Being green isn’t easy. Wired magazine appeared in my mailbox again this month with some bold headlines on the cover – ‘Keep your SUV’ ‘Forget Organics’ ‘Go Nuclear’ and ‘Screw the Spotted Owl.’ Sure, they have to sell magazines and controversy sells magazines but those statements seemed a bit heavy-handed. [As for selling magazines, you will easily recall for example the Vanity Fair/Miley Cyrus debacle right?]

The story behind the eye-catching headlines brings us some fun-filled facts about our carbon footprints as we go about our daily lives… e.g. Live in Cities – the suburbs have created edge-cities which in turn create super-commuters who spend more than 3 hours a day in transit. Also those lawns need mowing out there – 40 million lawn mowers each spew 11 cars worth of pollutants every hour. A/C is OK – it’s cheaper to cool a house than it is to heat it so living in Arizona is better than living in the Pacific Northwest as less energy is used in AZ and there are less pollutants created by cooling. Carbon Trading doesn’t work – where’s the guarantee that the tree planted in Bolivia to offset $10 worth of air travel, won’t be chopped down before it absorbs the requisite carbon? [Sorry, you'll have to sell that Range Rover now.]

But, what grabbed my attention immediately is the Hummer vs Prius match-up – pound for pound, making a Prius contributes more carbon into the atmosphere than making a Hummer. The Prius is actually not a good investment if you are thinking about buying one to save money according to the Hybrid Cars web site:

“Don’t buy a hybrid because you want to make back an investment. That will take between five and twenty years, depending on gas prices, the amount you drive, and how good of a deal you got on the car. Buy a hybrid because it’s the most fuel-efficient car on the road, because the tailpipe emissions are very low, because it uses great technology, or because it’s fun to drive. If gas prices keep going up, then you might get your return on investment. For now, it’s not a good enough reason alone to choose a hybrid version over exactly the same size and kind of conventional car.”

And Omninerd lays out the cost vs value proposition of owning a Prius over a regular used Toyota Corolla. Also let’s not forget that running the Hummer is a different story re its emissions than the amount of energy required to build it.

Final fun fact: All the so-called clean development mechanisms authorized by the Kyoto Protocol, designed to keep 175 million tons of CO 2 out of the atmosphere by 2012, will slow the rise of carbon emissions by…. 6.5 days.

We need a different strategy. Buying a Prius might make us feel good but selling our cars and hopping on the bus will actually make a difference.

Tags: Carbon Offsets, Green, Hummer, Kyoto Protocol, Prius, Wired

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 18th, 2008 at 11:24 am and is filed under Environment, Nemo Design, Opinion, Social Change, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.