Hawai'i's Environment
A little change can help a lot
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Columnist
The Center for a New American Dream doesn't need you to call your legislator or picket a local business.
Instead, it wants you to make a difference at home.
And it figures you can do so relatively painlessly.
The organization favors conservation, but has concluded that unless people do it voluntarily, we as a society are unlikely to develop the political will to do it in our communities.
Even little things can make a big difference, and whether or not you accept the ideas behind each of their recommendations for conservation, any one or two of them will have an impact, they say.
Eric Brown, communications director for the Center for a New American Dream, said the organization polled California residents in July, after that state's energy crisis, and found that most reported they had personally taken action to conserve resources.
"But the really amazing thing was more than 80 percent of the people who had conserved energy during the crisis said that it did not have a negative impact on their quality of life, which told us that making these little changes is really no burden at all, and there's no reason not to do it."
Another survey indicated that two-thirds of Americans say they would take action if they felt it would make a difference.
Its Web site, newdream.org, has details on the center Turn the Tide conservation program, which puts those two pieces of information together.
It suggests things that can be done, argues that they do make a difference, and helps participants calculate the difference they make.
Skipping a 20-mile car trip each week eliminates 18 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere a year. Skipping a meal of beef can save thousands of gallons of water. Shrimp fishing has a large bycatch of other marine life killed but not used, so the center suggests limiting meals of shrimp.
Stopping the flow of junk mail can save trees, water and landfill space. The Web site has a form you can send to cut out much of the unwanted mail.
Stop the use of toxic chemicals in your yard, use low-flow devices on showers, and aerators on faucets. Replace incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents.
"If only a thousand of us each replace four standard bulbs with low-mercury CFLs, we can prevent the emission of 5 million pounds of carbon dioxide and reduce our electricity bills by more than $100,000 over the lives of those bulbs," the center says.
The center says it's not against consumption, just wasteful consumption.
"We are attempting nothing less than a shift of American culture away from its current emphasis on consumption toward a more fulfilling, just and sustainable way of life," the group says.
Jan TenBruggencate is The Advertiser's Kaua'i bureau chief and its science and environment writer. Reach him at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 245-3074.
