More Humans, Less of Everything Else

The extraction of “unconventional” fossil fuels, whether through fracking, deep-water drilling or the unimaginable waste of Canadian tar sands, has provided much of the motivation in my personal life to methodically reduce our family’s CO2 footprint. Since the baseline year of 2000, we have managed to reduce our contribution to greenhouse gasses by approximately 90%. […]

Solar-Ready Homes

The policies set by local governments can do much to move us toward sustainability. We do not have to wait for national regulations to change the way we build or rebuild the homes in our communities. There is much to be done and with the political gridlock in Washington, local action is our best hope […]

Solar Water Heating Update

Last October we installed a solar water heating system on our home. It has been about ten months and I thought this would be a good time for a promised update. Overall, we are very pleased with the results so far. Solar Water Heating System Our system was manufactured by Heliodyne in Richmond, California. I […]

Looking Back on 2010

As 2010 comes to a close, I thought it would be interesting to take a quick run back through the year’s Green Living column topics to reflect on what where we’ve been and perhaps get a glimpse of where we might be going.

Longest Solar Eclipse Ever

There was a time when a solar eclipse struck fear into the hearts and minds of those who did not understand what caused the sun to briefly disappear during the middle of the day. Now when the moon casts its shadow while passing between the earth and sun we enjoy the relatively rare experience. We’ve […]