"Saving Energy; It Starts at Home" Peter Miller (National Geographic 3/09)

The article “Saving Energy It Starts at Home” takes on a mission that the writer, Peter Miller, had before writing the article. His mission was to reduce the carbon footprint of his family. Miller compared this to going on a diet but not one of food but of reducing consumption in other areas of his life. Before beginning his experiment to save the planet he had to find out what kind of energy he was already using on a regular basis. After calculating through all of the expenses of energy of one month he compared it to that of the average American family which consumes 150 pounds of CO2 a day. Before finding out their own family’s consumption of CO2 they decided their goal was to reduce their emissions to 80 percent less the American average. To Peter’s surprise their monthly consumption of CO2 was already 30 percent higher than the country’s average. So to make the ‘diet’ easier they decided to find some neighbors to join them on their mission. The Bauer family, a family already committed to a green lifestyle, was very keen to help out. For one month these two families worked together to find ways to decrease their CO2 emissions while finding bumps and difficulties along the way. Simple daily activities like dropping family members to their jobs or schools, they found could take up a lot of their ‘supply’ of CO2 when there were much more environmental ways to perform them. This article also included many interesting facts about the American lifestyle such as; the average new house is forty-five percent bigger than it was thirty years ago. This article also provides endless statistics on carbon from various sources and a full carbon reduction plan. Through this article anyone can see that the earth needs saving and anyone can do simple acts to save it.
Before reading this article I thought I was fairly knowledgeable on the subject of CO2 emissions and their effect on the environment. After reading I found out that there was so much more I could do to protect my own planet. It turns out that there are everyday tasks that are having a greater impact on the environment than most people think, but with these problems there are several ways to improve and fix them. My opinion on the environment and our ability to save it has only increased since reading about Peter Miller’s experience on reducing CO2 emissions. I am very confident that anyone can do their part even if it’s the smallest thing like turning off the television when their finished watching, or carpooling on the way to work. We are all perfectly capable of playing a part in saving energy to reduce CO2 emissions.
Some questions that arose while I was reading were as follows. How can we inform those who don’t know about global warming? If saving energy also saves money why aren’t more people making the effort to save energy? How can I do more to help save energy in my day to day life? These are a few of the questions that came up during and after my reading but I know that after this article my opinion on saving energy has certainly been enforced and influenced to do more for our environment.