Saving the World one Olive at a Time

It’s the little things that mean a lot. I don’t know if it’s an urban legend or if it is true, but I understand that in 1987 American Airlines decided to eliminate one olive from each salad that it served, and in the process saved $40,000 per year. Similarly, in 1999 Singapore airlines looked at the cost to butterfly the prawns for a proposed appetizer and found it would cost $750,000 per year. And, in 2005 Northwest Airlines stopped handing out a half-ounce bag of braided pretzel sticks, achieving a savings of $2 million per year.

No, this is not an article about the slow degradation of airline service. The point here is that your small actions can be added to hundreds of thousands of other small actions by other people, and make a tremendous impact on the world. Let’s apply this principle to energy security and global warming.

Before we look at the specific actions you can take, let’s talk about why addressing global warming is important. First, the numbers we’re dealing with are staggering. The United States consumes more oil than any other nation, 20,030,000 barrels of oil per day. That is greater than the consumption of China, Japan, Russia and India combined.

The US is also the world’s worst emitter of CO2 gases, emitting 5,762,050,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, which is approximately the same amount of CO2 emitted by China, Russia and Germany combined. That’s nearly 20 metric tons of CO2 for each man, woman and child in the United States. In the US, 45.6% were emitted in the generation of electricity and heat. That does not include manufacturing and construction (11.1%). 30.9% of CO2 emissions came from “transportation” sources.

These numbers might be huge, but remember the lesson of removing a single olive from a salad. A small action can have a huge impact. For example, Hewlett-Packard just redesigned the packaging for its printer cartridges and in the process eliminated 37 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.

Over half of the oil we use is imported (58%), and that number just keeps going up. US officials project that by 2025, we will import 68 percent of our oil to meet demand. So, if, as we said earlier the US consumes 20,030,000 barrels of oil per day, and if 58% of that oil is imported, assuming a price of $58/barrel, the US sends $673,809,200 to foreign countries every day to pay for our oil habit. When the price is at $75/barrel, as is has been recently, the amount of money we export per day increases to over $871 billion per day! While much of this oil is currently imported from our friends in Canada, some of this money goes to countries that, quite frankly hate us. The more oil we consume, the more we import and the more dollars we send overseas, the less secure we are as a nation.

We’ve been talking about some very large numbers here. I’d like to go back to the analogy we used at the beginning, the analogy of a big impact a small olive can have. Here are ten small steps that can add up to have an enormous impact.

10 Small Actions to make a Big Impact

1. If you want to make a big difference with a small action, start by showing the movie An Inconvenient Truth in your home. It’s very easy. Go to BraveNewTheaters.com and sign up, buy the movie, invite your friends and pop the popcorn. The movie will make a big impact on your friends. Then ask your neighbors to host the movie in their house and to invite their friends. That way you keep the wave of influence going.

2. You can write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Tell the paper why you care about global warming. Tell them why it is important to you, in your town. Make the letter about the local impact of this global phenomenon.

3. While you’ve got your paper and pen (or laptop) out write to your Senators to ask them to support S.309, Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act. This Act: requires that the U.S. reduce its emissions between 2010 and 2020 to 1990 levels and by 2050, to a level that is 80 percent below 1990 levels.

4. If there is no way you can get your Senators to support S.309, ask him or her to sign on to S.280, Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007. While this bill accomplishes some of the same goals as S.309, it also, unfortunately, provides massive subsidies for nuclear energy. Be sure to let your Senators know you don’t like that portion of the bill.

5. In their 2003 book, You Can Prevent Global Warming, Jeffrey Langholz and Kelly Turner provide 51 easy ideas to save energy (and money) while saving the earth. Here is one of their simple ideas: replace a burned out bulb with a compact fluorescent bulb. "If every household in the United States replaced its next burned-out light bulb with a compact fluorescent, we would prevent more than 13 billion pounds of carbon dioxide being emitted—that's equivalent to taking 1.2 million cars off the road for an entire year." If you don’t want to buy new bulbs, you can simply turn off unneeded lights, or bring natural sunlight into your home eliminating the need for lights.

6. Your car emits just as much greenhouse gas as your home does. So, obviously when you can it’s best to use alternative means of transportation such as mass transit, car pooling, bicycling, and telecommuting. If you leave your car at home two days a week, you can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1,590 pounds per year.

7. If you must drive, then try to drive a car that gets better gas mileage. That doesn’t mean you have to go out and buy a new car. You might be able to get better gas mileage from the car you have. Fixing a car that is noticeably out of tune or has failed an emissions test can improve its gas mileage by an average of 4 percent. Replacing a clogged air filter can improve your car's gas mileage by as much as 10 percent. You might be able to improve your gas mileage by around 3.3 percent by keeping your tires inflated to the proper pressure and by 1-2 percent by using the manufacturer's recommended grade of motor oil.

8. Also, the way you drive makes a big difference. Gas mileage usually decreases rapidly at speeds above 60 mph. As a rule of thumb, you can assume that each 5 mph you drive over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.20 per gallon for gas. You can reduce oil consumption in the US simply by slowing down.

9. If you can afford a new car, then obviously a hybrid car is great for the environment (I drive a Prius), however you can go with a more conventional car and still achieve great gas mileage. For example the Toyota Yaris and the Honda Civic are both rated at 40 MPG on the highway. Or for the really adventuresome, take a look at the Smart Car.

10. Educate yourself about global warming and what you can do about it. Look at information from Global Green, GreenHomeBuilding.com, US Green Building Council, and the National Resources Defense Council.

So, there you have it – ten small actions that can add up to make a huge difference, just like removing the olive from one salad can have an enormous impact. If you’re the overachiever type and you’d like bonus points, then email this blog to five other people. If they take just one of these actions, just think what an impact you will have.