Featured

Inspiration for Enjoyable and Climate-friendly Eating for the New Year

Happy (belated) new year! I have been pretty delinquent in posting on here for a long time, but I wanted to add another food post to the ones I posted two and three years ago. It is becoming more and more widely known how much animal agriculture, particularly beef, accelerates climate change, and how dramatically smaller the carbon footprint of most plant-based foods is compared with animal-based foods (see graph below).

There has never been a better time to eat vegan, or at least shift a little more in that direction. There are so many wonderful recipes, products, restaurants, and flavor combinations, that you’d be hard pressed to find an animal-based food craving you can’t pretty well satisfy with plant based foods. I decided to organize this post by category so that you can easily come back to look for ideas depending on season, meal, occasion, etc. It is pretty comprehensive so feel free to skim!

Soups

It’s a cozy time of year to enjoy some flavorful, nutritious, steaming soup! Soup recipes are nice and versatile; you can sub in whatever veggies you prefer or have on hand, and most soups stay good for several days if you want to make a large batch to have leftovers.

We loved this squash, kale, bean, and sausage soup by NYT. I like gardein frozen Italian sausage, but you could use any plant-based sausage to sub for the chorizo. We took the NYT’s advice to switch it up from butternut squash and use acorn instead, but then wished we’d just stuck with butternut since the acorn squash with all its nooks and crannies took so long to peel! Use your favorite greens for the kale, and you’ll have a great main course.

Our friend Emma made a great, simple soup a few years ago when we visited, basically with veggie broth, lentils, carrots, onion, celery, and (if I remember right) thyme. You can mix and match your preferred veggies, herbs, and legumes.

One soup we love we fondly call “labor soup” because we made it after I got sent home from the OB clinic for “false labor,” only to be back at the hospital later that night with Willy on his way! We prefer it without the tomatoes, and you could do either regular or sweet potatoes. The lemon juice and parsley give a nice hint of flavor that brings out the soup’s freshness, and of course you can sub your favorite herb. We like it with toasted sourdough bread. It was nice having the leftovers on hand when we got back home with our new baby!

We love this root vegetable soup (in the photo–left out the barley) in fall.

One of my proudest cooking moments was when Andrew asked me if this beer cheese soup I made was actually vegan because it was so convincingly and deliciously cheesy. 

There are lots of great recipes that are either vegan or easy to veganize for chili, white bean chili, butternut squash soup, and tortilla soup (some of those are linked in my prior two food posts). 

Kid Friendly:

I’ve mentioned in my previous food posts that we don’t hold our kids to a vegan diet (check out my food post from early 2020 for further thought behind that decision), but that they know why we make the food choices we do, and we like to offer them healthy, appealing vegan food options (and we get excited when they enjoy them). A few kid-approved winners:

Wessy loves quesadillas made with violife cheddar shreds. We cover half a small flour tortilla with the cheese, sprinkle on a little cumin, paprika, oregano, and garlic powder, fold over the top, and microwave for 20-25 seconds. The first time Andrew made him one, he declared, “Daddy, you should be a professional chef” (and he doesn’t give out compliments unless he means it!).  

For snacks, a few vegan options that are a hit are pretzels, veggie straws, and pumpkin seeds. We make sure to have at least one or two fruits/veggies at each meal, and some of their favorites are strawberries, apples, cuties mandarins, baby carrots, bananas, broccoli (roasted at 350 degrees for 12 minutes with a little olive oil, salt, and lemon juice), spinach (that’s Wessy’s new fave–he just eats pieces of it raw, with or without salad dressing), and craisins (if we can count that as a fruit). Willy sometimes enjoys vegan chicken options (like beyond chicken tenders or impossible nuggets), and Wessy likes tater tots. Willy loves sourdough bread, and Arnold’s is a good brand of vegan sourdough sandwich bread. Our friend Jessica made some cornbread that Willy loved, made from cornbread mix with oat milk and applesauce, so we’ve made that too.

For bento boxes for school lunch, some things they enjoy include pretzels, craisins, strawberries, apples, baby carrots, cut up violife cheddar cheese, and pumpkin seeds.

My mom’s recipes:

Many of you know that I lost my wonderful mom suddenly to cancer last summer. Some of my favorite foods she used to make are either already vegan or easy to veganize. I’ll leave the original recipes in her words or clippings.

When I was a kid, for birthday dinners and some other special occasions we loved lemon chicken. I’ve made the recipe below substituting beyond chicken tenders (so yes, that makes them twice fried when you’re done), flax eggs, Follow Your Heart parmesan, and Earth Balance vegan butter, and it has all the good taste of the original. 

Lemon Chicken (serves 4+)

1/4 c. parmesan cheese

1/2 c. bread crumbs

1 1/2 lbs. chicken scallopini

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 c. olive oil (can add a couple T. butter if you want)

6 thin slices lemon

1/4 c. minced parsley

1 1/2 c. chicken broth

1/4 c. lemon juice

1/4 c. dry white wine

2 T. butter, melted

Mix cheese and crumbs together.  Coat chicken by dipping in egg, then in crumb mixture twice.  Brown for 2 minutes in oil and butter.  Place in shallow dish.  Top with sliced lemon and parsley.

(Dish may be prepared to this point and refrigerated until ready to serve).  At serving time, prepare sauce by combining chicken broth, lemon juice, wine, butter, salt and pepper.  Boil for 1 minute.  Pour over chicken and bake uncovered for 30 minutes at 350.  

She served the lemon chicken with the pasta and green beans below–only substitution needed to make them vegan is to use vegan parm (I like Follow Your Heart brand):

Pasta with Oil and Garlic

9 oz.+ pasta (fettucine or linguini)

Boiling salted water

1/3 to 1/2 c. olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 c. chopped parsley

1/2 t. salt

1/4 t. pepper

parmesan cheese to pass

Cook pasta until al dente (while preparing sauce).  Heat oil in skillet over low heat.  Add garlic and cook gently for 2 minutes.  Remove pan from heat and add parsley, salt and pepper.  Toss pasta with sauce.

Here is the recipe for Savory Green Beans (5-6 servings)

1 1/2 lbs. green beans

2 or 3 T. olive oil

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 T. chopped onion (or more)

1/2 c. diced green pepper

1/4 c. boiling water

1 t. salt

1 t. dried basil

1/2 c. Parmesan cheese

String the beans.  Heat oil and garlic in skillet.  Add the onion and green pepper and cook slowly 3 minutes.  Add beans, water, salt and basil, cover and simmer until beans are tender, about 15 minutes (keep an eye on it so beans don’t stick to bottom).  Stir in half the cheese, turn the mixture into a serving dish and sprinkle with remaining cheese.

When I was around middle school, our family got a pasta machine, and my parents made some great pasta dishes. One of our favorites was chicken with almonds. We made this using beyond tenders (gardein chicken filets also work well), earth balance vegan butter, veggie broth instead of chicken broth, and vegan huggs homemade vegan sour cream, and it really captured all the flavors I remembered well. 

Chicken with Almonds

1/4 cup butter

boneless chicken breasts (4 small)

1 clove garlic

2 T. chopped onion (I also add mushrooms)

1-2 T. tomato paste

2 T. flour

1 1/2 c. chicken broth

2 T. sherry

2 T. slivered almonds

salt and pepper to taste

1 t. tarragon

3/4 c. sour cream

1 T. grated Parmesan

Heat butter, add chicken and brown on all sides.  Remove chicken, add garlic, onion and mushrooms and cook over low heat 3 minutes.  Add tomato paste and flour and stir until smooth.  Stir in broth and sherry.  When returns to boil, return chicken to pan and add almonds, salt, pepper, and tarragon.  Cover and simmer slowly for 45 minutes.  

Transfer chicken to shallow casserole.  Stir sour cream into sauce remaining in pan and heat thoroughly.  Do not boil.  Pour sauce over chicken and sprinkle with the cheese.  Brown lightly under preheated broiler.  (Serve with pasta).

Another childhood favorite was the black beans and rice recipe below. It made me a cilantro and bell pepper fan for life. Once you sub veggie broth for chicken broth, it’s already vegan.

Mexican

Who doesn’t like Mexican food? There are plenty of great options for the flavors you crave without meat or dairy.

We love these lime and cornmeal encrusted potato tacos. We make just the potatoes from that recipe, then top with caramelized onions, pickled cabbage, and this homemade salsa; we roast the tomatillos first, and it’s also great on chips.

Guac is easy and delicious: mash up avocados with generous squeezes of lime juice, cilantro, and jalapeños. You can also veganize your favorite seven-layer dip recipe, using violife shredded cheddar for the cheese and homemade vegan sour cream. 

Check out my two prior food posts (early 2020 and early 2021) for ideas for Mexican/southwest medley, salad, and enchilada casserole. 

Asian

Here are some of our favorite Asian-inspired vegan dishes:

Andrew has made this Thai Red Curry dish a couple times, and it’s very flavorful, healthy, easy, and fresh tasting.

This tandoori sheet pan dinner is amazing. The marinating sauce is addictive. We usually do cauliflower, onion, bell peppers, mushrooms, and/or zucchini and skip the tofu and potatoes, but you can choose whichever veggies you want. We like to serve it with green chutney and sometimes make these smashed potatoes with a little Indian spice instead of the chives.

A nice weeknight dinner (we make enough for a few days) is this versatile red lentil Indian dish. We usually mix in some roasted veggies (like carrots or cauliflower) to make it more substantial, and top with avocado, cilantro, and lime.

Italian

There’s something comforting about the aroma of Italian food cooking that makes your whole house feel warm and cozy. Here are a few of our favorite Italian recipes:

This lasagna was SO good! We threw in some spinach and mushrooms too, and made it with violife mozzarella and this ricotta.

In the fall, we like to do a butternut squash/sage/vegan sausage pasta dish. We looked at a few recipes and sort of combined them, but basically we roast cubed butternut squash, then throw it in a skillet with a little vegan butter and olive oil, white wine, sage, salt and pepper, vegan sausage (we like gardein Italian sausage), nutpods unsweetened creamer, and toss it with cooked penne pasta and vegan parm.

I don’t know if risotto necessarily automatically goes in the Italian category, but this dish is delicious and special occasion-worthy. We use earth balance vegan butter, veggie broth, sweet earth vegan bacon, and this vegan mascarpone, without the sugar. It’s so cheesy that we don’t feel the need to add the suggested parmesan. 

I mentioned in my previous posts that we love making pizza with miyoko’s mozzarella (and by “we” I mean Andrew–he is the best pizza chef). In addition to the traditional red sauce and cheese + toppings, we like a fall version with arugula, walnuts, sauteed pear, extra virgin olive oil, and balsamic vinegar (and if you can find it, vegan gorgonzola is great on it too). 

Summer

It’s always fun to cook (and eat) things that taste seasonal! I mentioned a few summer dishes in my previous posts, and we’ve discovered a couple of great new ones.

We loved this heirloom tomato gazpacho and this orzo with late summer vegetables, subbing miyoko’s mozzarella.

Holidays

No need to pine after turkey or ham with all the festive and flavorful vegan dishes out there! 

For side dishes, we really liked these roasted carrots with a couple of caveats. Don’t make the same mistake I did attempting to roast them at 180 degrees…obviously they weren’t really cooking so we had to crank up the oven to around 350, and looking back at the recipe, lo and behold, it is 180 degrees celsius. Also, you really don’t need to make the cashew cream. It makes way too much, and the carrots are plenty flavorful the way they’re marinated, especially if you add the suggested toppings (we used mint instead of parsley along with the pomegranate seeds and shaved almonds). 

These scalloped potatoes are super yummy and decadent. 

These beggar’s purses are special occasion-worthy–we used vegan feta for the goat cheese.

These sweet and spicy roasted nuts are quick and easy and a big hit to bring along to a party or put in jars as a gift. 

Andrew has fond memories of his family’s tradition of Bisquick sausage-cheddar balls on Christmas morning, and they turn out amazing with Impossible breakfast sausage (in the tube), violife shredded cheddar, and soy milk.

Lunch

I got a little tired of bringing PB&J to work for lunch, so I switched to tofurkey and vegan provolone, and got a little tired of that too. I still bring those sometimes, but a couple more ideas to mix things up:

My friend Katie suggested making a sandwich with vegan cream cheese and veggies/sprouts. You can vary it up with your favorites; I like using miyoko’s cream cheese (there are other good brands too like violife or Kite Hill) on Arnold sourdough or Dave’s killer bread, and add 2-3 veggies (tomatoes, cucumbers, avocado, spinach, sprouts, arugula, etc). In the summer, a simple sandwich of sliced tomatoes and avocados on your favorite bread with evoo drizzled on is great, especially if it’s not a work day and you can eat it right after you slice the tomatoes. 🙂

Hummus is a nice option too; lantana has several fun flavors you can use for a sandwich, optional to top with spinach, sprouts, or other veggies. Hummus is also a great dip for carrots and other raw veggies. 

For a lunch that feels a little more like a treat on a day you don’t have to pack one, some of the vegan chicken products are great on sandwiches. I like to make a sandwich of a gardein filet (spicy or not) or gardein Nashville hot chicken on toasted sourdough with vegan mayo, topped with pickle slices. 

Andrew has made these amazing sofritas a few times, and they’re great for lunch with black beans, with or without a tortilla.

Breakfast

In my last food post, I mentioned Just Egg, avocado toast, hashbrown casserole, waffles, and breakfast tacos. Some other fun breakfast ideas, whether you’re in a hurry or want to make a nice meal:

Cereal (like plain cheerios or Nature’s Path maple pecan crunch) with soy milk and berries or banana, or toast (I like sourdough bread toasted with miyoko’s butter) are nice quick, tasty options. If you’re really in a hurry, some great frozen microwavable options are Plant Pure burritos or Alpha breakfast sandwiches. Many bagels (including Dave’s killer bagels) are vegan and are good with vegan cream cheese or peanut butter. 

A couple of our favorite things to make with Just Egg: 

We got a wedding present, the Bride and Groom Cookbook, that has a recipe for a frittata that we’ve always loved. Luckily, the vegan version tastes every bit as good as the original. Sauté some onion in vegan butter or olive oil in a small skillet, then put (for ~2 people) about a half bottle of Just Egg in a bowl and mix in 2 tablespoons vegan parm, some fresh or dry basil, ~⅓ cup sundried tomatoes, and a little pepper. Pour the “egg” mixture into the hot skillet and cook for a few minutes on medium heat, using a wooden spoon to push the cooked edges in and let the runny part go to the outside to cook. Then broil for about 2 minutes. So good! 

Just Egg also comes folded/frozen. It is great for making an easy breakfast sandwich with beyond breakfast sausage patty, vegan cheddar, and hot sauce on sourdough. The liquid Just Egg also makes a good scramble with vegan sausage and cheddar and onion/spinach/any veggies you like.

Sweets

Plenty of vegan ways to indulge your sweet tooth!

There are lots of great non-dairy ice creams. A few of our favorites are Sodelicious (especially their salted caramel cashew cluster), Jeni’s, and Ben and Jerry’s (and vegan reddi whip is great on top). Ghirardelli recently released vegan chocolate chips. 

Many mainstream brand boxed brownie and cake mixes are already vegan and call for water, oil, and eggs to mix in. Use flax eggs instead and you’ve got an easy and tasty, homemade-ish dessert! Some of the store-bought frostings are also vegan so that makes for easy birthday cakes/cupcakes. 

For homemade chocolate chip cookies, if you really want them to taste delicious and gooey, splurge on miyoko’s vegan butter and they’re at least as good as any with cow’s milk butter. 

For yummy store-bought vegan sweets, we like Oreos or Justin’s peanut butter cups.

Andrew and the boys made this wonderful autumnal maple pecan apple crisp for my birthday.

Local businesses/restaurants

A brief shout-out, for those who live in metro Atlanta, to:

Gregory’s Atlanta Vegan Breakfast in Roswell. It’s just take-out, but it’s so good. Our favorites are the Rose Grit Bowl and the Columbus Sausage, Egg, and Cheez biscuit. Check them out on Instagram!

Calverita’s Taqueria Vegana is amazing, especially their birria tacos. They have pop-up events all over metro Atlanta; if you follow them on Instagram you can catch them when they’re near you!

Nisha’s makes great Indian food and has a ton of fresh, flavorful (and sometimes spicy) vegan options. They are not a vegan business but offer lots of good food. Check out their website for when they’ll be at various farmer’s markets and grab a couple containers of curry and some of their paratha bread and samosas.

That’s about it. Thank you for reading if you’ve made it this far! Cooking and eating low-carbon-footprint foods is a lot of fun and never gets boring. I’d love to hear some of your favorites too!

Featured

None of this is nearly enough

I’ve been blogging for almost  two years about personal changes you can make to lower your carbon footprint. I firmly believe that our choices matter, since every bit of emissions (or emissions lowering) matters, since our choices can inspire others to do similarly, and since our integrity matters when we ask for systemic change; those in power will want to know what we’re doing that’s under our control. 

But I will freely admit that one family (or many families) buying solar panels or electric cars is like trying to bail out a sinking ship with a teaspoon. None of this is anywhere close to enough to address the magnitude of the crisis we’re facing. With twenty fossil fuel companies responsible for a third of all emissions, in some ways it’s even a distraction to focus on our own small steps to green living while the world burns. The wildfire season in the American west has been getting more terrifying and devastating each year, in direct relation to human-caused climate change. In turn, as the wildfires burn through huge areas of forest, astronomical amounts of CO2 are released into the atmosphere, creating a positive feedback loop that accelerates climate change. In 2020, wildfires in California emitted an estimated 112 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air. This is roughly equal to the emissions of 24 million passenger cars driven for a year. CA has about 15 million cars, so this means even if every single CA driver eliminated their driving-related emissions by not only switching to an electric car but ensuring that their car was charged by renewable energy, this change wouldn’t even cancel out the emissions from wildfires alone.

The devastation of California wildfires has been increasing year after year.
NY Times The Morning, 10/11/21

In addition to the catastrophic wildfires, 2020 was a record-setting hurricane season with 30 named tropical cyclones in the Atlantic. Hurricanes in recent years have been barreling upward in intensity, with Dorian in 2019 the strongest hurricane to ever hit the Bahamas, tied for the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane in history, and prompting some experts to suggest we need a new category 6 rating to accurately characterize the severely intense storms that are becoming increasingly common as climate change takes its toll.

All of the increasing devastation we’re currently seeing in terms of wildfires, hurricanes, droughts, and extreme heat, are occurring at approximately 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre industrial temperatures. Right now, the most wildly optimistic scenario has us hitting 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100, which would be a much worse scenario than what we are currently experiencing. And we are likely to reach that temperature much sooner–in the next 10-30 years–rather than at century’s end. If we reach 2 degrees Celsius of warming, many metrics (extreme heat, declining biodiversity and coral reefs, sea level rise, poverty, food impacts) would be several times worse than under the 1.5 degree scenario. And even the 2 degree scenario is also looking more wildly optimistic with each year that goes by without meaningful action on climate and with ecological disasters multiplying in the headlines. We are currently on track for about 3.6 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100, and some scientists are forecasting the 22nd century (when today’s young children are leaving the Earth to their kids and grandkids) as the “century of hell.”

We are in serious trouble. 

I do not believe that we are without hope. Experts agree that it is technically possible for us to shift away from fossil fuels, reach net zero emissions globally by 2050, and avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. I think we’ve all seen enough of our dysfunctional, gridlocked government and enough of citizens yelling at each other about public health guidelines during the pandemic to know that the way we usually act is a far cry from an all-hands-on-deck effort to reach a “technically possible,” but astronomically difficult, goal. We need the biggest and best collaborative effort the world has ever seen, starting now (or ideally, quite a few years ago). Our individual efforts to cut our carbon footprints matter, especially if we inspire others to do the same and if we cause enough of a shift in demand that companies start offering more sustainable products. But that’s not going to get us to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2, or even close to 2. 

We need systemic change. And arguably, an individual or business’s actions in lobbying for systemic change can have much more impact than that individual or business working to cut their own carbon footprint. The good, hopeful, and empowering news is that there is a lot you can be doing to work for systemic change, and your voice really matters.

I’ve been volunteering for Citizens’ Climate Lobby for 2.5 years now, and it’s the most high-yield, meaningful, rewarding, and effective volunteering I’ve ever done. CCL is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization with roughly one chapter per US Congressional district and several international chapters. We are focused on passing a carbon price (specifically a carbon fee and dividend system), which many thousands of scientists and economists agree is the single most effective policy we could pass to reach our climate goals while protecting the economy and especially protecting lower income people economically. The basic idea is that you start with a small, but steadily increasing, fee on carbon emissions at the source (where coal, oil, or natural gas comes out of the ground), and then return that money to American households as a monthly dividend check. Many scientists and economists agree that this would likely be a make-or-break piece of a climate package that could allow us to reach our goals of 50% emissions reductions by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050. CCL has been working for over a decade using multiple levers to increase political will in support of carbon pricing: grassroots (events like tabling, speaking at clubs/businesses/faith organizations to educate the general public about carbon pricing and mobilize them to contact their elected officials), grasstops (bringing on board community leaders to endorse carbon pricing, including leaders of businesses and faith organizations, local governments, and prominent individuals), media (writing op-eds and letters to the editor about climate, organizing media coverage of climate events), and lobbying (meeting and communicating directly with federal elected officials and their staff to build their support for carbon pricing). CCL members spend meetings with elected officials and their staffers expressing gratitude, building common ground and relationships, and increasing officials’ support for carbon pricing. Currently, a gradually increasing carbon fee and dividend system is being seriously considered as part of Congress’s budget reconciliation package, and I think that CCL’s diligent work over the past ten years has greatly contributed. The past 2.5 years with CCL, I’ve met some amazing, fun, dedicated people, and I’ve even gotten the chance to meet my Congresswoman, Lucy McBath, a handful of times and talk to her about carbon pricing. Most elected officials truly want to hear from their constituents; you may be surprised how accessible your member of Congress is. If this sounds like something you’d like to be involved in, in a big or small way, check out https://citizensclimatelobby.org/. If you click “Join CCL” and enter your contact info, you should be contacted by your local chapter leader with an invitation to the monthly meeting and to the recorded volunteer trainings. If carbon pricing sounds good to you but you aren’t ready to commit to being a CCL volunteer, a few quick calls or emails to your Senators, House rep, and the White House can help make carbon pricing stick in the reconciliation package.  

Other organizations that could use your help advocating for climate action are Sunrise Movement, Sierra Club, Green Peace, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Extinction Rebellion, among others. Getting involved in elections supporting pro-climate candidates and voting rights is crucial as well. The Environmental Voter Project is a nonpartisan organization that organizes phone banks around key elections where you call self-identified environmentally concerned citizens and encourage them to get out and vote. Even if you sign up for a 2-hour phone bank here or there when it fits into your schedule, it can make a difference. 

On the local level, your voice can have a big impact too. For almost two years now, I’ve been part of a small group of environmentally concerned citizens in my city (Roswell, GA), working to get the Mayor and City Council to pass environmental resolutions. A few months ago, we had our first success, with the unanimous passage of our resolution to steadily increase the percent of native plants used on city property. We’re hoping to pass further resolutions so that our city can do more to combat climate change, including committing to transition to 100% clean and renewable energy, as many other cities have done (check out https://www.sierraclub.org/ready-for-100 for a model if you want to start or join a campaign in your city). If you don’t know where to start, request a meeting with your Mayor or a City Councilmember or attend a public City Council meeting to express your concern about climate change and your desire for your city to do more to help.

If you are reading this and feeling overwhelmed at the thought of adding more responsibilities to your schedule, I understand not everyone has the same bandwidth. I am lucky that with working part time, I’ve been able to get deeply involved with Citizens’ Climate Lobby. But if you can’t commit to regular volunteering, there are small ways to make a difference. CCL has a monthly calling campaign that you can sign up for even if you’re not a regular volunteer with CCL, and you’ll get a monthly email and text reminder to make a quick (1 minute) call to your rep and senators telling them how important climate action and a carbon price are to you (a voicemail or quick couple of sentences is fine–they are busy and unlikely to ask follow-up questions, so don’t worry about getting stumped by questions you don’t know the answers to). If you have time in the car or while doing chores around the house, search your podcast app for Citizens’ Climate and there are a ton of interesting and educational podcasts you can listen to that might inspire you to take small actions to help the climate movement or at least spark conversations with others that build positive momentum. If you can’t do any volunteering or advocacy work, committing to voting in all federal, state, and local elections is an important step to getting us leaders who will work for the change we need.

The climate crisis is truly dire, and it can be easy to lose hope sometimes. But we absolutely have reason to hope and the power to enact change. I’ll leave you with this quote by Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Featured

How are those climate-friendly investments doing now?

Shortly before the pandemic, I wrote about the importance of divesting from fossil fuels and instead investing in socially responsible (sometimes known as “ESG”), sustainable funds. We’d previously invested through Betterment’s sustainable portfolio, but actually in doing research for last year’s investment blog post, we realized that we could do a better job keeping our investments fossil-free by switching to Earthfolio as a robo-advisor and requesting their fossil-free investment option. (Incidentally, we recently read on Betterment’s website that they are increasing their focus on climate-friendly funds, although we’re overall happy with our decision to change to Earthfolio.)

With all the pandemic upheaval, we didn’t get around to switching our investments to Earthfolio until fall 2020. If you care about curbing climate change, I’m guessing you’re on board with trying not to invest in fossil fuels. But you probably also want some reassurance that funds you’re investing in for retirement or other financial goals are going to do well and get you a good return on your investment. So (drumroll please)…how are our Earthfolio investments doing so far?

Significantly better than comparable standard investments! Personalcapital.com has some nice tools to help you visualize how your portfolio is doing compared to other indices. We took a snapshot the other day at 227 days into our investment, and our portfolio had gained 19.69% compared to a blended benchmark representing a similar mix (but not sustainable/fossil free) of investments that gained only 15.67%. If we look at year-to-date stats, our portfolio has gained 11.29% compared to 10.63% for the comparable conventional blended portfolio. Obviously, this is just short-term data for what we plan on holding as long-term investments. But the numbers are looking good for how sustainable investments stack up over time compared with their traditional/non-sustainable counterparts. I shared some of this data in February 2020, and I’m happy to report that more recent data reflects that ESG equity and bond funds weathered the pandemic significantly better than their non-ESG peers. Sustainable equity funds beat conventional equity funds by a median of 4.3% total return in 2020! And sustainable equity and taxable bond funds both significantly outperformed their non-ESG peers in both 2019 and 2020. 

Another update is that we found some grade A (as rated by fossilfreefunds.org) funds for my employer’s retirement accounts! When I started with my current employer in 2019, we looked up the options for retirement funds on fossilfreefunds.org and the available options did not score very well, so we only invested the minimum to qualify for their match, and put the rest of our retirement investments in independent retirement accounts. I called and emailed HR several times in 2019 and 2020 asking for socially responsible funds to be added to retirement options. I’d gotten kind of a standard response that they were escalating my concerns, but hadn’t heard about specific changes, and we hadn’t checked the available funds’ grades on fossilfreefunds.org since I started working there in 2019. That is, until last week in preparing for this update blog, when (credit to Andrew here and in many of our climate-friendly investing decisions), we found a fund (ticker code TBCIX) that scored an A on fossilfreefunds.org! Honestly, since we didn’t save a list of all the fund options and codes initially when we found them to score poorly, I don’t know whether this fund is a new option, possibly in response to feedback from myself and others, or if their already available funds have been changing in response to the general societal movement towards sustainable investing and now score better than they used to. Either way, we were pleased to find out, and we increased our investments there and put them all in the grade A fund.

A final update is that we decided to put some of our investments into a climate activist fund called Engine No. 1 (ticket code VOTE). This fund may sound familiar to you for being in the news for staging sort of a coup at Exxon in May. Basically, with control over only 0.02% of Exxon’s shares, they influenced larger investors and got a majority of shareholders to vote to unseat three existing board members and replace them with climate activists. They plan to use the same strategy to influence other major corporations to shift away from fossil fuels. This may seem somewhat contradictory to divesting from fossil fuels, but the two strategies can complement each other, by avoiding passive investment in fossil fuels but participating in small strategic investments in fossil fuel companies, where the activist investors influence larger investors and punish corporations for making bad decisions with regard to climate. 

I hope that the encouraging performance data for sustainable funds and the increasing number of options for sustainable investing will have you doing a little research with regards to your own situation and taking action soon! Consider using Earthfolio or Betterment as a robo-advisor to get your investments into ESG funds, and when choosing funds from your employer’s retirement investment options, look them up on fossilfreefunds.org to see how they stack up climate-wise. Consider putting a little money into Engine No. 1 too. It doesn’t take much financial expertise to make sure your portfolio reflects your values–just a recognition that our investments affect the things we care about, and a motivation to make changes where we can to ensure a future where fossil fuels won’t dominate our economy, and where our kids and grandkids can breathe a little easier. 

Featured

The Least Sexy and Most Effective Way to Slash Your Home’s Carbon Footprint

In February 2020, our home’s carbon footprint was 64% lower than it was in February 2019. In June 2020, our home’s carbon footprint was 61% lower than it was in June 2019. I love our solar panels, but they only accounted for 6% of the February difference and 39% of the June difference. The real game changer? Probably not the first thing you’d picture when imagining a clean energy future, or the first image you’d see in a presentation about climate change, but perhaps the most important tool in our family’s quest towards net zero: a new, energy-efficient HVAC system. (Thanks to Andrew, master of spreadsheets, for crunching the numbers on our home energy use to compare year over year with the changes we’ve made, including converting between therms of natural gas and kwH of electricity as we’ve transitioned mostly away from natural gas. The actual difference between 2019 and 2020 is even more dramatic than the percentages above indicate, since charging our car is included in home energy use for 2020, and we use only a small fraction as much gasoline as we did before getting a plug-in hybrid. I’m happy to share raw data about our home energy use in more detail with anyone who’s interested).  

In 2019, when we started in earnest to plan how to cut our family’s carbon footprint, we thought about the biggest contributors to our country’s emissions: transportation (28%), electricity (27%, but more like 39% if lumped into the home/commercial building category including natural gas for heat and waste management), food (10%), and industry—basically “stuff” that’s produced that we buy (22%). So we knew our home’s electricity and natural gas use was a big chunk of our carbon footprint we needed to tackle. Sixty-three percent of our country’s electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, and for GA Power, it’s 69%. To get to net zero, we need renewable energy production to equal our energy use. We need to majorly ramp up renewable energy production, but it’s actually much lower hanging fruit (cheaper and easier) to lower our energy use through energy efficiency and reduction of energy waste and leakage. We absolutely need both to reach carbon neutrality, but energy efficiency arguably doesn’t get the attention it deserves. This post will focus on HVAC related energy savings, but stay tuned for a future post about energy efficiency in the rest of your home. 

Around 55% of the energy used in US homes goes towards heating and cooling. So unless you live somewhere with unusually mild weather year-round, the HVAC chunk of your energy use is probably where you’ll have the biggest bang for your buck in making a big reduction. We can see this on a larger scale in cities’ plans for transitioning towards clean energy: in Atlanta’s plan to transition to 100% clean energy by 2035, it’s estimated that the city can reduce its energy use by 25-30% via efficiency, mostly by insulating old homes and replacing old HVAC systems, and get an incredible return on investment in doing so. 

We had a basic idea of where most of our home energy use was likely coming from based on the above research, but to make a specific plan, we needed to know more in detail for our home. GA Power offers a rebate for a large chunk of a home energy audit, and similar programs exist in other states. We had Energy Consulting Services audit our home and were very happy with them. They put together a thermal map of our home so we could see where heat or cool air was escaping. Our windows were already double paned and doing a good job at insulation, but if yours are older or single paned, replacing them is a high yield way to lower your home heating and cooling use, often by a third or more. ECS recommended putting these cheap foam insulators behind our light switch and outlet covers (fun for kids to help with), seal around window frames and baseboards with clear caulk, and make some minor upgrades to our attic insulation (ECS as part of the audit makes a detailed “work list” in order of energy savings priority and recommended as DIY vs contractor, and they have a partner company you can optionally use to complete recommended work, which also can qualify for rebates through GA Power). 

Our highest yield change, though, wasn’t insulation but rather updating our HVAC system. Our old one was 17 years old and 10 SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Rating), which is inversely proportional to the energy used (so the higher the SEER, the better). The very best option for an HVAC system with a minimal carbon footprint is a geothermal system, which uses pipes that go deep underground to take advantage of the ground’s more constant temperature compared to the air, to release heat from your home into the ground in the summer and transport heat from the ground to your home in the winter. A geothermal system can perform at around 45 SEER, meaning it would use less than a quarter as much energy as our old HVAC system. There’s a 26% federal tax credit for installing a geothermal system, and you should eventually get a full return on investment in energy savings, but for us, the cost was prohibitive (plus in our case the only feasible place to install the deep pipes would have been beneath our driveway so we would have had to repave part of it–not the case for everyone’s home/yard though!). Geothermal systems seem to be more cost effective when incorporated into new construction–something to consider if you’re building a new home or have a chance to give input on new construction in your city, business, university, etc.

For more standard HVAC systems, the newer models are available with a max SEER of about 22, and also have rebates available and will eventually give you a return on investment in energy savings (and are more affordable than geothermal systems). We had a few companies come out to give us proposals/quotes, and we ended up going with Stuart Pro Heating and Air, and the TRANE XV20i DUAL FUEL HEAT PUMP W/ XC95 NAT/GAS FURNACE, with a 22 SEER rating and a smart thermostat. We were a little torn between getting a fully electric heat pump vs. the dual fuel one we ended up choosing. The dual fuel one works as an energy efficient electric heat pump for air conditioning and for most heat (when outdoor temperature is above 30 degrees or so). When the temperature dips particularly low, the natural gas kicks in. Ideally, if we are going to get to net zero carbon emissions, we shouldn’t be using any natural gas. And we really liked the idea of sticking it to the natural gas company by closing our account and not paying the monthly base rate. But, considering that the all-electric heat pump is less efficient in very cold weather, and that the GA Power grid is not anywhere close to all renewable, the dual fuel system has the overall lower carbon footprint. I hope that in another 15-20 years when we need to replace our dual fuel system, the grid may be green enough that the all-electric option has the lower (or maybe even nonexistent) carbon footprint. We were able to get a lower base monthly rate for natural gas after demonstrating our minimal use, and we close our natural gas account for the warmer months of the year. We also had our old ductwork redone to avoid leakage, so our heating and cooling related energy use ended up decreasing by more than the 55% we’d expect based on the improved SEER rating alone.

If you’re not in a place to replace your HVAC system (or replace windows or insulation), there are some free (or very cheap) and easy ways to chip away at your heating and cooling related energy use. Be sure that vents are open and aren’t covered or partially blocked by furniture or clutter. If you have a programmable thermostat, set it to run the heat or air conditioning lower during the night and adjust your thermostat when out of town or away from home for the day. Use fans in the summer and sweatshirts and blankets in the winter so that you can feel comfortable tweaking the temperature towards using less heat or AC. If the sun shines directly into a window, keep curtains open on cold days and closed on hot days. Install the socket sealers I mentioned above, and apply clear silicone caulk around window frames and where the baseboard meets the floor. Avoid keeping doors or windows open on hot or cold days. There are various types of inexpensive weather seals you can apply to the bottoms of doors to avoid heat or cool air escaping. 

We love our HVAC system. It runs reliably and keeps us comfortable using a fraction of the energy our old one used. Replacing an old one is a great investment for the planet and for lowering your electricity and/or gas bills, especially as extreme weather increases and we rely even more on our homes’ heating and cooling systems. If you’re not needing or able to replace yours now, keep efficiency in mind in the future when you need to replace an old or broken system, and use your influence at your workplace, school, or church when decisions are being made about upgrading buildings, so that we can keep lowering that bar of total energy use to get it low enough for renewable energy production to reach it. 

Featured

Composting made easy-enough-to-start-during-a-pandemic

I know a lot of you are stretched thinner than ever these days between working at home and caring for kids. This post is not intended to put pressure on you! But, if you’re at home and were thinking of tackling even a very minor spring cleaning/gardening/art project, I promise that starting composting will be as easy or easier. It’s a simple but important habit that can get us a little more in touch with Mother Nature’s way of doing things, and it lowers our food waste-related greenhouse gas emissions to slow down climate change. It’s fun and easy to get kids involved with helping, too. I had “learn how to compost” on my to-do list for months, and once we actually got started and realized how easy it is, I wondered why we hadn’t done it sooner.

When organic waste rots in a landfill in the absence of oxygen, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas many times more powerful in the short term than carbon dioxide. When composted, the carbon in the organic waste becomes sequestered in rich, healthy soil: a win-win-win for mitigating climate change, providing nutritious fertilizer, and saving money on both waste management and fertilizer production. 

One of my hesitations in getting started was that I associated composting with doing your own gardening. As much as I admire people with green thumbs and want to develop my own one day, we’ve only ever planted a small garden with a few tomato plants and herbs, so we don’t really have the need for a huge amount of soil. Of course, using your final compost product in your own garden is a great option, but if composting and gardening is too much to bite off right now, you don’t have to do both! You can offer to give away your compost to school or community gardens or an interested neighbor, or if you don’t have any takers (or if you need to get rid of some during shelter-in-place so can’t give it to anyone), you can just sprinkle it in the woods, in your yard, or on a median (meaning the soil you’ve made by the end of the composting process–not your food scraps!).

A friend of mine shared this helpful presentation on the basics of getting started with composting. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but I’ll hit the highlights here. The most important thing is getting at least a 2:1 ratio of “brown” (carbon-rich) to “green” (nitrogen-rich) in your compost bin. The color designations are a handy nickname for each category but don’t always correspond to the actual color of what’s in the category. The “green” (nitrogen-rich) category comes mostly from your kitchen: fruit and vegetable scraps and peelings, coffee grounds, and tea leaves, as well as “fresh” (not dried out) plants, like cut flowers, lawn or garden clippings, and fresh leaves. The “brown” (carbon-rich) category is more dried out plants, like pine needles and pine cones, dry leaves, and shredded non-glossy paper and cardboard. We are lucky to have a ton of pine trees in our yard, so when we dump the kitchen food scraps in the compost bin, we just grab a couple of big handfuls of dried pine needles to throw in with them. It’s not a good idea to put meat or dairy products in your bin since they attract animals, so in case you need a reason beyond the initial climate benefit and the pandemic-prevention benefit to move towards a vegan diet, a further benefit is limiting food waste since you won’t have the meat and dairy waste around to have to send to the landfill. 

 Sources I’ve read are mixed on how much moisture to allow into your compost bin. It seems like the consensus is that you need some moisture but you don’t want it sopping wet. There are plenty of options of how to set up your compost (in a bin or even in a pit in a shaded area of your yard), but I’ll share our specifics just to make things easy if you want to use the same products. We used this inexpensive outdoor open bin, which our kids enjoyed helping set up. We keep this bin on our kitchen counter to collect our “green” kitchen scraps, and then when it gets almost full and we dump them in the bin outside, we grab some handfuls of dry pine needles (about twice the volume of the kitchen scraps) to throw in with them, and drape a small tarp loosely over the top of the contents of the outdoor bin so that it gets a little moisture inside without getting soaked when it rains. We turn the contents of the bin every 2-4 weeks with this pitchfork. We’ve only been composting for a couple of months, so our product hasn’t fully turned into soil yet, but it looks like it’s on the right track. We get some fruit fly-looking bugs flying around the pile but from what I hear it’s normal to have some bugs, and the number hasn’t gotten out of control or bothered us. 

And that’s it! Shorter than my usual posts. We’re not composting experts, but there’s really not much to it, so I wanted to go ahead and share to encourage others to give it a try too. Feel free to reach out with tips, insights, or questions, and happy composting!

Featured

Stop telling people that COVID-19 is a punishment for our climate sins (or that this is some sort of gift)

We’ve all seen the beautiful, almost unbelievable, images: smog-free skies in Los Angeles, canals running clear in Venice, NASA images of the dramatic drop in pollution over Wuhan. Wild animals are reclaiming areas that humans have vacated. It’s amazing that nature is so resilient as to flourish so quickly in our absence. 

And in the midst of this, from good, thoughtful, well-meaning people, we’re hearing versions of a disturbing message: that this is somehow a gift. Or that this is nature’s way of punishing us from the way we’ve ravaged Earth (and yes, we certainly have ravaged Earth). That we should savor and prolong this pause (I totally understand that the pause needs to last until we get a real virus safety plan together–the message I take issue with is characterizing the pause as inherently a good thing). 

A popular meme is going around: 

I get the sentiment: that when we understand the urgency of a situation, we can take drastic action quickly. And that’s encouraging! But beneath the statement is an implication that our current situation, with all its devastation and fear, is what it would feel like in a world where we treat climate change with the urgency it deserves. 

Pope Francis (whom I like and respect, just as I like and respect most of the people sharing the messages that concern me), said that coronavirus is one of nature’s responses to people ignoring the climate crisis. Professor Leah Schade wrote a progressive Christian blog post that the pandemic is Earth’s way of demanding a Sabbath. Her article is actually very thoughtful and nuanced, but it’s hard to swallow her opening with the use of the word “Sabbath” in the context of the acute suffering happening now. The author of a much-shared (and again, for the most part thoughtful and nuanced) article “Prepare for the ultimate gaslighting” says that aside from the virus and the deaths (a pretty big aside!), “The Great Pause” is “the greatest gift ever unwrapped.” He then goes on to warn us that Best Buy, H&M, and Walmart are going to try to comfort us as the government and businesses try to get back to normal, and that what we really need to do instead of seeking comfort in material things and hurrying back to normal is endure the “bright light” of our current situation. I’m confused. If I really wanted products from those companies, I could order them online now. The comfort that I (and many others) are missing is not from things, it’s from seeing our friends and family (although many people are obviously, understandably, missing economic stability too).

The virus spreads through close/physical human contact, so human contact is what we’ve cut off in a (very necessary) attempt to slow the virus’s spread. The economic slowdown, with its extreme pain for many, and its temporary benefits for the Earth, is just a byproduct of the cutoff of in-person human connection. As necessary and for-the-greater-good as our current shelter-in-place scenario is, it’s traumatic for most of us. Social isolation increases our mortality risk on the order of smoking 15 cigarettes a day and can cause PTSD. China’s divorce rate has spiked as the nation has slowly emerged from lock down. Again, I am not in any way arguing against the shelter-in-place orders. We absolutely need them, we needed them sooner than we got them, and we need to continue them until we have a true safety plan in place for moving forward. And of course there are ways all of us can try to make the best of our individual situations and spread some hope and joy within the grand horrible situation.

But let’s not further traumatize (or gaslight, to borrow a term from the above-mentioned author) people by saying that if, somehow, we could have all of the realities of our current social-distancing situation without the virus and deaths, that that would be a good thing. Let’s not tell people that the pain they are feeling right now in this unprecedented situation is somehow a ripping of the band-aid off our addiction to an unsustainable economy and a revealing of a deeper, better, truer reality. No. We’re feeling pain now knowing that hugging a friend or family member could kill them. We’re feeling pain knowing that if we were to lose a loved one outside of our immediate household to this terrible disease, then most likely we’ve already hugged them or held their hand for the last time ever (and many have already experienced this reality). I’m feeling pain that my almost-5-year-old son’s wish that the germs will be gone by his birthday will not come true and that we won’t be able to invite friends and family into our home to celebrate.

I know I have it easier than most people in this situation. I have a wonderful husband and kids I get to see everyday, friends and family I communicate with regularly (none of whom have gotten sick at this point), and a (fairly low risk) job, and I know so many people don’t have those comforts right now. So if I’m having a hard enough time with this whole situation to be offended by the notion that our current reality is somehow more noble or worthwhile than the “norm,” I can imagine that people who have it much harder would also find that notion distasteful. And if I, as someone who’s acutely aware of how urgent the climate crisis is and who spends most of my free time on climate advocacy, don’t want anything to do with a climate solution that feels as painful as what we’re going through now, I can imagine that people who already had their heads in the sand about the climate crisis would want to bury them deeper at the suggestion that this, right now, is what a climate solution feels like.

 Drawdown (one of my favorite books that I’ve mentioned in previous posts) analyzes dozens of effective, ambitious but achievable solutions to climate change, and–guess what?–social distancing isn’t one of them. In preindustrial times (granted, there were plenty of difficulties then!), people managed to congregate without burning dangerous levels of fossil fuels. If we conflate our current reality with the changes needed to mitigate climate change, we give the idea that taking bold climate action feels like deprivation and despair. Climate change is an emergency that we need to take seriously. And we are lucky that we still have time (albeit a shrinking amount) to take corrective action that doesn’t feel acutely painful like what we’re going through right now. Carbon Fee and Dividend has been called “the biggest piece of silver buckshot” we have for a problem that doesn’t have one silver bullet, and it gives everyone a seat at the table for a smooth, economically favorable transition to a clean energy society. Drawdown’s analysis of its many solutions reveals that most are “no regrets” in that they provide side benefits (clean air, new jobs, more equity, etc.) and/or provide cost savings over time. Yes, there is hard work to put in, there is opposition to win over, and there will be some bumps, inconveniences, lifestyle changes, and sacrifices along the way. But I really think we in the climate movement are doing ourselves and the planet a disservice by putting out messages that what’s going on right now is what the Earth needs.

When someone comes into the ER bleeding, you don’t declare that their emergency is a gift and see how long you can keep them bleeding because it’s an “opportunity” for them to turn their life around and kick their smoking and soda habits. Sure, once they’re stabilized and their pain is relieved, send them to my office a week or two later and we can make a plan for their long-term health. But don’t lecture them or tell them that their pain is a gift right at the worst part of it. We absolutely can learn lessons from the pandemic. My last post was about the importance of listening to scientists, and there are a lot of other lessons for us to learn too: the importance of competent and honest leadership (I hope we remember that in November and have a safe way to hold our election!), appreciation for grocery workers and farmworkers among many others putting themselves at risk these days to keep us all alive, appreciating our health, loved ones, and nature. There are good conversations going on about policies we need in place like paid sick leave and universal health coverage, and those conversations need to continue. And I hope that employers continue with telework options in the future and limit work-related travel, to help the climate and people’s family lives.

But let’s not kid ourselves that, as Julio Gambuto says, this is “a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity…to Marie Kondo the shit out of it all,” and that this is the biggest chance we’ve ever gotten and ever will get to define our country’s future. That’s actually not what this is. This is a devastation. And yes, we can do our best out of the ashes to bring forth as much good as we can, but we have actually lost a ton of ground on very important causes. Millions of kids are missing their measles vaccines. Important HIV and malaria projects have come to a halt. And in terms of climate, even climate champions in Congress have advised members of Citizens’ Climate Lobby (the advocacy organization I volunteer for and love) that it’s insensitive to push for climate concerns in the stimulus bills and that now’s not the right time. CCL has, wisely and graciously, advised us as volunteers that, first and foremost, we take care of our families and ourselves during this time, and that when we do communicate with our representatives, we lead by being sensitive to what they’re experiencing and dealing with during this crisis, and that we follow their lead on whether they have any capacity to discuss climate action right now. Congresswoman Katie Porter said that Congress spent most of their recent virtual meeting telling people to unmute their phones to talk, and that they still haven’t figured out virtual voting.

The pandemic is not a gift. Apart from the devastation it wreaks in causing illness and death, it has dealt blows to progress in so many areas. I don’t say this from a position of hopelessness; there are many reasons to hope and many ways we can take action in the midst of this. But please stop calling it a gift. And don’t call it some sort of cosmic karma for the harm we’ve done to the earth either. We absolutely need to figure out ways to prevent future pandemics, and being more careful and thoughtful in how we use land and how we interact with wildlife is certainly one of them. But telling people that they’ve earned this suffering and brought this upon themselves sounds an awful lot like people saying AIDS was God’s wrath against homosexuality. Just don’t even go there. 

Right now we need empathy, relief, and honest, competent leaders sharing the truth with us and guiding us forward in this unprecedented time. There is room for reflection, for lessons learned, for looking on the bright side, and for speaking truth to power about what in our society has been flawed for a long time and needs to change. But please, don’t tell people that this is a gift, or a punishment. 

Featured

Put your money where your mouth is: the carbon footprint you didn’t know you had

If you’re working hard to lower your personal carbon footprint and reduce your dependence on fossil fuels, you definitely don’t want to invest in or lend to coal, oil, and gas companies so that they can expand their fracking, drilling, and mining. But that’s exactly what most of us are doing. Just since the Paris Climate Accord, the world’s largest banks have funded more than $700 billion in fossil fuel projects, with JP Morgan Chase the biggest offender.

We’ve all seen the graphs of how much your money can multiply if you start investing for retirement when you’re young. So, throughout our marriage, Andrew and I have dutifully set aside money each month for retirement, and we’ve felt excited to see the numbers in our accounts grow. When we were expecting our first son, we set up a Georgia Path2College 529 Plan and began investing in it monthly as well. And without thinking about it or knowing better, we were investing in fossil fuel companies through pretty much all of the funds where we had investments. With a little research (mostly thanks to Andrew), we discovered that some investments were easy to switch out of fossil fuels, and others much harder.

When you start looking into investing your money to avoid fossil fuels, the main terms you’ll come across are sustainable investing, ESG (environmental, social, and governance—metrics that are used to measure sustainability for individual companies) and SRI (socially responsible investing). They’re all related with minor differences, so I use the terms interchangeably. “Sustainable investing” may sound new, but it’s actually a $12 trillion industry in the US ($34 trillion globally) and growing quickly, especially among millennials and women, and is shown by many studies to perform equally or better financially compared with standard portfolios. And as public pressure mounts, especially with more people becoming aware of the urgency of addressing the climate crisis, more mainstream banks are recognizing the need to incorporate ESG criteria into creating their funds. 

I set out to write this blog post to share what we’d done with our investing based on our research last year on SRI, but in doing some additional background research over the past couple of weeks, we’ve actually come to the conclusion that we need to move our money again. We’ve been using Betterment as a robo-advisor and online platform for our investments since before SRI was on our radar. It has a nice app that allows us to track all of our savings and investments (even those we hold outside of Betterment), mortgage, etc., and lets us know if we’re on track for our financial and retirement goals. Last year, we were also happy to discover that they offer SRI. They offer a good and honest description of the methodology that goes into developing an SRI portfolio, along with its limitations, here.

Last year, we put all of our independent retirement accounts into Betterment SRI funds and also invested in one general sustainable fund through Vanguard. However, while researching for this blog post, I came across fossilfreefunds.org, a great website by As You Sow. I was disappointed to see that the funds in our Betterment SRI portfolio scored fossil fuel grades of Bs, Cs, and Ds.

In trying to figure out why a portfolio designated as socially responsible wouldn’t score better, Andrew and I thought of a few reasons. There are quite a few criteria that go into whether a company is considered “socially responsible” by environmental, social, and governance standards, and sometimes those criteria are in conflict with each other. It can sometimes be challenging to gather enough available data on a company to make a good call on how sustainable it is. There are also different philosophies on whether it’s socially responsible to invest in, say, a fossil-fuel heavy electric utility (e.g. GA Power): on one hand, electric utilities, most of which still get the majority of their energy via fossil fuel sources, are some of the biggest investors in renewable energy, which we of course want to support; on the other hand, utilities need to be much more aggressive than they currently are in transitioning to renewable energy sources, and there’s a good argument to be made that they need to feel the pressure and sting of mass divestment in order to be spurred to take urgent action. This New York Times article describes the dilemma well of whether to avoid problematic industries entirely or maintain some level of investment in order to have a “seat at the table” in helping that industry make decisions. You could have the same debate about whether, if you’re eating a more plant-based diet for the good of the planet, it’s better to patronize vegan restaurants or to buy the vegan option at meat-heavy chains to show them there’s a market for it. 

I think there’s a case to be made on both sides, but personally, we aren’t very keen to give any money to fossil fuel companies if we can help it. They are prone to greenwashing and paying lip service to environmental causes while spending a fortune lobbying against climate action. They talk about lowering their companies’ emissions without mentioning “scope 3 emissions,” which are the emissions from customers using the products they sell. What are customers going to do with gas and oil other than burn them? How can companies act like they’re not responsible for the gigatons of CO2 emitted when customers use their products for their sole purpose? 

So, in setting out to find a way to invest our money as free from fossil fuels as possible, and knowing that we like using a robo-advisor since it’s convenient, affordable, and helps us develop a balanced portfolio for our financial goals, we found this article.

We were most impressed with Earthfolio. While the other three robo-advisors offer SRI as one option alongside their standard portfolios, all of Earthfolio’s offerings are chosen by SRI/ESG criteria. The funds that make up their portfolios score mostly As and Bs on fossilfreefunds.org, although a few Ds, possibly due to conflicting criteria/different considerations on how to determine which funds are socially responsible; we were excited to discover on their website that they offer fossil-free portfolios on request for customers whose top priority is climate. We are tentatively planning to transfer our independent retirement accounts and general investments to a fossil-free portfolio through Earthfolio after doing a little bit more due diligence on fund performance ratings on Morningstar. We are overall encouraged by the data on financial performance of SRI portfolios compared with conventional ones. You can check out the financial performance of individual funds on fossilfreefunds.org. 

Sadly, one place where we have money invested for our kids’ futures does not have a sustainable fund option: the GA 529 Path2College Plan. It’s a little ironic, since a bright future for their generation depends on our economy rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuels. There are a few options in terms of aggressive vs. conservative investing in the 529, but none of the options are socially responsible. They are all through TIAA-CREF and range from A (a couple of real-estate only funds) to F on fossilfreefunds.org. TIAA-CREF’s website does note that they are taking ESG considerations into account when developing their funds, but I don’t know how encouraged I can be when their overall investments have 8% fossil fuel exposure, which is pretty average for major American fund managers. Even the designated “socially responsible” funds offered by TIAA-CREF (but not offered through the GA 529 plan) get mostly Ds with a couple of Bs and Cs on fossilfreefunds.org. The GA 529 plan’s website’s “single fund” page starts out: “Sometimes, you might want an investment option that is highly focused. Perhaps you want to make your choice based on the investment type of a single underlying fund.” Last year, there was a sentence after that along the lines of “perhaps you want a socially responsible investment option” but looking at the actual fund options, they were not SRI funds. I called their customer service number (877-424-4377) a couple of times and messaged them on their Facebook page (Path2College 529 Plan) to urge them to offer SRI and ask why that wording was there if they were not offering SRI options. I know they got my feedback, because they removed the wording from the website, but they have not added SRI options. If you are a Georgia parent, please call and send Facebook messages to tell them how important it is to you and to all our children’s futures to shift away from fossil fuel-heavy funds.

Another downer is that my employer, like most U.S. employers, does not offer sustainable mutual funds in its retirement plans. I contribute 4% of my salary to their 457 to qualify for matching since I don’t want to leave that money on the table, and I opted out of their 403b since it doesn’t have a match and we can contribute to our independent retirement accounts instead. I’ve called and emailed the HR department several times and have been told that other employees share my concern and that it’s being escalated. Our plans are through Principal Funds, whose website does give a nod to ESG considerations; the Principal funds I can search on fossilfreefunds.org average around a C, which might be a little better than TIAA-CREF, but it still doesn’t seem like sustainability is a high priority for them. When I initially called Principal (I was eventually directed to reach out to my employer’s HR department), the employee I reached didn’t know whether Principal offers SRI (or seem to know what SRI is).

One major takeaway I have from the research I’ve done (and I guess we all know this already) is just how deeply our economy has been built on fossil fuels. To shift away from investing in fossil fuels, it will take a lot of us urging our employers and 529 plans, and possibly the 529 plans and employers urging the fund managers (TIAA-CREF among others) to make changes. Momentum is (albeit more slowly than I’d like) building. The mayors of New York and London recently urged every major world city to divest from fossil fuels. Harvard’s faculty is calling for divestment of the university’s endowment from fossil fuels. Goldman Sachs announced in December that it is stopping funding for arctic drilling and putting restrictions on coal financing, and in the past two weeks JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo followed suit-yay for peer pressure! The American Medical Association resolved in 2018 to divest from fossil fuels.

Sustainable investing is a win-win. Surveys indicate that more employees will participate in employer-sponsored retirement plans if socially responsible options are offered. Financial returns are generally equal or better for SRI compared with conventional investing. We’d be in trouble if the fossil fuel companies had a good financial outlook for our retirement years, which is when the world needs to be reaching net zero emissions to leave a stable climate for our children. And now, it’s time to put your money where your mouth is!

Action steps:

Find out where your money is. Look online or call the fund manager for your personal investments, retirement, and kids’ college accounts to get the names of the underlying funds and check them out on fossilfreefunds.org. Make a plan to move your money to more socially responsible funds if possible, and put pressure on the people in charge of your employer-sponsored retirement plan and your kids’ college plan to offer sustainable fund options. This toolkit is helpful. 

Also, consider donating monthly to one or more organizations that promote systemic climate action. Two of our favorites are Citizens’ Climate Lobby/Citizens’ Climate Education and Natural Resources Defense Council. 

Climate friendly yard work for those lacking a green thumb and spare time

In the months after our second son was born, one of the things we did in an attempt to make life feel less overwhelming was to hire someone to do our yard work. It was a big relief every two weeks to have our lawn neatly mowed and all the leaves blown away. I’ll be honest, Andrew had been doing the majority of our yard work so that burden hadn’t been on me anyway, but anything taken off our pile of collective responsibilities felt like a lightened load for both of us.

We didn’t fully realize at the time just how harmful gas-powered leaf blowers and lawnmowers are. They emit many times more pollution than gas-powered cars, leading many municipalities to ban them (see if you can get your city to follow suit!). Also, fallen leaves provide invaluable habitat to wildlife trying to coexist with us, and they supply rich nutrients to our yards, where they are much better off than in a landfill emitting greenhouse gases as they rot; leaving them alone is an easy way to do our planet a flavor! We can also help the Earth and our pollinator friends, while saving ourselves time or money, by saying goodbye to our antiquated idea of beauty in the form of the classic American well-manicured, frequently mowed lawn. If we see beauty through a child’s (or bee’s!) eyes, we delight in seeing dandelions and white clover flowers sprout up in our yards. The habit of hunting them down as weeds and spraying or picking them to eliminate them, or mowing too closely for them to easily grow back, starves our precious, already dwindling, bee populations, not to mention that we definitely don’t need to be sending bags of lawn clippings to the landfill to rot, emit methane, and contribute to the overheating of our planet. A good rule of thumb is to let your flower-filled lawn grow to 6 inches, then mow down to 4 inches to let the blooms regrow and feed the bees. Makita makes high quality electric tools including a lawnmower and leaf blower (for blowing leaves from the driveway to the grass, not to collect for the landfill!) that perform just as well as gas tools. And please say goodbye to chemical weed killers. A reader was kind enough to share these informative resources about the dangers of the popular herbicide Roundup as well as safer and more eco-friendly alternatives to Roundup.

So the biggest bottom line about a climate-friendly lawn is that less is more, and you can ditch any guilt you feel about needing to “keep up” your yard. And of course, avoiding cutting down trees is one of the best and most basic things you can do to keep your yard climate friendly, as trees are one of our best resources for sequestering carbon. If you have a little time, there is more you can do to make your yard climate-friendly and an oasis for pollinators. I am definitely a beginner in all things related to gardening, and I don’t have much free time or a good track record on keeping plants alive. If you’re feeling ambitious, there are many good books on making your yard a wildlife oasis (this is one good option), and you can even make your yard a Certified Wildlife Habitat. If you’re like me and want to start small, a fun, easy, and rewarding way to start is by planting a pollinator garden of native plants. 

On the recommendation of a friend, I made an appointment last fall at Nightsong Natives in Canton, GA. If you live outside of metro Atlanta, it shouldn’t be too hard to find a native plants nursery or at least a nursery with good native offerings. Native plants (plants that existed in your area before the arrival of European settlers) have a ton of advantages over non-natives. They have deeper, more extensive root systems that reduce flooding and erosion, filter pollutants from storm water, and minimize the need for watering and other maintenance. The less water you can use on your garden and lawn, the better, especially as climate change increases the frequency and severity of droughts. Native plants support biodiversity, especially of pollinators, and do well without pesticides, which are generally harmful to ecosystems–try to avoid them, or if you really need to spray for a certain kind of insect, research eco friendly options. Thankfully, native plants are growing in popularity, and many local governments have passed ordinances encouraging and/or mandating their use (here’s one example). The helpful lady working at Nightsong Natives gave me a few recommendations each for our sunny garden bed and our shady garden bed, all pollinator-friendly native plants that aren’t palatable to deer (we have a ton in our neighborhood!). In the sunny garden, I planted Virginia Mountain Mint, Anise hyssop, and Shrubby St. Johns Wort. In the shady garden, I planted Packera Aurea and Solidago caesia. Native gardens are said to “sleep, creep, then leap” in their first three years, meaning they take some patience! Ours are still in progress, but it’s exciting to see some healthy new growth this spring, especially the Packera Aurea and Anise hyssop. I’m looking forward to when they are in full bloom and buzzing with bees and butterflies!

While it can be hard to find edible native plants, growing an edible garden, native or not, can be a fun, delicious, and environmentally friendly endeavor, as it saves packaging and the transport energy of store bought food. We have a fairly small edible garden with herbs, cherry tomatoes, and hot peppers; meals always taste extra good when we can incorporate some freshness from the garden!

One exception to the general rule of it being good to leave your yard alone is if you have invasive species present. These are non-native plants that can cause harm to a native ecosystem by growing aggressively and crowding out/taking nutrients from native plants. Common invasive plants in Georgia include English ivy, Chinese privet, kudzu, and Japanese honeysuckle. If you make the effort to remove invasive species from your yard (and/or volunteer to help remove them from public areas near you), you can clear the way for native plants and ecosystems to thrive. 

I appreciated a reader sharing this resource for alternatives to the harmful chemicals in Roundup when trying to keep unwanted weeds out of your garden.

I hope you come away from reading this post encouraged by the good news that maintaining a climate-friendly yard is, in many ways, actually easier, cheaper, and less time-consuming than what we think of as conventional yard care. If we turn away from the American dream of a gleaming, uniformly green lawn and towards viewing our yards as a haven for wildlife, native plants, and our families alike, we can experience natural harmony with minimal effort. Composting, of course, is another simple, important way we can respect nature’s cycles. If you don’t have time for anything else, leave the leaves and flowering “weeds” in your yard, and take heart that the climate and bees appreciate it!

A Delicious New Year’s Resolution for a Livable World

Happy 2021! This year is starting out looking a lot more like 2020 than we’d like, but brighter days are on the horizon. Between the pandemic and a momentous election followed by a momentous runoff, I haven’t posted here lately, but doing what we can to turn the tide on climate change is more important than ever. 

I shared last year how a plant-based diet is one of our most powerful tools for reducing our carbon footprint. Going vegan will help the most, but almost-vegan, vegetarian, or just cutting down significantly on your meat and dairy intake will make a difference. It would take eleven years of avoiding food packaging to equal the climate benefit of giving up meat for just one year. 

My family has discovered even more delicious vegan foods and recipes in the past year, and during this dark pandemic winter I think we could all use some comfort food. Making a new year’s resolution to leave meat and dairy behind (or at least cut way down on them) doesn’t have to feel restrictive–I promise there are enough great vegan options that we feel we are spoiled by the amount of good food we eat. The climate, our kids and grandkids, animals, and public health (animal agriculture is the biggest contributor to pandemics) will thank you!

I shared several delicious vegan recipes in last year’s post, and I wanted to share some more here for people who’d like some inspiration. We are still in the habit of scaling up a recipe to make a bunch of food on a Sunday or Monday and then reheating it for several nights, because who has time to cook from scratch every night of the week? This recipe for pav bhaji is warming, flavorful, and pure comfort food. We don’t have an instant pot or a stovetop pressure cooker like the recipe calls for but it cooks just fine in a regular stock pot on the stove. In the summer, one of our favorites was this tomato risotto with grilled greens; we actually found using boxed tomatoes instead of pureeing fresh tomatoes was easier and just as tasty, and the fresh grilled green veggies have an amazing flavor. That recipe has some great tips for cooking risotto the right way and can be applied to other recipes–we have our eye on some more wintry risottos (with ingredients like leeks, carrots, and mushrooms) for the coming weeks. This salad is unique and so tasty, especially in summer–it’s hard not to eat the homemade dressing and the spiced/candied nut mixture alone before you even put the salad together! This recipe was pretty much the best veggie burger I’d ever had–great with homemade fries or sweet potato fries.

Some other warming, hearty favorites of ours that are easy to scale up and make a week’s worth of dinners: this tortilla soup (topping with this convincing/tangy homemade vegan sour cream–if you don’t have the vegan yogurt on hand, you can leave it out and just thin with water to desired consistency–instead of queso fresco), or this white bean chili (using soy milk). Or if you’re feeling a little fancier, white beans au vin or this amazing spinach chermoula pie (we subbed violife vegan feta for regular feta, fresh spinach for frozen since it tastes so much better, and skipped the let it sit/let it chill steps and just used a regular pie pan and refrigerated rolled pie crust for ease/reducing prep time; it’s also fine to just chop the chermoula ingredients finely and skip the food processor step if you don’t have one). 

When we make Mexican food, I like to cook canned black beans with sauteed onion and pepper, a few shakes of cumin, chili powder, cayenne, paprika, and oregano, and a little garlic, vinegar, and lemon or lime juice (or whichever of those ingredients we have on hand). We love to make quick quesadillas with some of the black beans, violife shredded cheddar, and salsa. Another favorite of ours is making these addictive crispy smashed potatoes (https://cookieandkate.com/crispy-smashed-potatoes-recipe/) then layering green enchilada sauce, quartered corn tortillas, the black bean recipe from above, and the crispy smashed potatoes 2-3 times in a casserole dish then topping with violife shredded cheddar and baking at 350 for 30-60 min for a few nights of delicious meals.  

For Italian comfort food, you can’t beat spaghetti with marinara sauce and gardein frozen meatballs, with salad and homemade garlic bread (toasted baguette with earth balance buttery spread, garlic powder, and oregano or basil). Grilled pizza with Miyoko’s vegan mozzarella and your choice of toppings (Whole Foods even has good vegan pepperoni) is to die for. Speaking of Miyoko’s mozzarella…in last year’s blog when I said I’d resigned myself to vegan cheese being more of a mix-in rather than the star of the show, we hadn’t yet discovered Miyoko’s I thought I’d said goodbye to enjoying high quality cheese and crackers with a glass of wine, but then we discovered Miyoko’s vegan cheese wheels. Sharp English farmhouse is the best, but their other flavors are great too. Miyoko’s also makes great cream cheese. Some of their varieties are available at Publix and Sprouts, and Whole Foods usually has almost all of them. 

If you’re a brunch aficionado, there are plenty of vegan options to satisfy all your cravings. We only recently discovered Just Egg, a plant-based liquid that cooks and tastes just like scrambled eggs or omelets. Beyond brand breakfast sausage is great, especially the spicy kind. We love these waffles and add a few shakes of cinnamon. Hashbrowns with all your favorite mix-ins or vegan breakfast tacos are great too. The trick to great avocado toast is sprinkling some lemon juice on top (or mixing it in with the avocado), and that can also be a quick breakfast before work.

A few more favorites: tofurkey and vegan provolone sandwiches for lunch with vegan mayo, these brussels sprouts (they go great with butternut squash soup in the fall), and this vegan curry delivery if you’re in the Atlanta area (lasts for two nights for two adults). The possibilities are endless. I thought a vegan diet would feel restrictive, but I really don’t miss meat and dairy, and working with vegan ingredients can inspire you to be creative and cook outside the box. Have fun! Nothing tastes better than food that’s good for the planet!

The quickest, simplest, and most effective thing you can do for the climate and our future this fall

One of the things I value most about Citizens’ Climate Lobby, where I volunteer, is their/our commitment to bipartisanship. In the midst of a bitterly divided government, where it seems harder for Congress to work together toward common goals than for me to get my three-year-old to listen, CCL has developed, in conjunction with many economists and scientists as well as politicians of both parties, a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend bill that is projected to lower emissions by 40% in the next 12 years and 90% by 2050. Using a strategy of meeting elected officials where they are, building common ground, and showing respect and gratitude, we’ve earned the support of 82 cosponsors (including my Congresswoman!) for our signature Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, as well as gained support for several other bipartisan climate bills. Last fall CCL promoted The Far Middle campaign, in which football players at rival universities BYU and Utah, and later Michigan and Ohio State, wore purple to symbolize a coming together of Republicans and Democrats, red and blue sports teams, to push for climate action. In a polarized political climate, putting aside differences to work together for our common good can be very powerful, and even radical. 

So I am very much committed to working with whoever is in office, and I don’t think any elected official is beyond hope. That said, our most fundamental democratic right is voting, and I won’t pretend that all elected officials and candidates are equal in how willing they are to recognize the urgency of climate change and act on it. If you only have the time or energy to do one thing about climate change this fall, make voting that one thing. 

We don’t have time to waste. At about 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre industrial temperatures, we are already seeing record-breakingly devastating hurricanes and wildfires that are getting worse by the year. To keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, we need to decrease global emissions by 7.6% each year between now and 2030, a task that is becoming closer to impossible with each day, week, and month that goes by without strong society-level climate action. 

Let’s look at a few of the decisions on the ballot for this November. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris promote a plan to get us to net zero carbon emissions no later than 2050 (although I wish they would talk more about carbon pricing, specifically carbon fee and dividend, as a powerful, revenue-neutral way to dramatically lower emissions). Donald Trump, on the other hand, announced a few months after taking office that the US would withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, an international agreement crucial to our collective future, which many argue isn’t even ambitious enough but is certainly essential as a first major step of global action. Trump also has rolled back, or is in the process of rolling back, 100 (and counting) environmental protections and regulations, including many around air pollution, emissions, drilling, and extraction. He is now pushing to move forward with oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which would be doubly devastating in destroying vital wildlife habitat while extracting more fossil fuels to increase climate change. 

I’ll briefly compare platforms for candidates closer to home for those who live near me, but for those living elsewhere it is easy to research your candidates’ environmental platforms and records. My Congresswoman Lucy McBath (GA-06) is a cosponsor of the Climate Action Now bill as well as CCL’s bill, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. Climate change or any environmental issue doesn’t make the list of the nine issues on her opponent Karen Handel’s website. GA Senate candidate Raphael Warnock hosted a climate summit last year, while incumbent Kelly Loeffler took the anti-environment position in five of six recent votes on environmental issues. Jon Ossoff, running for GA’s other Senate seat, backs an ambitious climate plan, while his opponent David Perdue has a 14% 2019 environmental score as rated by the League of Conservation Voters (higher is better and the average Senator rates at 53%). 

Obviously there are many other vital issues to take into account when voting: racial justice, pandemic management, healthcare access, and many more. I could write a blog about each of those, but I’ll stick to my climate blog focus here. Each person has different values and priorities that go into voting, and it is a deeply personal decision. I do think climate action deserves consideration as an especially important priority, since if we don’t act on climate, any other issue we care about is sure to worsen, and we won’t have a stable and prosperous enough society to be able to focus on other issues.

You’re more likely to follow through on voting if you have a plan. First, confirm you’re registered to vote. With all the issues around the USPS and the stress it will be under with large volumes of mail-in ballots, it’s best to either vote early in person, or request your mail-in ballot now, and then return it to a county drop box ASAP. There may be a shortage of retiree volunteers at polling locations this November, so if you aren’t in an at risk group, consider volunteering as a poll worker. Consider making calls or sending texts to get out the vote; Environmental Voter Project is a great nonpartisan organization focused on getting voters who have been identified as caring about environmental issues to turn out and vote. Generations before us have fought, and sometimes died, for our right to vote; we just need to exercise it. Come hell or high water, or pandemic or postal service crisis, we can do this!

How much does that trip really cost?! Let’s use the pandemic pause to shrink our gigantic transport and travel-related carbon footprint

There are a lot of things most of us sorely miss from before the pandemic: hugging our friends and family, eating at restaurants, hosting parties…but I don’t think any of us would say we miss rush hour traffic. I don’t think most people miss work related travel. Coronavirus-related lockdowns caused record drops in carbon emissions this year, in large part related to decreases in emissions from transportation and travel. Climate scientists aren’t too optimistic about this temporary drop having much of an impact on the overall catastrophic level of carbon we’ve put into the atmosphere, assuming we just go back to “normal” when the pandemic is over. But what if we carry forward some of our more sustainable habits from this time of crisis?  

Pre-pandemic, the average American spent over 200 hours commuting per year, with many clocking in way above the average. I work about a 14 minute drive from home–now. Before the pandemic, the drive was over an hour each way (I took MARTA instead for a 45-50 minute trip each way and plan to get back to that when things are safer). Long commutes can suck the life out of you. They raise stress levels and make it so much harder to find enough time for sleep and exercise. And they come at a tremendous cost to our climate. Transportation is the biggest contributor to US greenhouse gas emissions at ~28.2%. Certain jobs can’t be done well at home, but for those that can, employers and employees should have conversations now–while most people aren’t in a major hurry to get back to the office–about making arrangements to continue partial or full telework even when the pandemic is over. 

Same goes for work-related travel, which often accounts for 25-75% of an organization’s total carbon footprint. Is the intangible value of “face time” (the real kind, not the iphone kind) with a potential client really worth it? We figured out pretty quickly how to get work done without the travel in the face of the COVID-19 crisis, and considering that the climate crisis looms as a much larger threat to the future of our civilization, we should think twice before getting on auto-pilot and booking those plane tickets again as soon as the pandemic is under control. 

Similarly, do families really need to spend all their weekends and emit huge amounts of CO2 shuttling kids to travel sports competitions? Could we get back to a norm of youth sports games being something for Saturday morning, in town, and having the rest of the weekend to relax? 

Many of us have been finding a new appreciation for nature in our own backyards and neighborhoods these past few months in the midst of disappointments over cancelled trips. We may be daydreaming about the big trips we want to take when we have the freedom again, but it’s worth at least considering if we could enjoy a vacation a short drive away enough to avoid the emissions of a flight or especially an international trip. This author calculated that his family of three’s winter vacation from New York to Miami generated enough emissions to melt 90 square feet of arctic sea ice. Travel isn’t as trivial or easy of a thing to give up as incandescent light bulbs or single pane windows. Many of us have wonderful memories of travel, and it can open our eyes to the world around us in a way that’s hard to quantify. But travel-related emissions we can quantify, and they’re scarily high. I’m not saying you have to deprive yourself of your dream vacation or skip your best friend’s destination wedding, but at least think of travel as an indulgence like a decadent dessert or strong cocktail–something to enjoy occasionally, in moderation, rather than seeing it as a virtue or civic duty to pursue. 

One thing I really hope we do get back to after the pandemic, in larger numbers than ever, is mass transit, in combination with making cities more walkable. This is a powerful illustration of how alternate forms of transportation clear the clogging of our roads that happens when we each drive a car to our destination. Before the pandemic pushed me to drive to work, I enjoyed my routine of driving to the MARTA station (not ideal, but walking to the bus stop and taking the bus to MARTA would push my commute too long), taking the train a few stops, and walking a half mile to arrive at work a lot more energized than I am now just getting out of the car and walking in. On top of lowering carbon emissions, public transit benefits communities financially, reduces air pollution and traffic congestion, and is healthier, safer, and more economical for individuals than driving. Many experts believe that in a net zero carbon future, people will be living closer together, able to walk or use efficient public transit to get to most of the things they need. We can make choices to move towards that more sustainable future by choosing (if possible) to live near our workplace and near the friends and family we like to see frequently, living in denser areas, and advocating for walkability, increased public transit, and mixed use developments in our communities. 

So what concrete steps has my family taken to lower our transportation and travel related carbon footprint? We try to limit our driving: Andrew works at home (even pre-pandemic), and I go in two days a week, and when feasible I will get back to taking MARTA. We try to stay pretty close to home for the most part, which hasn’t been too hard this year! Earlier this year, we traded in my Camry for a plug-in hybrid Honda Clarity, which has a 48-mile electric range (~43 miles in the winter and ~55 with the weather we’ve had lately), so we rarely dip into gas. We bought it used so we didn’t qualify for the $7500 federal tax credit on electric and plug-in hybrid cars, but the savings were pretty much passed along to us, so remember the tax credit if you look at prices of new electric or plug-in hybrid cars. There is also a GA Power $250 rebate for installing a level 2 charger at your home for an electric or plug-in hybrid car. We considered buying a full electric car with a longer range, but we decided the environmental impact of buying the larger battery wouldn’t be worth it when the vast majority of our driving can be done on the smaller electric range, with the gas engine only for backup. (Of course, we could have made it work to buy an all-electric car with a range similar to the Clarity, and just made more of a point to map out the charging stations in our area to use those rather than gas as a backup for longer outings.) Andrew’s car is a Prius V, which used to be what we drove for most of our family outings; now we use the Clarity much more, but take the Prius V on trips since we pack a million things for our kids and we’re still at the stage where I need to sit in between their carseats in the back. At some point in the next five or six years as electric car options continue to improve, we’d like to replace the Prius V with an all electric car with a longer range that we could take on trips. We rarely fly, although with little kids and with most of our close family nearby, that’s not much of a sacrifice for us the way it would be for many people whose families are more geographically scattered. We have changed our bucket list some and no longer daydream about what international trips we want to take when the kids are older. We loved our honeymoon in Costa Rica in 2010 and at the time told each other we’d return for our ten year anniversary; this year, in the interest of being climate friendly and not spending too much time away from our kids, we instead planned a couple nights at the South Carolina coast… and then the pandemic hit, and we ended up going extra climate-friendly and celebrating with a picnic by the river a half mile from our home. Good old milestones in the time of covid. There is a growing “no fly climate sci” group, since for people who fly frequently, air travel can easily make up the majority of someone’s carbon footprint. One climate scientist decided to stop flying altogether after he realized it accounted for ⅔ of his carbon footprint. If you do need or want to fly, read here for some lower emission ways to do it, including choosing coach and buying offsets. Climate conferences were already starting to trend virtual before the pandemic, and hopefully with a long pause of no one traveling for conferences in any field, the change will stick. 

None of the changes my family has made are nearly enough. We’re doing what we can, in the world we currently live in (in which we live in a sprawling, trafficky metropolis), with our limitations of time and small kids leading us to turn to the convenience of the car over walking/biking more often than we should. We need systemic change: high speed rail instead of mass air travel, dense walkable communities with efficient public transport where it becomes rarer for families to feel the need for a car, teleworking as a long term strategy to keep rush hour traffic off the roads. We need to imagine this future, more vibrant and connected world, and advocate for policies to get us there. And on our way to a more sustainable system, there are small and big choices we can make so that we don’t melt quite as much sea ice. Next time you’re looking for a new job, keep a short commute and flexibility to telework as a major factor in your decision, and think about whether there’s a way around commuting alone in a car (walking, biking, public transport, carpooling, teleworking). If you’re thinking of moving, consider a denser, more walkable community. Make a goal for the next vehicle you buy to be electric or hybrid, or better yet, see if your family can get by with one car, or no cars. For a vacation or weekend outing, consider destinations closer to home. Avoid circling around looking for a closer parking spot or idling in the carpool line. Maybe if we focus less on seeing the whole world and more on preserving it, we can keep it beautiful and livable for generations to come.

Going solar: a good kind of contagion

On a Monday evening this past November, I sat in our neighborhood’s Architectural Review Committee meeting, nervously waiting my turn. I’d heard horror stories from people in my climate advocacy group about months-long battles with their HOAs and losing friends in the neighborhood after finally getting permission to install solar panels. Our HOA’s guidelines (which I’d learned were fortunately less set in stone than bylaws or covenants) stated that no solar panels should be visible from the street, but for our house, which is surrounded by tall trees, the only parts of our roof where panels would get a decent amount of sun exposure would be visible from the street. Two of the team members from Better Tomorrow Solar were kind enough to come to the meeting with me, and we were prepared with arguments about the urgency of the climate crisis and the sleek, aesthetically pleasing design of the panels. Andrew was nervous that I was going to want to move if our request got denied. I assured him that we didn’t need to move, I just wasn’t going to take no for an answer. When my turn came, I launched into my prepared reasons why our solar plan should be approved. The committee chair asked if people had questions, and the only one was asking if we were planning to cut down any trees (we weren’t), and then to my amazement the committee unanimously approved our plan! 

Rooftop solar could provide 31% of all electricity used in Georgia, but only 64 out of every 100,000 homes in Atlanta has a solar roof. I’m happy that HOAs seem to be turning the corner on being open to rooftop solar. Denying residents the right to install solar panels because some HOAs consider them an eyesore seems to me akin to telling someone they can’t wear their oxygen nasal cannula because it’s unsightly. There’s no way we will have a livable future without tapping every possible renewable energy source to get ourselves off of fossil fuels. I think solar panels are beautiful. I feel a little rush of dopamine every time I see them on a home or business, and I feel the opposite whenever I see a large roof glinting in the sun with no solar panels to harvest that sunlight’s energy. I was happy to learn that home solar rooftops are contagious, even more so when visible from the street, and can’t we all get behind something that we want to transmit to each other these days?

Georgia is home to the largest solar panel assembly plant in the Western hemisphere. The price of solar energy has plunged to a mere 4% of what it was 15 years ago, making it cheaper than coal or natural gas. So why aren’t more homeowners adopting it? 

I think part of it is people just don’t realize that it’s an option for people on the regular electric grid, or they feel daunted at starting the process. Getting started is actually super quick and easy with no commitment–you don’t even have to make an appointment. Better Tomorrow Solar created a free rough proposal for us (design of where panels should go, price quote, and estimate of energy generated/return on investment) based on google earth, then tweaked it based on a quick drone flyover at our house. They broke down the estimated environmental benefit of our solar panels in equivalent terms of trees planted or cars taken off the road, which was pretty cool to read. Most other solar companies also offer a free proposal. Because our house is fairly shady and surrounded by tall trees, our return on investment is relatively long at ~21 years. But don’t be discouraged–the average in Georgia is 10.8 years. We appreciated that Better Tomorrow gave us a conservative estimate of energy generated, which was lower (and turned out to be more accurate) than the government’s PVWatts calculator. Once we got approval from our HOA in November, we signed a contract and Better Tomorrow ordered the materials and completed the installation in December, in time for us to take advantage of the 30% federal tax credit for 2019 installations (the tax credit is now 26% for 2020). 

Another reason I think people in Georgia in particular are hesitant about installing solar is that our state has not, historically, had policies that are financially favorable for solar homeowners. GA has not been a net-metering state, but that is changing this year. Net metering policy affects you if you have a solar system but are still connected to the GA Power grid. If you buy a battery storage system to connect to your solar system, you can store energy captured during the sunny hours to use during the night and/or during a power outage. We didn’t want to pay for a battery storage system, so our solar system is connected to the grid, and energy produced by our panels goes first to power our home real-time, and then excess goes to the grid to power other homes. During the night, on cloudy/rainy days, or any time our home electricity use exceeds what our solar system is producing real-time, we use and pay for electricity from the GA Power grid. As you can see in the curve below from our handy enlighten solar app, the majority of solar energy produced in a given day happens in the span of a few hours of peak sunlight.

You can try to strategically run your dishwasher, washing machine, etc. during that time, but inevitably, if you don’t have a battery storage system, you’re going to be sending electricity to the grid during sunny hours and buying it from the grid during not-sunny hours. GA Power traditionally has paid homeowners only a fraction of the price per kWh of energy produced as excess by solar panels compared to what they charge customers to use their electricity. Net-metering means they pay the same for your excess as they charge you to use their energy when you need it. Fortunately, they have adopted a net-metering policy for the first 5,000 applicants this year, and I think there are plenty of spots left. It has not gone into effect yet, but it is supposed to be retroactive, so we should be recouping the money we’ve lost from their original policy back to the beginning of 2020, and this should improve our return on investment by two to three years. Essentially, net-metering acts in a similar way to free battery storage, although it doesn’t have the advantage battery storage does of being a backup during a power outage. 

Transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables is crucial to stem the tide of the climate crisis, and as solar power allows us to let go of coal, we get an immediate benefit in decreased air pollution. Renewable energy is also a powerful social good and can be especially beneficial to people with lower incomes whose financial stability is often at the mercy of high utility prices. Better Tomorrow Solar recently constructed a solar array on a low income multifamily apartment building in Atlanta as part of a study to see if reducing energy costs can improve tenant stability, and they hope this will encourage landlords to increasingly install solar as a draw to tenants. They are one of two women-owned solar companies in Georgia and are donating profits for solar contracts signed through July 31, 2020 to local COVID-19 and post COVID-19 relief efforts, regardless of payment and project completion dates (and they are running sales now on solar panels and batteries). They have social distancing policies in place to be able to complete projects safely, and even last fall before the pandemic was a concern, we had very limited contact with the team as the vast majority of the project was completed outdoors, with a little bit of electrical work done in our garage and in our attic.

Solar power alone is not enough to make most homes carbon neutral. Reducing a home’s total energy use (which I’ll get into in detail in future posts) is extremely important too, as are utility-scale solar and other renewable energy projects. But it is a key part of getting us away from destructive fossil fuels, and there’s really not a downside to harnessing abundant, cheap, clean solar energy and then using it on-site. France passed a law in 2015 requiring new buildings in commercial zones to have solar panels or plants on their roofs. I hope that we pass more legislation incentivizing and pushing us towards solar roofs. But we don’t have to wait for that. With the price of solar energy lower than coal and the urgency of the climate crisis becoming ever more apparent, there’s no time like the present to make your roof a piece of the puzzle of a sustainable world.