Blog Action Day: Teh Envir0nmentz!
I learned today from Slashdot that it's Blog Action Day, a day to test how 15,000 blogs with millions of readers can make a difference. Sure, I'll jump on board to support today's agenda, which sounds really trendy: the environment!
I checked my carbon footprint this morning. As calculated by the Nature Conservancy Carbon Footprint Calculator, Ben and I have too much house for two people and our footprint is above the average of 53 for American Households with two people. It's waaaay above the international average of 11, but I wonder if you have to live in a 600 square foot apartment and not own a car in order to even come close to that. Does it matter that where I live, we have renewable hydroelectric power that's generated from our local mountain snowpack? Unlike where I grew up, just a couple miles from a nuclear power plant, I now rely on the type of energy that looks forward to the annual meltdown... har har.
Speaking of the Nature Conservancy, I donated $15 while I was in college to get the free umbrella as a thank you. They've been a reliable source of return address labels for many years now, and unlike the DMV, they always know where I live without me filling out a form.
I said DMV because it's on my mind... I have until the end of the month to renew my car registration, for which I must go to the DMV in person. Why can't I just send it in? That's a good question, reader.
Apparently when you move within Utah, they don't forward your renewal forms even though you've registered for mail forwarding with the United States Postal Service, and even when you change your address online or over the phone, they still won't send them to you. That was partially understandable last year when I actually moved. But I'm pretty certain that over a year after that first annoying event, at which time I'm fairly certain I gave them my new address on the forms, they should have been able to send me the renewal forms. But no. I have to waste my time and gasoline (there goes my hope of reducing my carbon footprint) just to get a stupid sticker to go on my license plate. And the USPS is now going to have to raise their rates again because the DMV wouldn't pay the 41 cents to send in the forms. And you have to have the printed forms with a PIN in order to renew your tags online. Grr.
So anyway, I think it's about time that Ben and I start paying the $6 a month to participate in our new local recycling program. Even if global warming is a myth, and we're only experiencing the cycle of Mother Earth (and not 100% to blame for inducing an environmental apocolypse), I think recycling is helpful on many levels. I already drop off my telephone books and newspapers in the public recycling bins, so that gives me the warm fuzzies and all that.
And I think I remember, from my mixed memories of early education in the 1980s, something about Reduce, Reuse, Recycle leading to a major bonus point if you get stuck in purgatory after you die. I went to Catholic school for a year and a half, so that may have contributed to the confusion. And my half-hearted attendance at PSR, the extracurricular parochial education for Catholics attending wayward public schools, didn't help with much of anything. I remember coloring pictures of Jesus that I'm sure weren't recycled.
I hang out with the Unitarian Universalists now, whose seventh principle affirms and promotes "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part." That means they're totally down with being environmentalist hippies. Hooray! Of course, there are only four of us in the entire state of Utah. I don't understand why more liberal congregations aren't popping up all around...
