One Tonne Challenge

Rick Mercer is the government's spokesperson for the One-Tonne Challenge. A good choice: He's a really hilarious guy and I like him a lot. The challenege is to voluntarily reduce your Greenhouse Gas Emissions in an effort to reduce worldwide pollution levels.

Congratulations if you've taken on the challenge!

But this challenge has me a little miffed. I went to the website and started using the GHG calculator which would tell me how much Greenhouse Gas Emissions I am responsible for. Because I am so environmentally conscientious, I knew my number would be very low.

I was wrong. According to the calculator, my emissions are way above the national average! But the calculator is vague, incorrect, incomplete and just plain stupid. It's a government website. Surprise. The biggest problem was that, since my house was built before 1946, I had to select that my house was "pre-1946". This is where the trouble starts. The genius who designed this website programmed the calculator to ASSUME that if you select "pre-1946", then everything in your house from your furnace to your fridge, to your showerheads, is pre-1946.

I am not kidding.

At the end, you are able to select the options you'd be willing to take to reduce your GHG emissions, such as installing low-flow aerator faucets and showerheads. This is where I fixed everything. The website suggested I upgrade my old furnace to a modern, high-efficiency one. When I clicked that button, it reduced my GHG number - by a lot! Since I already have a brand new modern forced air high efficiency gas furnace, this button just brought me to where I should have been in the first place.

The calculator thinks I produce 6.13 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year. The national average is 5.5 tonnes. I was totally insulted to think Jimmy Dillnuts in his SUV creates less greenhouse gas than I do by biking to work! So I checked off all the boxes that are the steps I'm supposedly taking to reduce my emissions. I clicked buttons for my Energy-Star appliances, insulation values, windows, etc., etc., etc. which gave me my new Greenhouse Gas Emission number. Instead of achieving this number, it is actually my current greenhouse gas emissions: 3.88 tonnes. A much better number.

So how do I reduce my number to 2.88? Now that I can't press any buttons to see how to reduce my emissions even more, where do I go from here?

On a related note, how do I reduce my anger by one tonne, since the government has pushed all my buttons?