Doing Something About Carbon Offset Arguments

Like the NYTimes, a month ago, today’s Strib gave carbon offsets the hairy eyeball.

As they confirm, being carbon neutral is super cheap ($6/laptop, a dime/gallon of gas). It’s so cheap, that I see it as the 2nd easiest way to be more environmentally & energy conscious. The first – buying all your energy through your energy company’s renewable energy program (like WindSource from Xcel Energy).

I buy both. I don’t buy Joel Makower‘s argument:

“I’m concerned this will simply be a guilt-free way for consumers to do as they please — to drive their Hummers as far as they want, just so long as it’s carbon-neutral.”

100% offset whether a luxury auto, a Tennessee mansion, a Dodge Neon, a Prius, or your daily bus commute is better than any of those without the offset. Doing something is always better than doing nothing. Being carbon-neutral is better than not.

So what if the biggest violators continually and repeatedly buy the most offsets. Isn’t that the point of offsets? If everything we used was completely carbon neutral from the start, we wouldn’t need offsets. But they’re not.

Sure, dramatically changing to a lower-impact lifestyle is even better. Quantifying and understanding your carbon footprint is a good, easy, approachable starting point.

After offsets, next step is better understanding the biggest violators in your lifestyle; your car, your appliances, using the Kill-a-Watt to find the others.

Then, reduce where you can, offset the rest.

Elsewhere:

“It seems that some environmentalists are more interested in producing guilt than in reducing carbon.” – Alex Tabarrok

Follow My iTunes via Twitter

Thanks to Doug Adams’ script, Current Track to Twitter v1.5, if you follow me via Twitter you’ll get continual updates on what I’m listening to.

I’m digging Twitter as way to automatically publish in the background. I can keep my flow and we can stay connected.

I see this quality that’ll keep Twitter from being Pet Rock 2.0. If more and more people can ‘tweet’ without thinking about it (via the API, not the browser) Twitter fades into the background, like the internet itself.

Productivity Tip: Quicksilver Not For Long, Slow Scripts

After reading LifeHacker’s excellent Beginners Guide to Quicksilver I thought I’d try somethings I haven’t asked Quicksilver to do before. Like shell scripts.

I know I’ve got one lying around – here’s one – my backup script.

Bad idea.

Quicksilver is unresponsive while the script is running and completely ignores my increasingly frantic key invocations. Forcing me to actually use the dock and Finder. Blah.

I noticed this briefly when I was playing around with adding Twitter support to qspress. In the end, I decided to use Alex King’s Twitter Tools plugin because the Quicksilver (via qspress) -> WordPress -> (via Twitter Tools) Twitter publishing flow made more sense than sending to WordPress & Twitter simultaneously.

Garrick Speaking at U of M’s Wireless Cities Conference

Mark your calendars, on April 16th, Peter Fleck and I will be on a panel with TCDailyPlanet‘s Executive Director – Jeremy Iggers, and the U’s Christina Lopez talking about how ubiquitous internet access will change community news.

More info: Wireless Cities Conference, looks like it’s $75 for U students and staff, and $175 for the rest of us.

Many thanks to Peter for presenting the idea and collaborating on the pitch.

LATER:
I’ve been cruising the archives to refresh my memory on the things I’ve written on this subject:

Peter recommended relistening to the recent Public Media recordings:

LATER:
Peter’s post.

“…the success of muni WiFi as a means of public internet access isn’t something that comes easily or automatically,…” – Carlo @ Techdirt, Apr 10, 2007

“We’ve believed for some time that the real benefits of muni wireless could come from public service applications like remote meter-reading, security or public safety communications, with public internet access an added benefit on top.” – Carlo @ Techdirt, Jan 23, 2007

“….Outside.in…the best way to discover the conversations that are going on in your neighborhood—whether that’s where you live, where you work, or where you want to be. See what locals are saying right now, and share your own wisdom with your friends and neighbors.”

“After talking to a half-dozen publishers and funders of grassroots citizen media sites, I’ve come up with a series of lessons they’ve learned. These lessons can serve as a guide — rather than a template — for other hyper-local sites.” – Mark Glaser, PBS.org

12 April 2007
First pass at my presentation: Garrick-WirelessCities-Presentation.pdf [5mb]

Monday, March 26, 2007 2:49:38 PM

It’s a beautiful day. Blue skies. The Dashboard widget says 77°F. Our home weather station says 80°F. That aggregation project I’ve been working on since last fall is coming along nicely. Some big, pleasant surprises this morning. Still miles to go, but it’s fulfilling the vision – even at this early stage. Yes, it’s still my only aggregator. The hardest thing about making the switch – breaking the habit of launching NNW.

Rocketboom’s Andrew Baron: Advertising Doesn’t Work

“The point I was making is that we are not happy with advertising right now.” – Andrew Baron

If anyone was going to figure advertising-on-serial-media out, I was sure Andrew would. Not that I think it makes sense or is even a good idea.

From my post on the Ze Frank / RocketBoom geek fight last October:

“…there are many other ways to make a living than advertising. Sure, none of them are fashionable, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

That said, I think the RocketBoom team has already figured out how to make money with their daily video blog. The same way I make money from this blog and the First Crack Podcast:

“…the video blog has become kind of a loss leader and a promotional device for the real money.” – Frank Barnako

Now, I’m not doing work for Nokia or John Edwards, but, on a blog, the author is the advertisement still stands. 😉

ELSEWHERE:

“What I do know is [Earthlink] had a lot of opportunity to inform me, and by going with that vague and horrible spot they did, they pissed away their money on warm fuzzies instead of telling me something I could act on.” – Dave Slusher

Maybe that’s the real reason advertisers aren’t excited about podcasting.