I don't know whether this has been discussed much, but how can USMS support "going green," promoting and/or being supportive of being environmentally responsible for clean water to swim in as well as to drink?
Open Water swims, of course, are the perfect venues to remind us all to keep our waters clean for swimming. The Boston swim focuses on this; do other Open Water swims promote cleaner water? What do they do?
Can pool Masters swimmers, clubs, LMSCs promote being "greener"? Encouraging people to take shorter showers is one way. What are other ways?
I think it is a fine idea and good opportunity for USMS to promote this particular aspect of the environment. By the way, all the Great Lakes are down several inches, except for Lake Superior (where, at the moment, we don't have Open Water swims...but who knows, in the future???).
Jennifer Parks, Michigan Masters
Former Member
We do a lot of cuddling. Our windows are nearly always open.
Is this some sort of kinky, Canadian invitation??? Or are you just bragging?
:lmao:
Jenifer have we drifted too far from your Going Green Thread?
I don't know whether this has been discussed much, but how can USMS support "going green," promoting and/or being supportive of being environmentally responsible for clean water to swim in as well as to drink?
Open Water swims, of course, are the perfect venues to remind us all to keep our waters clean for swimming. The Boston swim focuses on this; do other Open Water swims promote cleaner water? What do they do?
Can pool Masters swimmers, clubs, LMSCs promote being "greener"? Encouraging people to take shorter showers is one way. What are other ways?
I think it is a fine idea and good opportunity for USMS to promote this particular aspect of the environment. By the way, all the Great Lakes are down several inches, except for Lake Superior (where, at the moment, we don't have Open Water swims...but who knows, in the future???).
Jennifer Parks, Michigan Masters
My own opinion is you don't have to go out of your way to save energy, it'll happen by itself in response to market forces.
I disagree. I think we need to go out of the way to save energy.
There's also no downside to using CFL bulbs, either. Yes, they contain small amounts of mercury. Just dispose of them properly.
I disagree. I think we need to go out of the way to save energy.
There will be a very small group of people who feel the way you do. However, as Margrave states, it is pretty much universally accepted that the hook to conservation is market forces, not early adopters or new gizmos. For instance, the sole reason people are sick of SUVs is the cost of gas, and a lesser extent environmental issues. If gas were still $1.25/gallon SUVs would still be hot sellers.
The majority of citizens will not go out of their way to save energy unless there is some economic value to them. Plus, if I have to go out of my way to save energy, doesn't that mean I'm wasting energy?
Stud cited a perfect example. Why would he bother taking mass transit, which is cleaner and ultimately better for our environment, when it is more costly to do so?
My new job was very close to metro. I live very close to metro. College Park, where I swim, is also near to a metro station. So when I started the job, I ran the numbers:
Convenience:
I'm a 5 minute walk from my home metro station and work is a 15 minute walk (+ 5 minute free shuttle) at the other end. College Park has a metro station, albiet its about a 30 minute walk from there to the pool. Rollerblades or a UMD bus solve that. And I could get a ride back to the metro after practice from a teammate.
Time:
To work, with the walking, waiting and rides, its ~50 minutes to use the Metro. From work to College Park would be about 15 minutes to metro, 65 minutes on two trains, plus transit time from the CP metro to the pool, say another 15 minutes, for a total of 95 minutes. Practice starts at 630, so i'd probably need to leave work early or swim less of the workout.
On the way home, its a 40 minute train ride, unless I miss the 848 train at CP - then add 20 minutes.
Cost:
Metro to work: $3.20
Work to CP: $3.90
CP to home (rail to bus option: $1.70), full rail: $3.20
Total Metro Daily Cost: $8.80; $10.30
Driving:
to work: 13 miles; work to cp: 21 miles; cp to home: 11 miles == 45 miles total
my car gets ~22 miles per gallon; premium gas is $2.87 at the cheapest place i can find, so 2 gallons, $5.74
car insurance is about $3.39 per day.
car is almost paid off so we'll leave that out
total cost to drive: ~$9.15
since i have the car anyways, add insurance to the cost to take metro.
I opted to drive and am doing my best everywhere else to recycle and save energy.
... as Margrave states, it is pretty much universally accepted that the hook to conservation is market forces, not early adopters or new gizmos.
The market can only take into account the cost factors it can see. It doesn't, for example, price the carbon emissions into the gas you buy even though there is a cost to cleaning up that particular mess. There is currently no way for the market to take that into account. Taxes are one way (e.g. the proposed "carbon tax" or the taxes on the gas you buy which go to maintain the highway infrastructure) to (rather crudely and artificially) inject such information into the marketplace. Regulation (e.g. CAFE standards) is another. Thusfar the Bush administration has adopted Margrave's and Aquageek's stance, but has done little or nothing to make sure the market has even a crude approximation of the true costs of our activities.
Muppet summed up his view of the costs of commuting by train and car and decided the car was the cheaper alternative. Nowhere in there did he take into account the cost of the pollution generated by his car, which is almost certainly much higher than the per-passenger-mile pollution generated by riding the train. That's not Muppet's fault. He's only looking at the costs he can see. If he did see those costs it's possible he would have decided to take the train. He didn't put in a depreciation cost because his car is almost fully depreciated. I would argue that should still have been included. While as a car ages it stops depreciating as rapidly, the cost to maintain it increase. Consider that the IRS will reimburse you forty-something cents per mile for business use of your car. They don't ask you how old your car is. It's also not a gift from Uncle Sam. That's his estimate of the actual cost to you to operate your car over the long-term - gas, oil, insurange, depreciation, repairs.
Early adopters serve a useful purpose. They buy the iPohones, Teslas and other new gizmos, and thus demonstrate their utility (or conversely, prove they don't work). If there were no early adopters there would be nobody to help drive down the price of such gizmos through economies of scale. In the absence of a complete view of the true costs of a particular activity someone will always have to be the first to sacrifice.
This problem of incompletely accounting for the costs of human activity is just an example of the tragedy of the commons.
Skip Montanaro
Kirk! Take the bus like I do!
scyfreestyler: aren't CF bulbs toxic to dispose of?
My own opinion is you don't have to go out of your way to save energy, it'll happen by itself in response to market forces. I've been taking the bus for the last 8 years to/from work (my employer gives me a free pass, and parking downtown would cost a lot), and the commuter lots are a lot more full than they used to be. I think it was the price of gas rather than people voluntarily taking the bus to help the environment.
Another example is the pool I practice at, which has timed valves on the showers.
If you throw them in your garbage can I suppose. We get special fluorescent disposal containers at work..they can be disposed of correctly. The benefits outweigh the drawbacks, similar to nuclear power in that respect.
JP, I know you missed Big Shoulders this year, but did you know one of the beneficiaries of the swim starting this year is the Great Lakes Alliance (http://www.greatlakes.org/)?
I think this is more in line with where you were going with this thread.
