Weatherize your home or apartment: For a very small investment, you can cut your heating and cooling
expenses and reduce the burning of fossil fuels. Use weatherstripping to seal drafts around windows and doors. If a draft
comes through electrical outlets or switches on outside walls, install foam draft blockers behind the cover plates. Use covers
(inside or outside) on air conditioners during cold months. And make sure your home has adequate insulation. Many older homes
don't have enough, especially in the attic. You can check the insulation yourself or have it done as part of an energy audit,
provided by many utility companies. Call your company to see if it offers this service.
Replace your light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs: While compact fluorescents are initially more
expensive than the incandescent bulbs most people use, they last 10 times as long. What's more, a compact fluorescent will
lower your energy bills by about $15 a year, and by more than $60 during its life. It will also keep half a ton of carbon
dioxide out of the air.
Drive less: When possible, choose alternatives to driving (public transit, biking, walking, carpooling),
and bundle your errands together so you'll make fewer trips.
Choose an efficient vehicle: A car that gets 20 miles per gallon will emit about 50 tons of carbon dioxide
over its lifetime. A car getting 40 mpg will emit half that much. When buying your next car, pick the least-polluting, most
efficient vehicle that meets your needs. Maybe it's an innovative hybrid that combines a gasoline engine with electric motors
(and never needs to be plugged in). Or maybe it's a wagon instead of an SUV. And over the average lifetime of an American
car, a 40-mpg car will save roughly $3,000 in fuel costs compared with a 20-mpg car, so compare fuel economy performance before
you buy. (See
www.fueleconomy.gov's Find and Compare Cars feature.)
Raise your voice: We need new laws that will steer our nation toward the most important solutions to
global warming -- cleaner cars and cleaner power plants. Send a message to your elected officials, letting them know that
you will hold them accountable for what they do -- or fail to do -- about global warming.
