problems. It’s a highly westernized, privileged, and objectively-leaning perspective.
Please don’t get me wrong here, I deeply admire the time you’ve devoted on this blog to living a more sustainable, balanced, and conscious life. We have to address climate change. But I would caution all those who read this blog to be equally critical of our western status quo when it comes to philanthropy and how to solve big problems like climate change. IMO, it’s going to take a lot of different and big, as well as small, ideas.
Shane March 21, 2016, 12:51 pm.
Another thing about Bill Gates — he is no nice-guy when it comes to doing business — think your own personal experiences with Microsoft products, and more importantly, read up on how Bill managed to make Microsoft into the monopoly it is: https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/r/rohm-microsoft.html.
Neil March 20, 2016, 6:31 pm.
Nice to see you showing your true colors these last two posts MMM. We always knew this was a thinly disguised environmental blog in a FIRE wrapper.
Bill March 22, 2016, 10:42 am.
Waste is waste, whether it’s money or energy. What if we accidentally made a better world and global warming turned out not to be real? THE HORROR!
My favorite part: “I’m asking you to judge yourself”. No one is perfect and you laid it all out there MMM. All of your lavish consumption – note my extreme sarcasm – fully addressed and environmentally neutralized.
Over the past few years I made an effort to endure slight discomfort by setting the house air conditioning to 82 in the summer. Half way through this past summer we turned it down to a frigid 80 when Mrs. Thriftyskate was pregnant – she was a champ with the heat up until the third trimester. Can’t believe I used to set it to 68. Pains me to admit it.
Picked myself up a used electric car last year too. Getting 22mpg with premium octane with the old car wasn’t just a financial drag, it was causing me to regret more and more the 175,000+ miles I had driven with it. I cringe at all the other wasteful things I’ve done in my life.
Keeping the judgement focused on me and not eye rolling other people is hard though. Especially on trash day around where I live. The neighbors put out their bins and it seems like a week doesn’t go by where there’s a perfectly re-usable item – usually made of plastic – poking out from underneath a lid. More motivation to not be as wasteful I suppose.
How di