It's a little easier to be green

I've just arrived back in town from my whirlwind tour of Vancouver, BC for the 9th annunal International Drag King Extravaganza. While I work on a write-up of my experiences at the event (which was awesome), I wanted to post something else important to tide you over:

Though the name is a little cheesy, the goal and the cause are unbeatable - Take the Mpower Pledge to help reduce carbon emissions in the city of Madison by 100,000 tons by the year 2011.

When you take the Mpower pledge, you join a community commitment to reduce 100,000 tons in citywide emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) by 2011.

You’re Mpowered to buy more renewable wind and solar power and help eliminate 40,000 tons of CO2; together, we can increase the efficiency of our current energy use in simple ways that can save enough energy to power more than 20,000 homes; we can install solar systems – a system in your home or business can eliminate 7,000 tons of CO2; we can reduce car emissions and plant trees – 1 tree absorbs 1 ton of CO2 over its lifetime. You can begin to conserve and protect our most precious resource: water.

You’re Mpowered at home, at work, at school and on the go to make our community a remarkably healthy place to live, work and play today, and for generations to come. You can. You count.

You can sign the pledge either as an individual or as a business (if you have one) and there are a number of options for actions to take to help meet the goal. Heck, I just learned that MG&E has a website that will give you an estimate of how much money it would cost you to sign up for their green energy plan, something that could offset your carbon emissions by 50-100% for a minimal extra charge. Tonight I'm going to go home and talk to the roommates about the plan and get our house onto it.

Every little thing helps, but signing onto a larger plan/pledge like this is an even better and more effective way to make a difference. It's not as difficult as it used to be to go all or even just mostly green, and the short and long term benefits can't be beat.