Updated 4/1/09:

There is one word of caution regarding The Pickens plan. Mr. Picken's Plan seems to promote the building of giant wind farms to produce electricity. And this is GREAT! But he is not all that altruistic as he says little or nothing about his strong underling agenda for public support to convert our national transportation fleet to run on CNG (Compressed Natural Gas.) Mr. Pickens is a savvy business person and is already heavily invested in Natural Gas. If he is successful with this push this will:

It appears residential wind energy systems are getting cheaper.

California's fascination with solar power has created thousand

Did you know that driving on tires that are 20% under inflated costs you around $.15/gal of gas? (at today's rate of $3.00/gallon) That's $1.50 per 10 gallons or roughly around $2.50 to $3.00 per fill up. When was the last time you checked your tire pressure?

Here's an innovative device that will alert you when your tires are low. At the average cost of $5 each, if your driving around on under inflated tires, these little guys will pay for themselves in no time at all, not to mention you'll also lower your carbon footprint.

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Regardless of how new your home is or how well it's insulated it still loses heat to the outdoors in cold weather. If you're not setting your home temperatures back when you are not at home, or at night when you sleep, consider this a very easy method of saving considerable money while also cutting your Carbon Foot Print.

How? Turn your thermostat down before bed then back up in the morning. Or, purchase a programmable thermostat to do it automatically. Every 1 deg you shave could save as much as 2%. (10 degrees could save you 20% of your fuel cost.) You can be the judge as to how low and for how long, but committing to this little trick can save us all.

Check out your potential savings here, and do not fall victim to this myth:

Myth: By turning the heat down at night in the winter, I will lose the load and it will cost me more to reheat the home in the morning when I turn the furnace thermostat back up.

Fact: Lowering the thermostat setting by 1°C (2°F) for eight hours each day or evening can yield a savings of up to 2% on the cost of heating. This applies to either manually setting back your thermostat or using a programmable set back thermostat. An average house can expect to save about 3% to 5% on its heating cost by lowering the temperature setting by 1°C (2°F) over the heating season.

For the price of a warm sweater, some warm sweatpants and an extra blanket, you could be savings hundreds on your fuel bill!

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Just why is vegetation (trees in particular) so important? Because they absorb carbon from the air and lock it into the earth - at least that's what they should be doing! Let's look at how we disturb this process.

• How much carbon is digested by one tree? Average = 14lbs/yr
• How much carbon is produced by one person? Average = 730lbs/yr (or 52 trees)

Why not burn wood? Even wood scraps? - When you burn one tree it takes 25 years for another tree to absorb the carbon created by the burning of the first. If you simply fall the tree and replace it by a new tree, that is best. Why? Because the burning of a tree completely negates the benefit of it absorbing (or locking) carbon produced by other means.

What do we mean?

The "carbon" produced by one person, noted above, is that from your body only! It does not include the additional carbon "you" are responsible for such as - home heating, home cooling, transportation, office heating, office cooling, food preparation, food preservation, plastic disposables/consumables, packaging, package delivery, lighting, electronics, cloths washing, cloths drying, cloths finishing, hair care, water consumption, water heating, home cleaning, auto cleaning, trash (non recyclable) transportation, recyclables transportation, recyclable processing, organic waste transportation (which could be composted saving millions of tons of carbon each year!), etc. etc. etc.

This is your carbon footprint! It is the reason the base source of the energy required for these tasks comes from a zero carbon source!

Make sense!

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