Environment

You may remember last fall when I moved about 1/2 a mile north from my old home downtown and suddenly found myself feeling like I was miles away from town. For the thousand or so people like me who live near Umstead Drive, Village Drive, and Estes Drive Extension, the only way to walk downtown involves a 2-mile hike up MLK Boulevard or a cut through the woods around Estes Park Apartments to Pleasant Drive in Carrboro.

Well, the Town of Chapel Hill was two steps ahead of me and was already planning an extension of the Bolin Creek Greenway that would connect Umstead Park and our neighborhood to Northside (which is just across the creek), the future Carolina North campus, and MLK Blvd. Importantly, this extension will also connect my old neighbors in Northside to University Mall (the Greenway's eastern terminus).

For my New Year's Resolution for 2007, I decided to take tangible steps to reduce my carbon footprint. I was already doing something by riding my bicycle more and driving less, but I wanted to go a step further. But, I didn't want to spend a lot of money doing it.

First I audited my family's energy purchases. We were buying gasoline, electricity, and natural gas. I determined that we were directly generating 81 pounds of CO2 a day! That's far below the national average in the United States, but it is still a big number.

Next, I looked at the cost of strategies for reducing my carbon footprint. Sadly, some strategies were quite expensive, but other strategies were very cost-effective. I was ready to have my New Year's resolution cost me at least a little money, but I wasn't ready for the realization that my resolution might cost less!

Today the Orange Chat blog published some thoughts about the "Lot 5" downtown redevelopment effort from a reporter's conversation with Chapel Hill Town Council Member Mark Kleinschmidt. In a perfect example of the utility of blogs for having unmediated communication with the public, Kleinschmidt responded by adding and clarifying his thoughts on his own blog.