Global Warming for Busy People is a free service open to all, a labor of love really, by our authors.  We are in Spring of 2017 starting free one-on-one mentoring services, to help you make a life change in any of the three personal superpowers each of us has:

1. Your first superpower: “To Save the Planet, Change Yourself First”…  Together we’ll a) calculate your carbon footprint, then b) based on its biggest numbers, mentor personalized ways to get started cleaning it up.
2. Your second superpower:  “To Save the Planet, Invest Your Working Life”… Together we’ll talk through your skills and aspirations, what green jobs are in your region, and visualize a green job search that will put your career on the side of good rather than evil.
3. Your third superpower:  “To Save the Planet, Use Your Voice”… Together we’ll talk through what talents you bring and which of the many dozens of advocacy outlets your skills would match up well with.

And, as always, Global Warming for Busy People will try hard to keep us focussed on the vital-few really big tactics that matter, rather than getting bogged down in the trivial-many.

Use the Contact page to reach out to us… (please be patient, as we are just getting started creating our site and launching this mentoring service).

MEANWHILE, HERE’S A GOOD MONEY SAVER WHICH ALSO HELPS FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING:

Suppose you don’t have enough cash to buy a new electric or plug-in hybrid car… and your old gasoline car still has some life in it.

Pick up a USED electric, and keep the old car for long trips only.  Use the electric car for around-town driving (which winds up being at least half of all typical owner miles, and is more in my case).  The savings really add up as, in effect, you cut your gasoline expense in half or more.

This is what I did, keeping the old Toyota 4Runner (I like to go camping)… But really, on average I only need to use it about two days a week and a few weeks every summer and ski season.

Here’s why:  My $8,500 used Nissan Leaf is damn-near free to drive (I’ve spent less than $60 over the fifteen months I’ve owned it, since juice is at most about a sixth the cost of gasoline to go the same distance if you have to pay the power company.  A bonus: near my home, cities and tech companies furnish free charging stations).

Voila!  An around-town car that saves me about $850 in gasoline a year, versus about $50 per year electricity costs.  So my payback on the capital cost is less than ten years, versus gasoline cars which have zero payback and are pure cost-sinks.

And a second bonus, of course, is that electric cars have vastly lower repair costs – no smog fees, no oil changes, and no worn-out expensive transmissions, rings, valves, head gaskets, broken timing belts or any other consumable or main engine parts that gradually shake apart over the life of a gasoline car.  Think about what a gasoline engine is:  A controlled explosion, which must be perfectly timed.  Gasoline engines eventually shake themselves apart!  Not so with electrics.

People say that eventually the batteries need replacing, but as my car is a 2011 with seven years on it, the battery has not degraded ONE JOT. It still charges to full rated spec, suggesting to me that gasoline companies spread falsehoods to scare people away from electric cars…

As well, there is much, more space inside an electric car, as they don’t need a transmission or drive shaft taking up room between the seats and under the dashboard, or a differential taking up space under the trunk.

And finally, there is the fun factor:  These dang things throw you back in your seat when you punch it!  Electric cars are fast as hell (faster than gasoline cars) and my wife calls ours The Rocket Ship.  I outraced a BMW yesterday… not something the other driver ever guessed my Leaf could do!

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© William Murphy and Global Warming for Busy People™, 2017.  Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to William Murphy and Global Warming for Busy People with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.