New year's non-resolutions

[trixtah]

A few things I've been thinking about in the last month:

• I really do need to find a decently-sized place to live.
• I resent the fact that to get enough space to fit me, my books, and a pet and maybe a garden, I essentially have to rent a 3-bedroom house. Canberra's housing stock consists of them, McMansions, "functional" apartment blocks with no garden space (I live in one now), or townhouses/swanky apartments ditto.
  
• I don't want to have to share with a stranger here in Canberra. There might be some groovy, reasonably clean, reasonably quiet, reasonably sane, queer-friendly types here, but hm, yer standard 3-bedder does not have soundproofing, and I'm getting more twitchy about privacy the older I get.
  
• I wish I had about a million bucks so I could start off a co-housing project. Room for garden, nanimals, play area, with moderately dense, well-designed and varied living spaces.
  
• Renting a three-bedder seems wasteful for one person. It is wasteful. Even if I could find one cheap enough to rent by myself that wasn't in hickville.
• I've offset my carbon consumption last year (and will do for the forseeable). I've done my car and my current living quarters for less than $200. Obviously I'll up that if I get a larger place.
  
• Organisations that do carbon offsets in Australia:
• Elementree (native treeplanting around Australia, focussing on areas with erosion and salinity problems - they have an excellent carbon calculator tool, and this was my choice for doing my offsets).
• Carbon Neutral (predominantly native treeplanting around Australia, again in marginal areas affected by salinity etc. In association with Men of the Trees, and my second choice for Australian offsets).
• Greenfleet (treeplanting around Australia, with a particular focus on the Murray/Darling river system area)
• Climate Friendly (wind farm development in Australia and NZ. While this has longer term benefits than planting trees, I think they should be self-funding. Funding R&D into other alternative energy sources seems to be more worthwhile).
• EasyBeingGreen (a NSW-based commercial enterprise that sponsors emission-reduction methods, such as low-energy lightbulbs, and sponsoring tradespeople to install low-emission options.  Again, I'm not sure why an individual should donate money for them to carry out their services, but the ideas are worthy.)
• Carbon offsets in NZ:
• CarbonZero (part of Landcare Research, a government body, and used by the Green Party to offset all their travel. Provides calculators which one can use to offset with the EBEX21 project, which places convenants over unused land (>100ha) for the purpose of it regenerating its own bush/forest, while monitoring and calculating results. I use this to offset my air travel).
• Next time I'm home, I'll rent a car from Europcar.
• I need to switch over to the "green" electricity tariff.
• And no more Aussie-grown rice. While I'd much prefer to "buy local", having rice paddies around a river system that is rapidly drying up seems counter-productive, to say the least. At least with fruit trees, in theory (and I hope in increasing actuality), they can be drip-irrigated directly at the roots. Rice paddies, not so much.
  

Comments

[stormkpr.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is awesome that you offset your carbon consumption! Kudos to you.

I need to do that more. Definitely.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Yep, well, at least it's not hard these days with those websites and a credit card. :-)

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

No more Aussie-grown rice for me, either, now that I know it's causing damage. It's a pity, too -- Sunrice's arborio is a match for any Italian rice I've tried, and about 1/3 the price.

Not 1/3 the cost, though.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a real shame, and too right about the gap between something's price and its cost. I'm also entertaining doubts about Aussie sugar and dairy products, but I need to do a bit more research on them. At least I don't eat mutton (or red meat in general).

[saluqi.livejournal.com]

Augh, stupid LJ flakiness. I had a comment all written out but now 'tis lost.

Anyway, the short version is that I've been steering clear of Australian rice for a long time, it's all I can do not to break into a rant in the supermarket aisle. We have the cars greenfleeted, but I have not done the rest, partly because greenfleet is struggling to find land to plant its trees on and it has a real backlog at the moment. Thanks for the other offset links. Nifty!

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely with you on supermarket aisle rants. I've been avoiding Aussie rice for a while, but after more recent reading-up on it, I'm making it a real policy. There are a few other bits and bobs I'm wondering about, but I need to read up some more (such as sugar).

It's great that there are a lot more carbon offset options around. While it's essentially throwing money at a problem, it seems like an effective strategy, at least for the short-medium term.