I have good news. You don't have to wear hemp clothes and eat compost. Why? Most of us are so energy inefficient that it takes effort not to reduce our personal greenhouse gas emissions.

Maybe this sounds familiar:

Wake up, eat a bowl of processed corn products and scrambled "farm-fresh" eggs raised on a farm a thousand miles away. Walk out to the car, a redesigned military assault vehicle large enough to house a herd of bison, drop off the garbage, mostly rotting food from the back of a twenty year-old fridge that developed its own internal weather system, food which could have been used to create compost and fertilizer the wilting garden.

Drive to work, cutting off a bus, crowding two cyclists out of the bike lane and putting the fear of death, and the fear of your elevated chrome bumper, into the small hybrid vehicle with four passengers using the high occupancy lane. Buy a disposable paper cup full of coffee made from beans grown in what was a tropical rainforest. Go up the your office, where the lights and computers are left on overnight, put on a sweater because the office is cold enough to store cadavers, and book a 4000 mile overnight flight to attend next week's three hour meeting.

Finally, on the way home, stop at the store, and after a twenty minute existential debate about right and wrong, choose the paper over the plastic.

Is a light bulb going off? Maybe an energy efficient one?

Here is my guide to actions you can take at home, at the table, on the road and in the air to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions It is based upon those wasteful practices, habits and thinking that make me laugh, and make me cry.

For other great guides, try Celsias, Environment Defense, the Canadian Office of Energy Efficiency and onelesstonne.ca. I hope this can be a living document, so please share your own suggestions and fun stories about energy (in)efficiency.

At home

Buy energy efficient light bulbs. You know, the one's that look like glass curly fries? How many people do you think it takes to change one of those energy efficient light bulb? Zero. The bulbs last for years. Sure they are more expensive, but do the math and you'll discover the energy efficient bulbs are always a smart investment.

For heaven's sake, cut down on the air conditioning. Entire power plants must be kept online solely to handle the surge in power needs on a hot summer day. One way solution is to increase the thermostat to 24-25ºC (75-76ºC). If you are dressed for a hot summer day, why are you cooling the house to a "room temperature" of 20ºC (68º F)? Ever wonder why you get the sniffles in the middle of the summer? You're subjecting yourself to a total 5-10 ºC drop in temperature - on the order of what happens during an ice age - every time you walk into the house.

The same goes for heating in the winter. If you wearing a sweater and pants, why heat the house to 20º C? Drop the thermostat a few degrees. It'll cut your energy use and your bills.

Time for a new kitchen appliance? Buy an energy-efficient appliance with the US EPA's Energy Star label. As with the light bulbs, the decrease in energy use can defray the some of the cost. The Energy Star site explains the available products. The Canadian Office of Energy Efficiency has a shopping guide and a tool for calculating the cost of operating a new appliance.

Cut down on dishwasher use. Yes, you are right, newer dishwashers use much less water. But they still require energy to run. Just two of you ate dinner? Wash the dishes by hand. The same goes for your front-loading washing machine. It's more water efficient, but can still be an energy drain.

Reduce your household waste. Waste disposal requires a lot of energy. And landfills themselves directly emit methane and other greenhouse gases. So cutting down on your garbage is crucial to reducing your impact on the planet.

With so many recycling programs available today, it should be easy. For example, living in a place like Toronto, you should get a grey box for paper and cardboard, a blue box for bottles and cans, and a green box for organic waste. That covers almost every product used by the average consumer. Do you have a full garbage bag at the end of the week? What is in there? Un-recyclable packaging you should have avoided purchasing in the first place? Toxic items like batteries that should not be going to a landfill? Or something that belongs in one of the conveniently colour-coded boxes?

Finally, to tackle all this in an organized fashion, get a home energy assessment. In Canada, they are available through the Energuide for Houses Program. Even better, buy one for a friend. They make terrific housewarming gifts especially since most new homeowners are planning extensive renovations and will have the opportunity to improve insulation, etc.

At the table:

Eat less meat, especially beef. It takes about one-seventh the energy to create a gram of vegetable protein than a gram of beef protein. You don't have to become a vega. Nor do you even have to become a standard "lacto-ovo" vegetarian (dairy, eggs, but no meat) - though I'd be happy to convince you of the benefits. Instead, try something simple to start: substitute chicken for beef and/or eat one less meat-based dinner a week.

Buy local. Sure, some food is not grown in the northern U.S. or Canada. If you badly need fresh citrus fruit in January, buy the stuff from Florida, not South America. This isn't about protectionism: the fact is those Chilean nectarines don't walk to your grocery store.

Also, buy organic. Trendy, sure. Also a good idea. Organically-raised crops receive no fertilizer and no pesticides which means less energy used in production and fewer greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere. If we all ate organically-raised meat, from animals fed grass rather than feed, we could dramatically cut down on the land demands (for feed grain production).

One option is to support a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) food co-op. This a way to support local farmers and obtain seasonal organic produce - in your area. There's a guide to CSAs across the US; for just NY, NJ and CT, check here.

Avoid excess packaging. Ah, an old standby. There is absolutely no reason those mushrooms or those cherry tomatoes had to be packed in a 1 ft x 1 ft plastic container. Don't buy 'em. Buy the ones in bulk. If there's no choice, complain to the management. You'd be surprised how quickly a grocery store responds to such suggestions.

And, please, do us all a favour, stop drinking bottled water. I can not repeat this enough times. Bottled water is the biggest snow job out there. Look, I love Fiji, I have many friends there, but there is no reason that Fiji should be bottling up spring water and shipping it halfway around the world to people living in cities that have large water treatment facilities. Yes, if you visit Indonesia, or if you live in a small community with no water treatment, by all means, be safe and drink bottled water. But if you live in North American city, bottled water is wholly unnecessary. Your tap water is tested regularly. It is safer than water anywhere in the world. Bottled water, on the other hand, is not subject to rigid testing. The explosive growth of the bottled water industry in North America is not based on any real decline in urban water quality. It is based on marketing and paranoia.

And taste? If you think that bottled water is cleaner because it tastes "better", you have been duped. First, few of us have a water palette refined enough to even tell the difference. Second, taste is not always an indicator of the quality of water. If you drank tap water regularly, you would think it was fine.

On the road:

Obviously, the key here is to drive less and drive more efficiently. One litre of regular gas will emit about 2.5 kg of GHGs to the atmosphere. For the non-metric, that is about 5 pounds per gallon. See that 5 lb bag of charcoal - carbon - beside your BBQ? Pick it up. It's heavy. That's what we're talking about. Here are some strategies for being more efficient:

The best thing you can do? Stop driving to work. This by far the easiest, most obvious and most cost-efficient way for most people to reduce GHG emissions and combat smog. I know what you may be thinking, easy for Simon to say, he enjoys cycling, but I have to drive. Is that true? Ask yourself objectively. If you're Canadian, for example, there's a 90% chance you live in a city, every one of which has one or more reasonable alternatives for commuting into and within the core. Take public transit. Walk, skip, bike, roller-skate, unicycle, whatever. The potential direct cost savings - gas, maintenance - are enormous.

If you absolutely have no other choice but to commute by car, then find a way to car pool. Think how much faster the morning commute would be no single-occupancy vehicles. Too hard to organize? Start simple. Meet at a convenient transit node and share a ride downtown.

Cut down on the number of vehicle trips you make. Every time you get ready to leave the house, ask yourself if you can get to your destination on foot, by bicycle or by public transit. If you do have to drive, try to combine errands. Maybe start with a simple goal: I will eliminate one or two car trips each week. You?d be surprised how easy this is. A change in food shopping is another great way to start. If you walk or cycle to get groceries, you'll eat more fresh food, have fewer things go rotten in the fridge, and support a local store.

When you do have to drive, make it a fuel efficient car. Duh. If you live in a city, and especially if you work in an office, you don't need to own or regularly drive a SUV or a truck. For the one or two times a year you drive in deep snow or need to transport a horde of people or a pile of furniture, just rent a truck. The rest of the time, the most you need is a sedan, hopefully a small hybrid. Seriously, think about this: it is a choice between one or two hundred bucks on a rental and many extra thousands to buy a big car and pay for extra gas. If you are shopping for a car, use this great fuel efficiency, emissions and cost calculator.

Remember, too, there are also ways to increase of the efficiency of your driving. Keep the tires inflated, shut the air-conditioning, don't slam on the gas at every opportunity, and please, you're not a Formula One racer, don't waste your money on higher octane gas.

In the air:

Ok, relax, I'm not going to tell you to cancel your overseas vacation. But there is no avoiding the fact that air travel is responsible for a large proportion of fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. So what can you do? This may be the time to purchase carbon offsets.

Add up how many miles you flew this year - it's easy, we all belong to frequent flier programs - punch it into a carbon calculator and find out how many tons of CO2 you've emitted. Use that total to determine your donation to Tree Canada, American Forests or one of the many organizations that plants trees or invests in renewable energy to offset carbon emissions

Do yourself and your expense account a favour: cut down on the short cross-country work trips. With this wireless and video technology, is it necessary to fly across the country for a one-hour meeting? Set up a video conference. Save yourself the effort, the sleep. And, academics, let's not get all self-righteous harping about waste in the business world. We can be just as guilty here.