New members and prospective members read here! How to join the Georgia CRAG!

kirti

CRAGger Georgia Maryland

I am so excited that you are interested in our Carbon Rationing Action Group! Though we are officially set up for Georgia in the USA, we are open to any member with an interest from the Southern States, until you decide to form your own CRAGs for other regions.

What we do: we track our direct energy use over the span of a year. Our year begins on November 1, so that gives us some time to plan and do trial runs. From our energy use, we calculate carbon dioxide emissions using standard conversion factors. Each one of us is striving to get our personal emissions down below 17,500 lbs per year. This sounds like a lot, but it is 10% less than the national average. Note that most CRAGs are in England, so that when you look at their groups, their masses will be in kilograms instead of pounds. They also emit less for each unit of energy consumed and in general consume less energy, so our targets are starting out a lot higher than theirs. This is ok- we all have to start somewhere!

HOW TO JOIN

There is more information available at http://www.carbonrationing.org.uk/files/carbon_rationing_guide.pdf about how to join.

You join a CRAG by letting your nearest group’s “carbon accountant” know and by explaining something about your living circumstances as this will affect how your CO2 is counted.

For example, my details are:
I own a house with my family (of 3).
Our heating is by Gas.
Our appliances all run on electricity. We do not use oil.
We don’t get our electricity from a renewable source (wind, etc.), although Georgia power does have a green program, which I will be looking into.
We own 2 cars; one of them is mine.
The entire family will be joining the scheme.

My ration would therefore have to cover 1/4 of the household’s emissions (no matter how much or little the others contributed to the total) and all of my car’s emissions (no matter how often others borrowed or shared my car {unless we as a group decide to track this differently).

Have you signed up at the CRAG site yet? Go to the CRAG site and get a login http://www.carbonrationing.org.uk and notify Kirti (the site contact). I (Kirti) will make sure you are added to our group!

We are still a little clunky but we are just getting started! We still have a few things do decide, such as whether we will calculate our own emissions or let the carbon accountant do it. Shannon (Maryland CRAG) is working on a calculator at the moment that will let you estimate your emissions the way the other UK CRAGs do it so that we can speak the same language with them.

Check out the resources at the Georgia CRAG: http://www.carbonrationing.org.uk/Georgia.

Maryland has a blog with resources for Maryland (and other interested people):
http://local-warming.blogspot.com/
We will be starting one for Georgia soon.

Thanks for joining us in this historic endeavor! Sign up now to be one of the first ten CRAG members in the US!

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