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Most of my environmental tips boil down to one underlying principal:
Don't confuse "discomfort" as a synonym for "anything less than complete, perfect comfort." Much of our energy inefficience comes from never wanting to experience any inconvenience or discomfort where anything less than perfect comfort is labelled as uncomfortable and anything less than perfect convenience is labelled as inconvenient. Thus we want every gadget to do everything that might concievably be wanted and we want it to do it immediately. Therefore we frequently end up making purchases based on the less than 1% outlying anomolies than for the 99% standard uses.
God knows I'm not an anti-car activist (I've driven 50 miles just to have dinner and then drive home) but people are really stupid an wasteful in choosing their cars. For most people, 95% of their driving falls into
a single type and need. Go buy a car that fits that need and then figure out how to get by when the other 5% comes up. Existing electric cars would be ideal for 90% of all driving but people won't buy them because sometimes they want to drive 300 miles to Vegas. Or 400 to Disneyland. Ok, so buy the electric car and then rent a car for long trips. Or buy a small car and then rent a truck for the day when you need to haul a couch. You're never going to be trying to outrun an invading alien army so you don't need a car that can go 185 miles per hour.
If you live in the city and near your job then ride a bike and rent cars for weekend travel.
You don't need air conditioning every time the temperature rises above 75 degrees or a heater every time it falls below 70.
Don't run the dishwasher half full. Don't do small loads of laundry. If you have the space consider line drying your clothes, at least for the bulkier stuff that takes the longest in the machine.
Every once in a while just walk to where you're going. Even if it is kind of far away. Amazingly it isn't as hard as you probably think, you'll eventually get where you're going, and you'll form a stronger bond with your neighborhood.
But mostly, while the all the little things are good, until people begin to behave rationally in their transportation choices the inefficiency most people have there far outweighs any gains (for most people) elsewhere in their lives.
So I think the two biggest things you can do are:
1) Drive the most efficient car that meets 90% of your needs (and be honest about what you're needs are). Lani and I are fine with a "compact" car since we hardly ever have other people in it. We got a hybrid set up for highway travel (as opposed to the Prius which gets better city mileage) since most of our car miles are highway miles) and didn't worry about the low horsepower because 80 miles an hour is really the fastest I ever need to go.
2) Live where you work or work where you live. Once it became feasible we moved so that Lani's commute is only 3 miles each way instead of 30.
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