Low Carbon Chic—Let’s Go Loud!
It is time to be heard
Maybe we are all being too damned timid.
Yes you, and me, and all of us climate concerned readers.
In case you haven’t seen it, the personal finance world is all agog with a new trend called “loud budgeting.” CNBC reports that a TikTok video by Lukas Battle is touting the advantages of saving money loudly and proudly. Personal finance professionals think it is awesome. It made me wonder: Can we do the same for carbon?
AS CNCB describes loud budgeting:
TikTok’s loud budgeting trend encourages consumers to take control of their finances and be vocal about making money-conscious decisions, rather than modeling purchase decisions after celebrities and their bottomless pockets — and financial experts love it… In that way, loud budgeting is “…almost more chic, more stylish, more of a flex.”
In other words, it’s cool to not spend. It’s a great idea… Let’s make it cool to not burn! We can make it chic to reduce our personal carbon emissions, and we can do it loudly. Reduce carbon. Let people know how much we chose to reduce today, yesterday, and tomorrow. Associate it with cool photos and cool people. Everyone can announce the carbon they saved by choices they made.
"Today, I decided to cook at home rather than go across town 17 miles to go out for dinner at a favorite restaurant. At 30 miles to the gallon, I did not burn 1.1 gallons of gas and therefore prevented 21.4 pounds of carbon. I also saved $4.00 in gas and $34.00 in a dinner bill.”
“The glass of wine in this photo was earned when I…”
“These garden seedlings (photo) are saving carbon by reducing my trips to the grocery store. Because I have them fresh at home, I don’t need to make that extra trip to stay fresh.”
Loud budgeting and carbon chic go together.
How can you know how much you saved? Here is a handy little list showing the pounds of carbon created by your personal choices to burn a fuel:
12.125 pounds per 100 cubic feet (or 12.58 pounds per 1 therm) of natural gas
22.45 pounds per gallon of home heating oil and diesel fuel)
All of your day-to-day decisions have an impact on your personal carbon budget. Every time you drive your car you produce carbon. When your furnace runs and your water heats, you produce carbon by burning natural gas or propane. Now, using these numbers, we can tie our choices to the actual carbon we produce. Likewise, we can track the impact of our decisions to budget our carbon—that is, to not burn it because we made a different choice. And it is those choices that we can go loud with!
I know it is not as easy to measure carbon as money saved, but how about if we make it cool to reduce carbon emissions and be bold enough to brag about it anyway!
Show us a video of riding your bike or taking public transit instead of driving the car
Share how many trips you refused to take to the mall or town this week
Let’s see the video of the thermostat turned down to save carbon
Estimate your savings in every article or video
Share your savings at a cocktail party or poetry reading
Here is the plan.
If you write, like I do, maybe post one short thing every week on a decision or action you took to save burning fuel. Super easy. Five minutes. Say what you did, and ask others what they did.
If you do videos on YouTube or TikTok, put those up.
Whatever medium you use, get it onto Facebook, X, Instagram, or anywhere you go.
If you are in a business and your business or company is doing cool stuff to save carbon, post it!
More ideas:
How is your garden saving carbon?
What choices did you make with electricity?
Which idling trucks did you turn off?
What did you hang out to dry instead of running the dryer and how much did that save?
Tell everyone and be proud of what you have done to change your own carbon emissions.
Now, some of our savings can't be known until the bill comes in with the meter reading. But we can still celebrate the choices we make and then show their impact on our carbon production budget when the bill arrives.
In other words, just like loud budgeting is celebrating the refusal to spend money, we can celebrate the refusal to burn carbon.
And by the way: There will be a little side benefit: It turns out that whenever you don’t burn carbon, you also don’t burn cash. In other words, you’ll be saving money. Let’s celebrate that, too!
Anthony Signorelli
To learn more about how you can save money, save time, and live a better, more abundant life while reducing emissions, get my free newsletter The Climate Abundant Life.
I love this idea and will embrace it!