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Editor's Note:

It's easy to take a pessimistic view of the future, at least until you meet a young lady like Sasha Mathas. Inspired by Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, this junior high school student decided to see what she could do to help us prevent the troubling future the movie warned about. The article below is the first fruit of a semester-long independent study course she and her mom (an industry colleague) put together to see what an ordinary citizen could do on a personal level to reduce their own "carbon footprint." Her first report documents the changes she's helped make in her own household to reduce the family's carbon footprint. A future installment will document the work being done by her local school district to cut its fossil energy consumption through conservation and renewable energy technologies.

While it will take much more than turning off a few lights and driving a few less miles to push back the greenhouse gas concentrations in our atmosphere to a sustainable level, Ms Mathas' study serves as an important reminder that the keys to a hopeful future lies in all our hands and that anyone can make a difference if they choose to.

Climate change is happening: It is caused mostly by a concentration of a greenhouse gas, Carbon dioxide (CO₂), in the earth's atmosphere. The resulting changes will have many serious and damaging effects over the years ahead. Even though CO₂ is a naturally occurring gas, it is increasing in the atmosphere because of humans burning coal, oil, natural gas, and organic matter. These "fossil" fuels (called that since that's how they were created under the earth), have increased mainly to provide electricity and run vehicles.

Global temperatures have already risen both on land and in the oceans. Polar ice, and glaciers around the world, are melting. Researchers show that the second largest ice cap in the world is melting twice as fast as scientists first estimated. Storms are getting stronger and plant and animal species are struggling to catch up with the changes. All of these facts disturbed me when I saw Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, last summer. Because the film moved me, I decided to write a report for school. This article will tell you some of the things I've learned that may help you, and the planet.

For example, while working on my report, I became the second person in the United States to receive a product called the Power Cost Monitor (reviewed here October 2006) from a company in Canada called Blue Line Innovations. I received it because they heard of my project through my mom's friend, colleague, and greenTECHZONE editor, Lee Goldberg. The product displays current and total electricity usage in dollars and cents and in kilowatt-hours, and also displays the time and temperature at the meter's location. The display unit stays inside your home and the sensor unit sits on your meter. Blue Line Innovations is involved in several important demonstration projects in Canada that determine the extent to which consumer behavior is changed and electricity usage is reduced by using a monitor, and also to examine the positive effect the Power Cost Monitor has on greenhouse gas emissions. You can see the monitor and get a feel for exactly how it works at their web site.

Where Blue Line Innovations helped me see the impact that my family was causing by using up so much electricity, another company, TerraPass Inc, helps to balance the damage caused once it happens. More about TerraPass in a moment.

So, I used to think that I couldn't do anything about global warming, but that's not really true. Here's what we can do to help the planet, and even save money. The dollar amounts that follow are approximate and are found at http://www.michaelbluejay.com along with other helpful information that you should check out:

1. Use ceiling fans instead of air conditioners -- and save $610 per year;
2. Recycle so that products you're finished with get reused and made into other products like plastic containers, bottles and cardboard. Many products can be recycled, such as paper, plastics, and glass products;
3. Wash your dishes in a dishwasher only when it's loaded fully, so you don't waste water;
4. Replace your fridge with an energy-saving new model, and save at least $45 per year;
5. Dry your clothes on a clothesline instead of a dryer, and save $156 per year;
6. Wash clothes in cold water, save energy. If you use the right detergent the clothes come out just as clean. When you wash in cold water you save approximately $73;
7. Change your light bulbs to compact fluorescent lights, the cost to do so will be around $32 and you save $90 per year;
8. Buy locally grown foods. When you get veggies try to get them where they are grown locally, like at a vegetable farm. This saves CO₂ emissions since they do not need to be transported far;
9. Take a bus instead of your car when you don't need to travel far. At the cost of gas today, it will be cheaper;
10. When not using your computer, either turn it off or set it on money-saving sleep status and save $59 per year.

Not only will you save money by reducing the cost of electricity in your home, but also you will make an impact on CO₂ emissions -- and if we all do it, the impact will be big. So now you know how CO₂ emissions can be reduced, it is possible to offset them completely by purchasing a TerraPass.

I met with Tom Arnold a few weeks ago. He is the Chief Environmental Officer at TerraPass, located in San Francisco. Tom is a 2005 Honors MBA graduate of the Wharton School, and one of the founders of TerraPass.

Today, you can purchase a TerraPass for your home, car, or for when you fly to see your family, or for business. When you go to the site, you enter your energy bills, the car you drive, or the next plane trip you will make. TerraPass tells you how much CO₂ you're using, and then the company sells a pass that will offset exactly what you've put into the atmosphere. They then use the money you paid to fund clean energy projects that reduce carbon dioxide emissions. You can also buy a TerraPass for your home. You can go to their site for more information.

Reducing CO₂ emissions is very important to the environment. Knowing I can help to change the world and how we live in it makes me optimistic as to what the outcome could be, if enough people join me.

So, please pick several of my recommendations and start today. Involve your children -- I'm only 13 and wouldn't be doing this if my family didn't go to see An Inconvenient Truth. We can all make a difference. If I stopped watching television my mother could save $86 per year, but that might be taking it just a step too far!

Sasha Mathas is a student at the Independent Learning Center in Paradise, California. She is 13 years old.