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Decarbonize Your Life

How Heatmap’s Staff Decarbonizes Their Lives

Recommendations from our homes to yours.

How Heatmap’s Staff Decarbonizes Their Lives
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

As a renter in a walkable city, I can’t get heat pumps or solar panels and don’t need an EV. The main thing I try to do is buy used. There’s so many vintage, consignment, and thrift stores, online used clothing and furniture marketplaces, and even name-brand businesses that recycle old styles and models that you can find basically anything you want. Yearning for a pair of Lululemon leggings or in need of a basic black J.Crew blazer? Check Poshmark or Depop, where someone is inevitably giving away theirs for a discount. Facebook Marketplace is a goldmine for chairs, desks, lamps, toasters, fans, air conditioners, and so much more. If you’re in search of a couch or dresser that you need delivered, try AptDeco. Searching for used clothing and furniture takes time and effort, and can make me feel crazy. But fast fashion and furniture are a scourge of the Earth, and this is my best effort at resistance. — Emily

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again -- I fully endorse buying a used Chevy Bolt. With its estimated 259 miles of range and its zippy acceleration, there is no better bang for your buck if you’re considering an electric vehicle. Plus, you can score a federal (and sometimes state-level) rebate on the purchase if you meet certain income requirements. Factoring in incentives, it’s possible to nab one for about $12,000 in certain states. Sure, it’s not a head-turner, nor is it the fastest to charge, but you’d be hard pressed to find a better deal when buying an electric vehicle. — Mike

The internet overlords knew that I had been reporting on plastic waste and the myth of plastic recycling a few years back and bombarded me for months with perfectly targeted Instagram ads for Blueland. Eventually I caved and bought its reusable hand soap bottle and soap tablets (and eventually a number of other cleaning products, too). You can order new dissolvable tablets on a recurring or one-off basis, thereby avoiding buying and disposing of single-use plastic products every time you need more soap, detergent, or surface cleaner. Lest you need reminding, plastics are made from natural gas and crude oil, so even though you might not see emissions spewing out of your disposable dish soap bottle, know that there is indeed a better way. — Katie

We live in an older apartment that, unfortunately, does not have central air, and we haven’t yet sprung for a heat pump. Upon moving in last year, however, we replaced our old, drafty living room windows with double-pane windows, and the ancient window unit with a Midea U-shaped air conditioner. Our area is relatively dense and our apartment is across the street from a fire station, so in this case our pursuit of energy efficiency hasn't just improved our carbon footprint, but also our quality of life in terms of noise. — Matthew

I did my first Veganuary in 2021, while quarantining at my parents’ house (because there’s no time like a global pandemic to completely upheave your lifestyle). I’ve been a vegetarian for almost 20 years and have never eaten red meat, so I’d been pretty confident that going 31 days without using any animal products would be a piece of (plant-based) cake. Wrong. I was humbled by the challenge — and awakened to how much dairy and eggs I consume without even realizing it. Ever since then, I’ve been far more intentional about using ingredients like cheese and butter only when I really need them; my husband and I haven’t had cow milk in our fridge in years because we don’t mind the substitutes. That’s the thing about diet: While eating plant-rich meals is one of the highest-impact things an individual can do to reduce their emissions, it truly doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing endeavor. Believe me, I still love cheese — but now I also know that vegan butter makes the best chocolate chip cookies. — Jeva

When my wife and I were in college, we became vegetarians together; we did it for reasons that involved animal welfare, personal health, and, somewhat embarrassingly, the fact that I got really into Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael. For the two of us, habit-shifting environmental concerns were not yet in the mix. Many years have since passed, and though we still don’t eat meat, those once-distant concerns have taken center stage, and on the rare occasion that we’re asked why we’re vegetarians, the state of the environment has become our first response. Though it now feels almost passive, avoiding meat remains one of the most significant ways that we — my wife and me, and also all of us — can reduce our emissions, and now that we’re parents, it feels like a valuable lesson that we’ve passed on to the next generation of lentil aficionados. — Jacob

When you use toilet paper from one of the big tissue brands, you are literally wiping your ass with a 100-year-old tree — so deeply is this seared into my brain that I could have sworn I’d read it word for word in the Natural Resources Defense Council’s inaugural “Issue With Tissue” report, but when I search the text, it’s nowhere to be found. In any case, the message stands: As recently as last year, all three of the major U.S. tissue manufacturers — Kimberly-Clark, Procter & Gamble, and Georgia-Pacific — still made their toilet tissue and paper towels exclusively from virgin forests, which is simply not something I can live with. In my house, we use Seventh Generation Extra Soft & Strong, made from 100% recycled paper pulp and treated with non-chlorine bleach. But things are beginning to change! The sixth edition report came out last week, showing that two out of the Big Three have improved their options and practices. — Jillian

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Electric Vehicles

The Chevy Bolt Is the Cheap EV We’ve Needed All Along

It’s not perfect, but pretty soon, it’ll be available for under $30,000.

The Chevy Bolt.
Heatmap Illustration/Chevrolet, Getty Images

Here’s what you need to know about the rejuvenated Chevrolet Bolt: It’s back, it’s better, and it starts at under $30,000.

Although the revived 2027 Bolt doesn’t officially hit the market until January 2026, GM revealed the new version of the iconic affordable EV at a Wednesday evening event at the Universal Studios backlot in Los Angeles. The assembled Bolt owners and media members drove the new cars past Amity Island from Jaws and around the Old West and New York sets that have served as the backdrops of so many television shows and movies. It was star treatment for a car that, like its predecessor, isn’t the fanciest EV around. But given the giveaway patches that read “Chevy Bolt: Back by popular demand,” it’s clear that GM heard the cries of people who missed having the plucky electric hatchback on the market.

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Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

From the perspective of the stock market, you’re either in the AI business or you’re not. If you build the large language models pushing out the frontiers of artificial intelligence, investors love it. If you rent out the chips the large language models train on, investors love it. If you supply the servers that go in the data centers that power the large language models, investors love it. And, of course, if you design the chips themselves, investors love it.

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1. Two deals worth billions highlight a bright spot for clean energy

Base Power, the Texas power company that leases batteries to homeowners and taps the energy for the grid, on Tuesday announced a $1 billion financing round. The Series C funding is set to supercharge the Austin-based company’s meteoric growth. Since starting just two years ago, Base has deployed more than 100 megawatts of residential battery capacity, making it one of the fastest growing distributed energy companies in the nation. The company now plans to build a factory in the old headquarters of the Austin American-Statesman, the leading daily newspaper in the Texan capital. The funding round included major investors who are increasing their stakes, including Valor Equity Partners, Thrive Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz, and at least nine new venture capital investors, including Lowercarbon, Avenir, and Positive Sum. “The chance to reinvent our power system comes once in a generation,” Zach Dell, chief executive and co-founder of Base Power, said in a statement. “The challenge ahead requires the best engineers and operators to solve it and we’re scaling the team to make our abundant energy future a reality.”

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