Saturday, December 14, 2002
The Ottawa Citizen
Doing our bit
Kate Jaimet's article on whether Kyoto's goal is possible to attain has inspired me to document my personal commitment to greenhouse gas savings since 1990.
My wife and I resigned from our full-time work to pursue new careers from home. We thus saved office space for two employees (estimated four tonnes saving). I sold my car (five tonnes) as I now telecommute (five tonnes) and my wife drives much less (three tonnes). We bought a very small motor home instead of a much larger and similarly expensive model in order to minimize emissions (five tonnes).
We sold our older, poorly insulated house in Ontario and moved to a newer energy efficient house in Alberta (two tonnes). (I don't need to account for the fact the Ontario house was heated and powered almost exclusively by non-emitting nuclear and hydro electricity, whereas the Alberta house is heated with natural gas.)
It seems we have already reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by about 24 tonnes annually and are well beyond the request from our federal government that we reduce our emissions by one tonne each. We will seek more.
Perhaps there will be an emission reduction credit for these early reductions under the federal government's Climate Change Plan for Canada. Citizens or organizations less environmentally conscious than us, or compelled to increase their emissions, may wish to buy them. We look forward to offers for ours.
Duane Pendergast,
Lethbridge, Alta.