Climate Change at Home

I was heartened to read of my fellow alumni’s enthusiasm for confronting climate change in a way that “brings down to scale the enormousness of the problem” (“The D Word,” April issue). A great way to do that is to drastically reduce your use of fossil fuels in your own home, just as the University is doing on campus. Weatherization, geothermal heating and cooling, LED lights and high efficiency appliances, electric vehicles, and solar photovoltaic arrays can be used to greatly reduce your use of fossil fuels.

I was able to retrofit my 1929 house, dubbed Colonial Solar House, to provide all its own energy plus the energy for the local driving of two electric cars. You can do it too! There are terrific federal and state incentives for all of these upgrades. The University is demonstrating tremendous leadership in converting the campus to geothermal heating and cooling, installing large solar farms, etc. We can do the same in our own homes.