New Facebook Group - 5:10 YR PERSONAL CARBON ACTION PLAN

[Tom Balderston]

https://www.facebook.com/groups/3181343955519636/permalink/3181352148852150

YOU ARE WARMLY INVITED TO JOIN OUR NEW PUBLIC GROUP  at the above URL!

PERSONAL 5:10 CARBON ACTION PLAN LAUNCH

We are excited to announce this group for information sharing and mutual support to de-carbonize our homes and consumer choices.

The concept of the 5/10 action plan is that repeating the scary scenarios of climate change, however true, are not effective at motivating people to change. It is understood that political change is a critical piece of climate action, but personal change will be almost as important, because Americans exercise great power with their consumer decisions. It seems reasonable that those who are concerned and aware may have to act first.

The goal of the challenge is to create a forum where people can calculate the emissions from our current lifestyle and purchases of gasoline, natural gas, jet fuel, electricity, and consumer goods, and to share mutual support for creating and executing a plan to reduce them. The 5/10 year period is to coincide with worldwide goals of starting drastic reductions in fossil fuel use by 2030 and to help reach the 1.5 to 2 degree scenarios described by the IPCC. This effort is being led by Tom Balderston and Michael Laurie

The idea is to spend the year 2021 figuring out what our own lifestyle carbon footprint is, then researching and building the plan to cut that in half by 2025, and by 90% by 2030. Once we have a plan, we should share it with friends and make a public commitment. Through the decade there will be many ways we can offer each other support to get there. We will be providing a simplified calculator all on one excel page that is based on our Pacific NW weather and electric power mix, and a planning worksheet that will show the reductions in 1, 5 and 10 year goals.

It’s true that action is urgent, but it actually is all right if you can’t change the whole world by next week. The plan should be to cut your purchase of these products 40-50% by 2025, and 80-90% by 2030. We hope 10 years is enough to mix relatively simple actions like smart thermostats with larger capital improvements like heat pumps water heaters, and heat pumps for home heating as we can schedule and afford them. The focus here is to reduce our anxiety and guilt and give us ways to act and feel like part of the solution.

The open forum should definitely include discussion of equity issues, including: how to make plans affordable for low income people and renters, financing capital improvements and energy retrofits, choice of offsets and whether tree planting programs, etc. benefit poor nations and the responsibility of those with resources to do more.