By Jody Record, Media Relations
December 6, 2006

Denise Blaha has a philosophy about climate change that goes like this: everyone is part of the problem so everyone should be part of the solution.

Those aren’t just words. Blaha, a research associate at the Institute of Earth, Ocean and Space, has been giving talks on climate change to middle and high school students for more than a year now. She has also taken steps that led to the reduction of her family’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by 25,000 pounds.

And now, she and a woman she met through one of her global warming presentations are daring the entire state to do the same with their newly-formed New Hampshire Carbon Challenge.

In August, Blaha was asked to address a women’s group in Barrington. Afterward, Julia Dundorf, who had hosted the event, urged the women to follow Blaha’s example and lower the carbon emissions in their own households.

“The emails that flew back and forth over the next few days were amazing,” Blaha says. “People really understood the seriousness of climate change and they were willing to make changes.”

Blaha’s own efforts have netted her a $250 savings in her electric bill. More importantly, she says, it has made her feel like she is being part of the solution. Here’s how:

She started by finding an online carbon calculator (There are many. Google “carbon calculator”). After filling in the applicable information—i.e., the number of rooms in her house; its heat source; the types of cars she and her husband drive; their annual mileage—Blaha learned they were emitting about 56,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

“That’s lower than the New Hampshire average (80,000 pounds) and the U.S. average but still, I felt we could do better,” Blaha says. “Once I had a number, I tried to devise a strategy to get it lower.”

First, she figured the carbon emissions for the Toyota Matrix she drives and learned it was10,500 pounds. Knowing that she could cut 150 pounds for each compact fluorescent light bulb she used, Blaha changed all the bulbs in her house. When that wasn’t enough, she decided to switch the light bulbs of her friends and neighbors.

“I’d show up and say, ‘I’m here to change your light bulbs,” Blaha says. “I brought all the bulbs with me; it wasn’t a hard sell. In two or three weeks, I’d found homes for 70 light bulbs.”

Once she’d offset the emissions generated by her car, Blaha sought to cancel out the 12,000 pounds emitted by her husband’s car. To do that, she spent $40 on a carbon offset. The goal of a carbon offsets is to “undo” the effects of global warming by investing in such projects as reforestation and wind farms. They can be bought by anyone.

Blaha chose TerraPass (terrapass.com), a group working on large-scale energy projects. Other carbon offset companies are listed on the New Hampshire Carbon Challenge brochure (http://eos-webster.sr.unh.edu/nhcarbonchallenge.pdf ). She also turned her thermostat down a few degrees and saved 1,400 pounds of carbon emissions and about $135 a year.

Washing laundry in cold water saves about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide; weather-stripping, 650 pounds and reducing garbage through recycling, about 1,200 pounds.

“Most of this is a matter of education. I believe anything is possible, you just have to get the word out, show people there’s a problem and there’s a solution to solve it,” Blaha says. “We may only have 10 or 20 years to reduce the carbon tipping point before we can’t do anything about global warming,”

Now, Blaha and Dundorf are putting together a steering committee to help decide how to move the NH Carbon Challenge forward. There are plans for a web site with a carbon calculator and information on carbon offsets. Blaha calls the whole notion a “work-in-progress.”

“It’s a little daunting. I’ve never done anything like this,” she says. “But I hope we can get people involved and eventually, be a model for other states.”