Commentary Archive

Clean Air-Cool Planet held a 2 day conference last week in Manchester, NH called Global Warming and Energy Solutions. Here are several topics that struck me as particularly interesting.

US automobile fuel efficiency standards have not been increased since 1990. So if automakers were not required by law to make fuel economy improvements, what did they do? Or has car technology been unchanged since 1990? We take a look at several car models to see how car power, weight and fuel efficiency have been changing.

As you know, Global warming (or climate change) is all about trying to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that we are putting into the atmosphere. So how are we doing? What is the current CO2 level in the earth's atmosphere?

Here are the top 3 things that we need to do to fight global warming.

Congratulations EnergyRacers. You are reducing over 3,000 tons of CO2. That's a 17% carbon footprint reduction per member. While some of us have taken on the big projects like new windows (8%) or solar power (3%), most of us are doing the little things that add up to tons of CO2 reductions:

Congressman John Dingell (D-Michigan), the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, successfully excluded automobile fuel efficiency increases from the House energy bill passed last week. (Photo credit - US Congressman John Dingell)

As you know, the fight against global warming is all about how to reduce the carbon dioxide that we produce each day by driving cars, using electricity and heating our homes. Here is how EnergyRace can help.

Several of you have asked how EnergyRace calculates your carbon footprint (or CO2 emissions). Sometimes you ask because you are curious but many times it is because the EnergyRace number is either higher or lower than you expected. So here is how it works.