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I just learned a shocking fact: when one gallon of gasoline is burned, it produces 20 pounds of carbon dioxide gas. Twenty pounds out of gas — like air!
One good fact: In 2023 our rooftop solar panels produced 8.4 megawatt-hours, or 8,400 more familiar kilowatt-hours.
Upon a bit of (so easy on the internet!) research I found that producing each kilowatt-hour by fossil fuels costs about 1.6 pounds.
That means every year our 8,400 kilowatt-hours prevent over 13,000 pounds of nasty CO2 from going up there. Good job!!
Then I calculated how much CO2 we put in the air by traveling to and from Florida in the RV towing a car. I won’t bother you with the computation (4,000 miles, 6.5 miles per gallon, 20 pounds per gallon), but that one ride put a bit more CO2 into the air than all we saved last year with the rooftop solar.
Remedying our common problem of climate change and nature dying will not be easy. But nonetheless it is absolutely essential we do everything we can to fix it.
Henry Lanford
Bangor
