For those of us living fully in our modern material world, as I am, it is important to think not so much about denying ourselves things or giving them up, but rather, seeing how we can make shifts to living more lightly. One of my heavy impacts on the environment is computer usage. Right now, I have on my work computer, my home laptop, and my Blackberry.
All of you who are reading this blog are doing so via computer or by a personal device with web access that requires battery charging. I’d hazard a guess that most of these portable computers are not being powered by sun and wind. I am still waiting for Pepco to come and change the meter to hook up my newly installed rooftop solar panels to the grid, and I don’t have a solar charger for the Blackberry.
One thing I thought I could do to help make enjoying this way of connecting have less impact on the environment would be to go carbon-neutral. In the world of plastic, the ideal is don’t use, reuse, repurpose, recycle. In the world of electricity, it is don’t use, use from better sources, off-set. With respect to my blog, I am choosing to use the necessary electricity, but go solar with my house, buy electricity from a source that uses offsets (Clean Currents) for that electricity that is in excess of what the solar panels will provide, and I’m choosing to offset this blog’s impact based on readership through the Carbon Fund.
