Some of it is useful, some of it is useless nonsense, perpetuating other myths.<p>If you want to learn how negligible the effect of turning off your lightbulbs or converting to a gas heated kettle is, read "without the Hot Air" by David McKay: <a href="http://www.withouthotair.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.withouthotair.com/</a> It's transport and domestic heating that are the major energy consumers in the west. It's barely worth focusing on anything else.<p><i>"wood is a green fuel because the CO2 released when it gets burned will be sucked from the air by the trees planted to replace the felled ones"</i><p>What? No. Wood is a green fuel because all the CO2 released when burned was previously captured by the plant itself! What you replace it with is irrelevant.<p>The "Buy local" section is very good though. Local purchases will in general be a lot more wasteful than purchase of mass produced food which takes advantage of economies of scale.
However well-intentioned these articles are, I think it's intellectually dishonest to focus on such ridiculously irrelevant things as heating the water for your coffee when the fact is that it won't make any difference.<p>If you want to reduce your energy footprint, buy insulation for your house and stop driving. Really, everything else is insignificant in comparison.
To quote from the article:<p><i>In particular hard cheese, which takes a lot of milk to produce, can have a bigger footprint per kilo than chicken.</i><p>This is super stupid. Hard cheese contains more than double the calories of chicken. And nobody in their right minds will consume hard cheese as the main food item.
One thing that's always puzzled me: surely in the winter, when you have heating on, it doesn't really matter how efficient your appliances are - 'waste' heat from inefficient appliances will just replace heat that the heating system would generate otherwise?
<i>2. What they tell you: Buy a greener car</i><p>The perfect examples of this myth are the Toyota Prius and alike, it amazes me how wrong they are.<p>I've read that the production of these cars is more wasteful than the usual (because of the batteries that have to be shipped), that the global shelf life of the car is poor, that it is difficult to recycle them and finally that the fuel consumption is not extraordinary low (equivalent to a small car).<p>Yet they receive an enourmous media coverage because they seem to be the response to a greener car.
Spain has just passed a law to regulate temperature in public places like government offices, bars and shops. It shouldn't be higher than 21ºC in the winter, it shouldn't be less than 25ºC in the summer. Of course, what it's being regulated is the heating or AC devices! :-)<p>Hopefully this law will prevent us to freeze in theatres in the summer. And of course, it will reduce energy comsumption. There are more measures like forcing locals to have automatic-closing doors.
The buy local meme is everywhere and sadly like so much of environmentalism it is short on smarts, case in point:<p><i>What they don't tell you: The transport of goods accounts for a small but significant proportion of the human impact on the climate. It generally makes environmental sense, therefore, to favour local food and other products. However, it's not always true that local is best. One study suggested that lamb from New Zealand, with its clean energy and rich pastures, has a lower footprint when consumed in the UK than locally produced lamb, despite the long-distance shipping. Another study showed that cut flowers sold in Britain that had been grown in distant but sunny Kenya had a smaller carbon footprint than those grown in heated greenhouses in Holland. So while transport is important, it's not the only factor to consider.</i>
"especially in colder months when any heat from the flames that escapes around the side of the kettle will warm the room, reducing the burden on the central heating system"<p>this article is nonsense. Excess heat from an electric heater is going to warm the ambient air just the same as a gas burner will.
Maybe one thing that could help cut domestic energy consumption in the UK is the introduction of decent real-time meters. Getting a massive bill through the post once every three months doesn't really help you understand where your money's going, especially as they usually have confusing terms (kW/H, BTU etc) and strange pricing structures.<p>Look at these new ones from British Gas:<p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8375711.stm" rel="nofollow">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8375711.stm</a><p>If you could see how much you were spending each minute, do you think that would encourage you to optimize your usage?
Very good info!<p>A rule of thumb: the cheaper it is, the less energy it took to make it. Some more details: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=346912" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=346912</a><p>Be aware that less energy is not always equal to better for the environment.
As usual the single most important advice
is missing:<p><i></i>* Don't have (more than one) child. <i></i>*<p>We could build an everlasting eden for humankind
if we could persuade everybody to limit
themselves to one child for couple for the next two or three
generations and then switch to two children for couple.<p>Lacking that we are doomed to damnation.