It will be necessary, no doubt, to take on the big issues as this country strives to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide it releases into the atmosphere – things like increasing auto fuel efficiency standards and supporting national policy encouraging development of renewable energy sources.
But the small things matter, too, and can have an exponentially large effect on public attitudes. We’re talking about the efforts of San Francisco to ban the city and county from using public money to buy bottled water. Add to that the proposed outlawing of plastic grocery sacks in cities around the country. And moves to nix incandescent light bulbs in favor of efficient fluorescent bulbs.
Put together, these steps put the world on a path to reduced carbon emissions and independence from fossil fuels – and for us, independence from countries hostile to the United States. But they also have a compounding effect in the way they raise awareness.
When people begin viewing everyday items such as bottled water, plastic sacks and light bulbs in a larger environmental context, it can’t help but carry over into other issues and choices.
If you tote your groceries in cloth sacks, maybe you’d be willing to buy an energy-efficient clothes washer. Or, perhaps, if you think of the coal- burning plant that creates your electricity, you’ll remember to turn off the lights when you leave a room.
And the small things aren’t all that small when viewed together.
The Rocky Mountain Institute estimates that lighting is responsible for 25 percent of all electricity consumed in the United States. A good bit of that energy goes to the extra air conditioning necessary to negate the heating effects of the incandescent bulb, a 125-year-old invention that converts most of the energy it consumes into heat rather than light.
Australian and European lighting manufacturers have announced they will phase out the device. And California state legislators have proposed increasing efficiency mandates that effectively would outlaw the incandescent bulb.
San Francisco’s ban on plastic grocery bags was two years in the making. Proponents said it takes 430,000 gallons of oil to make 100 million bags, and San Francisco distributes 180 million a year. Lawmakers in New York, Boston, Phoenix and Los Angeles are considering similar actions. The Worldwatch Institute estimates that in the U.S., less than 1 percent of the bags used are recycled and 100 billion of them are thrown away annually.
The most recent of these local environmental decisions to grab headlines is the announcement by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom that he would ban public money from being used to buy bottled water for city employees.
A 2006 story by the San Francisco Chronicle found the city had spent more than $2 million for water, paper cups and dispenser rentals in recent years. The mayor declared it a waste of city money (he was right) and said the creation and disposal of plastic bottles combined with the resources needed to ship them was an undue burden on the environment.
Other organizations around the world, including restaurants in California and New York City, have taken up the cause as well.
Gina Solomon, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, calculated that transportation of water imported from France and Italy, the two largest exporters to the U.S., and Fiji water account for 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually. Solomon was quoted in The New York Times recently as saying that’s what 700 cars on the road would emit each year in carbon.
It’s easy to see how all of these seemingly small changes could move us forward in our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and our dependence on foreign oil. But their value becomes even greater when calculated in terms of how they could whet the public appetite for bigger and potentially more difficult energy decisions.
