True North

So the Junior Logician comes home from school today with a hand out that he said he was supposed to give to me. He drags it out of his backpack and when I took it from him and started reading he started laughing. For the headline of this flyer that his class was give was this...

20 Things You Can Do. Here are 20 things you can do to helpstop global warming.

Some of the things on their list were common sense things that most families do, not to save the environment, but to save money out of their ever tightening budgets. Things like taking shorter showers, washing clothes in cold or warm water instead of hot, turning off lights and televisions when not in use, unplugging the energy "vampires" (computer chargers and cell phone chargers) when not in use, turning down the heat in the winter...that kind of thing. Some of them fell into the "everything old is new again" category - line drying your laundry (although some people can't do that because of homeowners association regulations). Some of the suggestions were just flat our ridiculous (unplugging alarm clocks because of the energy used to power them) and everything was tied around reducing carbon dioxide.

What got to me was a suggestion that was included on the back side of the sheet almost as a throwaway line...plant a tree. If you really want to cut carbon dioxide, all you need to do is plant trees! That should have been suggestion number 1! Plant anything that uses photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen! Given how much carbon dioxide a tree converts in it's lifetime (over 1 ton) it is the quickest and easiest way to reduce carbon dioxide. Here in Minnesota Evergreen trees of all sorts are a great option and they make an excellent windbreak when those cold north winds start to blow.

One of the more ridiculous suggestions on that sheet though was this one:

Buy Locally Grown Food

Let's see....we live in Minnesota where the growing season is what....4 months long? And how are we to get the produce that we need to maintain healthy lives and thus not need health care? Oranges and other citrus foods just do not grow in Minnesota!

Seriously - a lot of the suggestions on this sheet are "well DUH!" suggestions. It's all stuff that is second nature to the Junior Logician (and his family) not because he is an enviro-nut. It is because he (and we) would rather spend our money on other things than runaway energy bills.

Cross posted at Ladies Logic where your comments are welcome.