May/June 2008 Issue

The Green-Belt Movement

A tipsheet for butt-kicking energy-saving moves.

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white belt: no-brainers Switch to CFL bulbs. Turn off lights when you leave the room. Set the thermostat to 68° in winter, 78° in summer. Turn down the water heater to 120°. Wash clothes in cold water and air or line dry them. Use rechargeable batteries. Recycle. Compost. Take mass transit. Ride your bike. Carpool. Drive 55. Walk to the store. Set your fridge to 37°. Set your freezer to 5° and keep it full (use containers filled with water). Turn off the dry cycle on your dishwasher. If it’s yellow, let it mellow. Unplug “energy vampires” like TVs, DVD players, and iPod chargers when not in use.

yellow belt: some assembly required Install motion-activated light switches. Use low-flow showerheads. Use a power-consumption meter to track down energy vampires. Choose a power supplier that uses renewable energy. Support renewable power by paying a premium on your electric bills (“green pricing”). Insulate your home. Eat local. Use a laptop. Learn to drive stick.

green belt: kill a watt Convert your fridge to run on propane. Switch your home energy source from electric to gas. Use a solar oven. Buy only Energy Star-rated appliances. Get a front-loading washing machine. Install an on-demand water heater. Install double-glazed windows, or retrofit old ones. Apply for a “green mortgage” and get lower interest rates for your energy-efficient home.

brown belt: technical knockouts Install a gray-water system…or two-stage flush toilets…or composting toilets. Use “daylighting” products such as solar tubes, and a parabolic reflector. Install photovoltaic panels on your roof. Install a condensing boiler for central heat. Get motorized combustion air dampers. Replace your fireplace with a high-efficiency woodstove. Power your fridge with cold air from outside with a Freeaire system. Replace your furnace and AC with a geothermal heat pump—and upgrade it to heat your water.

black belt: you have the power Convert your hybrid to a plug-in. Use your solar array to sell power back to the grid on sunny days. Produce your own energy from biogas. Get yourself a wind turbine.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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