Seacoast NRG

If you haven’t seen the latest animated film from Disney/Pixar, Wall•E, you really should.  And do take your children.  Far more than an entertaining love story, Wall•E takes a satirical jab at our obsession with bloated consumption.  How interesting it might have been if Disney had decided to forgo the usual merchandising tie-ins to make an […]

Sponsored by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), the 2008 National Dump the Pump Day is a day that encourages people to ride public transportation to help improve the environment and to conserve gasoline.  Make this Thursday, June 19 your opportunity to ride the (sea)Coast bus, take the commuter rail or the T into Boston […]

Good news for mass transit geeks (like me).  The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) announced recently that useage of mass transit is rising, as Americans took 2.6 billion trips on public transportation systems in the first three months of 2008, an increase of roughly 3% over the same period last year.  2007 was a banner […]

Friday, May 16 is National Bike (or Walk) to Work Day, and May 12-16 marks the sixth annual bike/walk to work week in New Hampshire.   In the Seacoast area, Seacoast Area Bicycle Routes (SABR) is sponsoring the 6th Annual Seacoast Bike/Walk to Work Day, with commuter (walkers and bikers, that is) breakfasts at several locations […]

Here are five easy steps toward measuring, and improving, our usage of gasoline—and by extension, measuring, and improving our own impact on the demand for energy and the production of emissions as well.  I like to call this process impact-awareness. 
1.  Inventory your driving, and ask yourself, did I need a car this time?  Quick trips […]

A look back at 2007, and my attemps to measure and improve my impact on the overall demand for energy and resources.  I like to call this process impact-awareness. 
Positive Impact:

Made it through another New England summer without once using air conditioning at home.
Installed more caulking and weather stripping around doors and windows in my apartment.
Started bringing […]

Amy Quinton of New Hampshire Public Radio has an interesting segment on the so-called right-to-dry movement to bring back clotheslines in New Hampshire.  The line drying of clothes is no longer an inalienable right, due to neighborhood and homeowner covenants that prohibit clotheslines for being unsightly.  Advocates state that line drying saves energy and money, […]

The ongoing arguments about global warming, its existence, causes, and potential impacts, became particularly heated (sorry) recently after the announcement awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC and Al Gore. 
All of this blather back and forth neither advances anyone’s state of knowledge, nor invites anyone wishing to engage in reasoned discussion and the exchange of ideas.  […]

Further to my impact-awareness post about reducing paper clutter, I’ve come across two web-based services promising to help you do just that. 
Green Dimes is a pay-for-service site ($15) that will reduce your daily load of junk snail-mail, and will plant 10 trees on your behalf.  Green Dimes claims to have stopped delivery of over 2 million […]

Paper is so ubiquitous and so cheap that we trivialize the amount of energy—including mental energy—required to create and manage it.  Here are five easy steps toward measuring, and improving, the impact of paper clutter in our lives—and by extension, measuring, and improving our own impact on the demand for energy and resources as well.  […]