I've been reading No Impact Man for a while. Today he linked to the Riot for Austerity 90% Emissions Reduction Project. The concept being that rich countries need to reduce their carbon emissions by 90% in order to prevent catastrophe, so this project proposes some rules for daily living that could cut individual carbon emissions by 90%.

It's discouraging to me how utterly difficult it would be for me to follow some of their rules, if I chose to try. Especially this one:

1. Gasoline. Average American usage is 500 gallons PER PERSON, PER YEAR. A 90 percent reduction would be 50 gallons PER PERSON, PER YEAR.

• No reduction in emissions for ethanol or biodiesel.
• Public transportation and Waste Veggie Oil Fuel are deemed to get 100 mpg, and should be calculated accordingly.

Let's see. 30 miles of driving per workday, 5 workdays per week, and we'll exaggerate and say I work a full 52 weeks a year. That's 7800 of driving, assuming I don't do any other driving besides driving to work. My Civic gets about 30mpg, so that's 260 gallons of gas per year.

Now let's pretend I could take public transportation from my house to work and that it was also 30 miles a day (which it wouldn't be, because there aren't any direct routes). Using their 100mpg number for public transportation, I would still be using 78 gallons of gas, 23 gallons over their 50 gallon per person per year limit.

So the best way I could reduce my gasoline usage to the levels they're talking about is to move. Barring moving, maybe ride my bike 30 miles a day, or some combination of public transportation and biking? Maybe I could carpool?

I'm not sure of the math behind any of this, but I like that this project exists and that they're challenging people to see what the numbers could actually add up to on a daily basis. It definitely adds fuel (har har) to my desire to move out of the suburbs and closer to everything. But it's also kind of depressing. I consider myself a little bit more environmentally conscious and less materialistic than the average person, but according to these numbers, I have nothing to brag about.