the greater of two evils

I drive to Toronto from Hamilton a fair amount, for gigs and recordings mostly. I'd love to take the GO Bus instead - I actually hate driving - but it doesn't run later than about 12:30am and I am almost never done playing before about 1:30, so I am forced to drive. Alternately, I could do the gig, stay at a friend's, and then come home in the morning, but then I'd miss hours of morning time with my family, and often I'd have to get up super early to get home early enough for my wife to get to work on time.

So I drive. But it's this family time thing that causes another problem: according to the US Department of Energy and the Union of Concerned Scientists, driving fast can use up to 33% more gas than keeping to the speed limit, and as we've seen, every litre of gas produces 2.4kg of CO2, so that's a lot more CO2 being emitted over time. When I leave for gigs, I give myself around an hour to get there from home. But I know, for instance, that the Tranzac can be a 45-min. drive, door-to-door, if I drive 120km/h instead of the posted 100km/h. So for that extra 15 minutes of time with my family, I opt to drive faster rather than use less gas. On the way home, all I want to do is collapse in bed, so I also speed home.

There are many examples of this kind of problem for me: my coffee pot uses 1200W of electricity. My microwave uses 1100W. Thus, if I make a pot of coffee, the most energy-wise thing for me to do is to turn it off right away, and then nuke it cup by cup as it cools. That way, instead of using 1200W of power for an hour or-so, I use 1100W in bursts of 1:45 (this is my optimal coffee-nuking time). But I'd say at least half the time I prefer to leave the pot on so I don't have to take the extra step - which probably takes about 2 mins total - of nuking my coffee before I drink it. Ironically, after that first hour I do like to turn it off so it doesn't start to taste burnt, and then I start nuking the stuff anyway (aside to coffee purists: I know this anaethema to your being. I would love to be a coffee snob, but I really just don't have the palate, which in the end is better for the Earth anyway. so ha). 

On a related note, the coffee I buy is fair-trade organic stuff, actually from PC (which is a little suspect, but at this point ignorance is bliss), and to offset the cost I also buy bags of roasted barley, which I then use in a 2:1 ratio for brewing. It does make a slightly nuttier taste, but it's not unpleasant and it saves both money and arable land. I also harvest the dandelions that grow in our yard, clean and dry the roots, and then grind them up in my bean grinder to add, about a tablespoon at a time, to the mix. According to the University of Maryland Medical Centre, dandelion root (ideally dried for at least a year according to some herbalists) is very good for the endocrine system; liver and kidneys both benefit. And it takes some of the bitterness out of coffee, so everyone wins. Well I win anyway. And I think that's it for today. 

[addendum: a recent article in the Manitoban says that putting the windows down instead of using AC does save gas but only when you're driving slower than 80km/hr; below that speed, using AC can increase your fuel consumption by as much as 30%! Above 80km/hr though, having the windows down actually creates so much drag that you ultimately use more fuel than you would blasting the AC]