2nd Blog Post For Final Project

So I'm reading this article from the New York Times on Green Metropolis, and one of the things that occurred to me was that my family is the nearly the epitome of the energy-consuming, "green" family. We compost, we recycle, and we try and conserve energy wherever possible, but we drive to work, school, shops, all around. We have tons of appliances, and no matter how clean the energy, we're still wasting it. I could do like a meta-analysis of my household's energy consumption, and I could come to some sort of conclusion about how we could improve our energy-citizenship.

The real problem with the public view of energy is that its just wrong. Aside from the total ignorance of people who deny climate change, those who believe they are helping the environment often aren't. For example, compost is a good thing for reintroducing nitrogen and phosphorous into the soil. It takes organic matter out of landfills and puts it back into the ground. It's nature's way of recycling. However, compost generates carbon dioxide. Therefore, composting should only occur for spoiled food. Otherwise, the costs outweigh the benefits. Similarly, recycling instead of reusing has greater costs than it does benefits because there's an energy intensive process in converting that material back into usable product. Here's the gist: there are two problems with our energy usage. One is that we depend on fuels that have finite amounts -- at least in the foreseeable future. The other is that the current method of energy consumption almost universally produce carbon dioxide, a very stable gas that absorbs infrared heat. This is what heats our atmosphere to excess. But the latter problem is one less tackled because it requires a change in our current methods of living: people cannot live in suburbs with offices and shopping malls that are all miles away. The more compact lifestyle is the more eco-responsible.