I had a lot of time to think yesterday as I rode/drove some 260 miles from Logan, Utah to Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. The occasion: the 25th annual LOTOJA bicycle race.

What struck me was the sum total of the environmental impact we were generating. You see, there were 1,000 riders, some from Jackson, most were from the Logan/Salt Lake City area. The point is that every participant was dependent upon a support vehicle to either get to the race, or get home.

For arguments sake, let's say there were 1,000 vehicles involved in the race as well. The race itself is 208 miles, but the support vehicles have to take a round-about route over the first half of the race to relieve congestion on the roads; my odometer says my car was driven 260 miles yesterday.

Do the math: 1,000 riders x (208 + 260) = 468,000 miles driven by race related vehicles this weekend. That's the equivalent of one vehicle circumnagivating the earth 18.79 times!

I don't recall seeing any Prius's on the road, but I did see a few Hummers and lots of SUVs. Again, for arguments sake, let's assume the average fuel efficiency of all the vehicles involved in LOTOJA is 15 mpg. According to TerraPass, that means we generated 610,397 pounds of CO2 and consumed 31,200 gallons of fuel … all in the name of sport/recreation.

To be sure, I'm as guilty as everyone else. And I've already made my motel reservation in Logan for the night before the race next year.

The point of this post isn't to judge the event or its participants. I merely wanted to explore the environmental impact of the kinds of events we all largely take for granted. Whether they are point-to-point bicycle races, trips across the state to take the kids to a soccer game, or journeys into the woods to ride ATVs and snowmobiles, we Americans really do create a huge impact–all in the name of fun.

If there's a bright side to this story, it's that you can participate in LOTOJA as a relay team with from two to five members. I competed with a friend and we "carpooled" …

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Interesting food for thought in a recent piece in Slate titled Are the Yankees bad for the environment?

Actually, Slate's conclusion is much the same one I came to in my LOTOJA post a little over a month ago: the vehicles we use to get to and from events — whether as participants or spectators — likely have a greater impact on global warming than all the energy required to operate a sports venue.

A football stadium that seats approximately 78,000 fans, for example, will consume about 65,000 kilowatt hours of electricity and 35,000 cubic feet of natural gas on game day. In the United States, where roughly half of our electricity still comes from coal, each kilowatt hour of electricity produces an average of 1.55 pounds of carbon dioxide. Natural gas is cleaner per unit: Each cubic foot emits 0.12 pounds of carbon dioxide. Putting on a big-time pigskin game thus ends up pumping around 47.6 metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere—or just 1.35 pounds per fan. For comparison's sake, the average American's carbon footprint is 64.81 pounds per day.

So, gathering 78,000 fans in one relatively compact place seems pretty efficient, right? But keep in mind that a stadium of that size will have something like 19,000 parking spaces. Let's be charitable and assume that all the fans drive standard cars and light trucks, which get an average of 21 miles per gallon. Let's also assume (again, very charitably) that each fan travels 29 miles round trip from home to game, the same distance as the average American's daily commute.

Using the standard Energy Information Administration figure of 19.564 pounds of carbon emitted per gallon of gas, then, all those cars spew out 232.84 metric tons of carbon dioxide. And that's surely a massive underestimation, given that many fans drive hundreds of miles in tailgate-ready RVs to pull for their beloved team.

So what's my point? Simple: the things we do everyday provide the best starting place for changing behavior and lessening our impact. Enjoy the occasional big event … as long as you are conscientious about regularly reducing your carbon footprint.

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As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, two friends of mine have asked me to consult with them to produce a conference on green events–running events in particular. As I think about the myriad topics this conference could and should cover–from compostable cups for water to organic cotton t-shirts–I find myself paying more and more attention to what other big events are doing to become green.

Last Sunday's Emmy Awards are a good case in point. Co-produced by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and the Fox network, and billed as the Eco-Opportunity Emmys, the event had one clearly stated goal:

to reduce the carbon footprint the Primetime Emmys have on the world’s climate.

So, how did they do that?

Here are just a few of the green initiatives behind the scenes:

•The Shrine Auditorium used clean “Green Power” generated from 100% renewable resources provided by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. This zero-emission electricity is part of the City of L.A.’s commitment to reduce carbon emissions by obtaining 20% of its energy from renewable resources by 2010.

•The stage sets were reusable rentals; the carpeting on stage and backstage were made from recycled plastic bottles.

•Biofuel generators, which use organic oils such as soybean or canola, were used as backup during the production of the show.

•Empire Limo provided Hybrid and Flexfuel vehicles to transport talent to the Awards.

•Lighting on and off stage was reduced by 15 percent.

Of course, this being Hollywood, there were a few other green initiatives that were a little more creative:

•Backstage, and in the press tent, products by makeup artist Napoleon Perdis were available for touch-ups. PETA approved Napoleon Perdis uses such all-natural products as organic beeswax in his Long Black Mascara, to chamomile and yarrow extract in his Auto Pilot Pre-Foundation Skin Primer.

•Meal and tuxedo tickets were all printed on tree-free paper, made of banana leaves and waste product.

•Dove® Chocolate’s exclusive parting gift is packaged in a reusable “picture frame” box.

You may be wondering: what's my point?

It's simple really. Whether it's the Emmys or a "road race" involving self-propelled runners or high-powered vehicles, there's always something event organizers can do to green-up their presentation. Moreover, this isn't the time for one special interest group to throw stones at another. Just because they perceive their environmental impact to be something less than a NASCAR race, runners and cyclists should still do everything they can to reduce the environmental impact of their recreational activities (see my LOTOJA post for a look at how quickly an event's impact can add up).

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Yep, this is it, one last (lengthy) Carbon Neutral Journal post for the record–a decision I should have made a year ago. Instead, I eked out a measly total of 10 posts in 2008, after having written 378 posts in my first year of carbon neutral blogging.

As some of you know, the meager output this past year wasn't because I lost interest or commitment to the topic. Quite the contrary–I simply redirected my time and energy from daily opining to trying to do something about the climate crisis. And I'm pleased to say that the Teton Area 10×10 effort and my new biz, Eco-Logistics, are both making steady progress toward that end.

Teton Area 10×10, our community initiative to reduce energy use by 10% by 12/31/2010, now has 180 people committed to the effort, and the Web site is growing, featuring 28 residential and two business profiles of recent energy use.

On the green event front, after a year of working on a couple of big projects for my former employer and Heatsheets manufacturer AFMInc, my partner, Lee Barrett, and I have our sights set on helping individual events clean up their act and reduce their carbon footprint in 2009. Already signed on are the Austin Marathon and the Lilac Bloomsday Run. With conversations lined up in the coming weeks with a number of other mass participant sporting events, I'm confident that Eco-Logistics will make a positive contribution to event participants' race experiences and the environment in the coming year. Who knows, we may even convince LOTOJA or some ultra-distance running relay to offer participants a way to help offset the huge carbon footprints that are inherent in point-to-point long distance races?

If you're interested in keeping track of what Lee and I are up to, please subscribe to the RSS feed at Eco-Logistics.biz.

For now, let's take one last look at what I've attempted to accomplish over the past two years:

After reducing our home energy use (electricity and natural gas) by 11% from 2006-20007, we slipped a little this year, increasing our home energy use by 3.3% from 2007-2008. My best guess is that some of that is due to the incredibly long winter we experienced (it snowed into June) and the addition of electric radiant heat in our master bathroom (a room we typically didn't heat in the past). The goal for 2009 is to get back to 2007 levels of use and maintain, or improve upon, a 10% reduction in home energy use, in keeping with our commitment to the Teton Area 10×10 initiative.

On the transportation front, we continued to reduce our driving–down to 12,500 miles this year, 20% less than in 2007–and made a switch in vehicles mid-year. No we didn't buy a Prius, but we did realize a significant savings in fuel consumption, simply by switching from our Audi with bikes on top to a mini-van with bikes inside–worth about 20% better mileage on long road trips with the bikes.

One of the reasons for the significant reduction in driving, however, was a corresponding increase in airline travel. In fact, after having not flown at all for over three years, my new biz venture had me flying a fair amount–ironic isn't it, that my venture into environmental consulting would greatly increase my own carbon footprint. According to the flight-by-flight carbon calculator on TerraPass, our flying footprint in 2008 was a whopping 16.5 tons (up from 3828 pounds of co2 in 2007)!

Speaking of TerraPass, one of the most confusing choices I've faced in the past two years is which carbon calculator to use? I started with Al Gore's calculator, but quickly moved on to TerraPass. I've also played with NativeEnergy's calculator, and the one at ZeroJH (supplied by Bonneville Environmental Foundation).

Much as I wanted to support ZeroJH and the Solar4Schools program, I found the ZeroJH tool to be the most approximate in its calculations. Al Gore's calculator said our 2008 co2 footprint was 16.7 tons (down from the original calculation of 17.5 tons in 2006), and referred me to NativeEnergy to purchase offsets totaling $233.80. TerraPass calculated our footprint at 17.5 tons, and the bill came to $208.25.

In the end, I went with the TerraPass calculator for a couple of reasons: it allows you to calculate the co2 impact of flying on a flight-by-flight basis, and it allows you to enter specific mileage data for any number of cars, by year, make and model–none of the other calculators provide this level of detail.

One note: in addition to the $208.25 paid to TerraPass to offset our carbon footprint, we choose to pay Lower Valley Energy $17.50/month to fully offset our electrical use with an investment in GreenPower.

bottom line:

$418.25, 20% less driving and a continued focus on managing home energy use got Alisan and me to carbon neutral for 2008.

We'll continue to work to reduce our carbon footprint in 2009 as we watch our country turn a page in the history book and, hopefully, pay more attention to the pressing state of the climate crisis than we have in the past.

Best wishes for a healthy and happy new year!

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