The Ten Minute Activist
Easy Ways to Take Back the Planet
Light Pollution
Consider the lightbulb shining over this book as you read. A mixture of energy sources generated that light. Most are polluting, and many add to global warming. If the by-products of producing that electricity accompanied the light into your home, your room would be filled with quite a toxic cocktail. Over half of the room would be polluted by coal by-products: sulfur dioxide, ozone, mercury, lead, cadmium, and chromium. Of that, 20 percent would be glowing with radioactivity from the nuke plants involved in generating the electricity. Another 20 percent would be filled with greenhouse gases from burning oil and natural gas. That leaves only seven percent from hydroelectric power and a measly two percent of clean, pure air from renewables like solar and wind power.
Before you turn off the light and stop reading, there's something you can do.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has two online tools that can help you see where your local energy comes from and how it compares to the rest of the United States. After you've used the first tool, the Power Profiler, and decided you don't like your reading light raising sea levels for three-eyed fish, you can check out their second tool, the Green Power Locator. This shows you what green energy programs you can join in your area, to make your reading a little less polluting.
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