Efficiency - the Name of the Game

Our low-flow showerhead just arrived yesterday. I need to get some teflon tape so I can install it this weekend. This will reduce water use in the shower from 2.5 gallons per minute down to between 1.2 and 1.4 gallons per minute. That's a 50% reduction in water used and a 50% reduction in energy to heat shower water.

I also just ordered an external 160 GB hard drive.

"How does this save energy?", you ask.

By buying this external hard drive and attaching it to my PC at home I will be able to turn off another computer. It's a massive old server with dual power supplies. It sounds like a jet taking off when you hit the power button. This old tank draws 500W of power and it's on 24/7. It serves as the file server for our house holding our music, pictures, videos, and other files.

By turning this machine off we save a lot of energy:

(500W/ 1000 W/kW) x 24 hours/day x 30.417* days/month = 365.004 kWh/month

365.004 kWh/month x 7.09 cents/kWh = $25.88/month in savings

* 365 days/yr divided by 12 months/yr = 30.417 days/month

In other words, this external hard drive completely pays for itself in 3 months. After it pays for itself, it's like an extra $25 a month in the bank compared to what I would have spent on the electric bill.

You Think Your Hippy Food is so Great? Think Again.

My wife often makes the argument that one of the single best things you can do for the environment is to become a vegetarian. This is because of the massive amount of energy and food needed to raise a single pound of beef, for example.

The runoff from most factory farms is also a significant source of pollution to the environment surrounding the farm. Pig farms are notoriously horrible on this count. In many developing countries in South America the rainforest is clearcut in order to make grazing land for cattle.

The conditions for the animals in these factory farms is also pretty terrible. I'm not a particularly large advocate of animal rights, but some of the conditions are just horrible. I don't believe that you should abuse animals, but I also don't think a rational person can make a moral case against eating animals except as it relates to the conditions of these factory farms.

Sounds like a pretty airtight case for vegetarianism, right? Not so fast. My wife likes to eat MorningStar brand "hippy-food" as I like to call it. They make many products like veggie burgers, chicken (not really) nuggets, and a whole host of meat-imitation products.

Why, if you're a vegetarian, do you have to eat a bunch of stuff designed to look and taste so similar to the meat you have forsaken is beyond me... but I am straying here.

All of these products share one thing: where they come from. That's right. All of these products are derived from the soy bean. Now how much processing (and thereby energy) do you think it takes to make something that looks like this...

... look like this...

Hmmm? Those beans have to be processed six ways to Sunday to make them look like a hamburger! I can't think of any way I could determine how much energy and pollution is behind one pound of this MorningStar stuff. It's a shame, too, because I bet it would still show that one pound of beef is responsible for more pollution than one pound of "hippy-beef."

I would be interested in knowing simply for comparison's sake.

Let's just make a safe assumption, since the hard data escapes me for now. The assumption would be that a pound of veggie burger is responsible for a good deal more pollution than, say, a pound of the soy bean it is derived from.

So if you're really serious about vegetarianism as an environmental concern, then you should probably give up the fake meats as well. All of those veggie burgers and chikkin nuggets that imitate the meat you scorn are doing slightly less damage than the factory farmed meats. But why go half way?

As you might have been able to guess, I am not a vegetarian. I am an omnivore, as Nature intended us. All of the strictly vegetarian branches of our evolutionary tree have died off. Since evolution makes no mistakes, we have to believe this was for a reason.

The route I have chosen goes like this:

• Consume less meat - Honestly, Americans eat too much meat anyway. Too much of anything is unhealthy. That's doubly true for red meat.
• Eat local and organic - When I do eat meat, I try to get local and organic whenever possible. It costs a bit more, true, but the taste is fantastic. The added cost will help reduce consumption and the better taste will make it hard to go back to the other stuff. Locally produced food is fresher and wasn't transported long distances to land on your plate.
• Buy from Mom and Pop - wherever possible I buy from a non-chain, locally owned company. Money spent in a locally owned establishment turns over an average of three times within the local economy. Buying from Wal-Mart often sends your money directly to their corporate headquarters with little to no turnover in the local economy.

I think of this as a holistic approach to my diet. By moderating the amount of meat I eat I am practicing healthier habits and contributing less to the environmental impact of meat. I reduce this impact even more by buying local and organic. If I buy this meat from a local butcher who sources his meat locally I am not only reducing environmental impact, but providing a boost to the local economy and taking money out of the hands of the worst environmental offenders.

Mode of Transport

Since October 23rd, 2006 I have been riding my bike to work. I started a new job at a location that was much closer to home (2.1 miles) and I had the opportunity to stop driving my car to work. I took it.

So by changing jobs to a place that was closer (and getting a nice raise in the process), I stopped burning about 4 gallons of gas a week. That's 17.4 gallons a month or somewhere in the neighborhood of $50.

There's an environmental bonus in addition to saving money. By not burning the 17.4 gallons a month I was using going back and forth to work, I am putting out less greenhouse gases (17.4 gallons of gas equals approximately 314 pounds of CO₂).

Also, by biking to work I am improving my cardiovascular health and general fitness level. I arrive at work energized and focused; ready to work. When I bike in the evening, I burn off the stress of the day and arrive home in a better mood.

As an added bonus my daughter goes to a school right on my path to work. It's about a third of a mile from home. We bike together to her school and then I head into work. On the way home I pick her up and we pedal home. It's some good father-daughter time.

It probably doesn't work out so neatly for everyone - a job that involves a raise and is close to home. But maybe the next time you look for a house or apartment you could take proximity to work and the availability of bike trails into account.

Even if the rent for this apartment is a bit more, it's probably worth it. Maybe paying $50 a month makes financial sense since you'll save that much in gas anyways. It may even be worth paying $100 a month more if you take into account that you could cancel that gym membership now that you're riding a bike every day. You weren't really using the gym anyways...

Now, to be honest, I don't ride my bike everyday. If it's going to rain on my way in to work I drive instead. I do have to maintain a professional appearance and showing up soaked doesn't count as 'professional' in most circles. On the other hand if it isn't going to rain until the evening I'll ride my bike. If I arrive home wet it doesn't reflect in my annual raise.

I ride through the winter, too. Admittedly the winters around here aren't that harsh, but going fast down a hill can get chilly.

Torn - or - Attack of the Wiki Links

I'm very torn between two tacks, if you will. The first tack I could take is:

Get the hell out!!

The ship is going down. Society is irretrievably broken and there's nothing one person can do about it. Humanity is blindly charging headlong towards a cliff it made by strip-mining. You keep screaming that there's a cliff ahead, but no one listens. Worse still, they act like you're a bit cooky.

You become part of the office rounds that managers take the newbies on... "And on your left is the office survival nut. Shhh! Don't disturb him! He may engage you in a talk about green energy or universal healthcare!"

In the Get the hell out!! scenario, you pity the blinded fools but you don't lose any sleep over their fate. The best you can do is try not to share their fate.

The second tack?

Hey man! Hope springs eternal, brah!!

Like some hackey-sack kicking, dreadlock-sporting, hippykin child of the suburbs you try to get involved and help fix the problem. Get involved with local politics, support candidates that will promote a green agenda. Ride a bike to work or organize a carpool or - gasp! - take public transportation.

Work on making your house as green as possible - CF bulbs, low-flow showerheads, low-flow toilets, insulate the hot water heater, the whole nine yards. Use canvas shopping bags, buy local and organic food whenever possible. Farmer's Market? Yes, please. Community Supported Agriculture? Sign me up. Buy a hybrid car if you must have a car at all.

The Good News?

The good news is that no matter what tack we take the actions needed are much the same. The only difference really is that with the Get the hell out!! tack you are moving to the country and getting off the grid. With the Hey man! Hope springs eternal, brah!! tack you aren't going anywhere.

We could always strike a tack somewhere in between - Get the hell out of the eternal spring of hope, brah!!! - or something like that. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Get off the grid but stay involved.

I think that's the way I'd like to go.

Who peed in his Wheaties?

For the first post here on Survive the Apocalypse I guess I should lay down the basic premise for this blog and maybe tell you a bit about myself and my lovely wife, with whom I will be writing this blog.

I am currently a city-dwelling young professional. Some may even call me a yuppie. They'd be wrong, but I can see where they'd get the impression. I am fairly young, I do live in a city (urban), and I work in IT (professional).

I used to blog many, many moons ago back when it was called "keeping an online journal." I would write in my journal every day back in 1999, 2000, and 2001. I was separated from my first wife and I had all of the time and angst in the world to fuel my rantings.

My lovely wife, apocalypsegal, was also an early "blogger" back before it was called blogging. We actually met through our journals.

Shortly after meeting my current (and last!) wife things were just too groovy. The list of things I was pissed off about got smaller and smaller. My need to vent and to vent every damned day diminished and then went away. I stopped posting and eventually my domain name registration lapsed.

I don't think I even have backups of my old entries anymore.

Then came the explosion of blogs and I thought, "Well, I'll never do that again. I mean - how passe can you be?"

But here I am. Here we are, my wife and I.

"Why?", you ask.

Well, I'm putting on this little dog and pony show for you for a few reasons:

1. It's free now! Thanks to blogspot I even get a decent URL for nothing!
2. I need to vent again. More on that later...
3. It's a great way to store my thoughts.
4. I can't lose this data because I misplaced a CD or a hard drive burned out.
5. This allows me to share with you, the general public, information and concerns I feel very strongly about.

So now you know why I started this blog. Now what's it about?

Simply put: Everything is going to Hell. You know it and I do, too.

The dollar isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Just this week the Canadian dollar surpassed the dollar in value. No offense to Canada, but if their currency is worth more than America's, then America has been managed very poorly.

The dollar's lack of value is indicative of many other problems. As a nation we are in debt. Mainly so we could fight a war that has nothing to do with anything but oil. Here's a little factoid that literally turns my stomach:

"Based on the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) recently determined that the Iraq war costs $720 million per day, $500,000 per minute – enough to provide homes for nearly 6,500 families, or health care for 423,529 children in just one day."

I got the above quote from one of the RSS feeds to which I subscribe. I'll credit it if I can remember where I got it.

So instead of investing in our nation we invest in bullets and bombs that can only be used once. Meanwhile bridges collapse, children go without health care, our nation's streets serve as the only home many Americans know.

Instead of enriching the entire nation we enrich a few defense contractor CEOs. We enrich Exxon and Chevron while our education system is in decline and our health care system is a nightmare.

We have money to kill, but not to grow. We have money for bombs but not for books or housing. We have money for destruction but not for dignity.

Our priorities are all wrong.

Global warming, impending oil shortages, and possible global shortages in water supplies are just some of the environmental issues that confront humanity as a whole.

As Americans the rise of China's industrial might is something that should have us much more concerned than we are. The rapid rise of America's industrial capacity precipitated our rise as a major global power. Of course it will do the same for China.

With an entire Damocles Armory hanging over the head of society, it isn't too far-fetched a notion that our way of life may change very soon. Whose life will change? I fear every one's life will take a turn for the worse. Nowhere will this be more true than in America.

By any objective measure, Americans live a gluttonous lifestyle. We are five percent of the world's population and we consume 20-25% of the world's energy. We get everything prepackaged and ready to eat from a store.

We in America are, per capita, the most polluting nation on Earth as well. How many sparkling clean SUVs with a single occupant do you see driving down any stretch of the road at any given time? I bet the answer is "a lot."

How many of us live right next door to people we don't know? I don't know most of my neighbors. Our increasing isolation is very, very bad for us as a social species. It is much easier to stand idly by as a complete stranger is mistreated. It's much easier to not be outraged when someone you don't know is laid off or has medical bills that ruin them. It's much easier to stand idly by as the authorities abuse their power when you aren't the one being abused ("First they came for them, but I was not one of them, so I said nothing...")

So I am writing this blog in order to prepare. I am preparing for a change. The good news is that what we will learn together on this journey will be beneficial for not only you, but your environment, your local economy, and yes, young patriots - probably even your nation (whichever nation that is).

There doesn't have to be an Apocalypse in order for you to reap these benefits. The purpose of this blog is to document my family's transition from gluttonous American waster-consumers into a family that lives in more harmony with their environment and their neighbors.

If none of the worst case scenarios come to pass (global climate change, world economic depression brought about by a collapse of the oil-economy, etc) it will be because people took actions like the ones we will discuss. Actions that fall into these two basic categories:

1. Reducing environmental impact
2. Increasing local involvement

Topics for future posts will range from Mad Max to Einstein (not really) to Julia Child. We will discuss preparation for emergencies, cooking healthy, renewable energy and energy efficiency (two topics that cannot be discussed separately).

As I read more books I will include them in the Required Reading section on the right hand side of the page. At this stage I have read Wilderness Survival by Tom Brown and I am just starting The Renewable Energy Handbook by William H. Kemp.