Carbon Neutral
I was listening to CBC the other day (surprise surprise) and they were talking about how an entire village somewhere in England is going carbon neutral. http://www.goingcarbonneutral.co.uk/
What was really neat was when they talked to the pub owner (it's only a town of a thousand and there is only 1 pub) he talked about how had saved 25% on his energy bill right off the bat by changing out lights and turning off the beer fridges at night.
But what was truly interesting was that while he had started out as really skeptical, he had now come over to a place where he was doing it not only for the money but also for the environment. When the interviewer asked him why he had been skeptical in the first place - he said it was a lack of knowledge, he did not know that he would see concete savings by just making a few changes. I think it also has to do with the fact that he felt empowered, he saw that he could make changes and it did really help. The interesting thing is that once the community got involved and started seeing differences others got involved too. The pub owner mentioned how one of the local football teams wanted to be the first carbon neutral team in England - they went from all individually driving up in dozens of cars to carpooling with 4 in each.
It was so refreshing to hear people who had shaken off the ties of complacency and were trying to do something compared to that wench Margaret Wente who seemed to relish her role as a crass SUV driving, environment be damned consumer who firmly believed that people won't change their lifestyles.
All this to say that we are looking to get a new car. We are not Liz and Paul - those amazing folk who can live without one. But I checked the NRCan website and one of the best cars in recent years has been the Volkswagen TDI and the Toyota Matrix. It helped also to narrow on what we are looking for too - there is soooo many options out there that it makes it nice and easy to just say I want one of the ones off the environmentally friendly car list and I'm not looking at anything else.
Craig next door is a fabulous guy who works for Toyota - he brought one home for us to try and gave us the 45 minute spiel on every aspect of this car, and he is not even the salesman.
So its between a new red (the kids like red) base model matrix (don't really have the cash for the fancy schmancy XR) or a used 2005 gold automatic VW TDI wagon with some more bells and whistles - car seat warmers (very nice in the winter), AC (bad for the environment), and a moonroof (I love those moonroofs) - but with a bigger price tag.
yeesh - but hey whatever it is in the end it will be a drive in the right direction eh?
What was really neat was when they talked to the pub owner (it's only a town of a thousand and there is only 1 pub) he talked about how had saved 25% on his energy bill right off the bat by changing out lights and turning off the beer fridges at night.
But what was truly interesting was that while he had started out as really skeptical, he had now come over to a place where he was doing it not only for the money but also for the environment. When the interviewer asked him why he had been skeptical in the first place - he said it was a lack of knowledge, he did not know that he would see concete savings by just making a few changes. I think it also has to do with the fact that he felt empowered, he saw that he could make changes and it did really help. The interesting thing is that once the community got involved and started seeing differences others got involved too. The pub owner mentioned how one of the local football teams wanted to be the first carbon neutral team in England - they went from all individually driving up in dozens of cars to carpooling with 4 in each.
It was so refreshing to hear people who had shaken off the ties of complacency and were trying to do something compared to that wench Margaret Wente who seemed to relish her role as a crass SUV driving, environment be damned consumer who firmly believed that people won't change their lifestyles.
All this to say that we are looking to get a new car. We are not Liz and Paul - those amazing folk who can live without one. But I checked the NRCan website and one of the best cars in recent years has been the Volkswagen TDI and the Toyota Matrix. It helped also to narrow on what we are looking for too - there is soooo many options out there that it makes it nice and easy to just say I want one of the ones off the environmentally friendly car list and I'm not looking at anything else.
Craig next door is a fabulous guy who works for Toyota - he brought one home for us to try and gave us the 45 minute spiel on every aspect of this car, and he is not even the salesman.
So its between a new red (the kids like red) base model matrix (don't really have the cash for the fancy schmancy XR) or a used 2005 gold automatic VW TDI wagon with some more bells and whistles - car seat warmers (very nice in the winter), AC (bad for the environment), and a moonroof (I love those moonroofs) - but with a bigger price tag.
yeesh - but hey whatever it is in the end it will be a drive in the right direction eh?
posted by ayearinhalifax | 5:30 AM
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