WHO is Chicago’s Greenest person? No, not the most stupid. Being green no longer means being straight off the banana boat, immature and gullible. It means being smart and up with the latest global warming trends.

The Chicago Tribune goes “hunting for the Chicagoan who has the lowest carbon footprint. “

Any luck?

We found him: Ken Dunn, who rides his bike year-round, eats homegrown vegetables and otherwise leads a sustainable lifestyle.

Great. How can we be like Ken?

Ken Dunn, who is considered the greenest person in Chicago, eats discarded or expired food that he stores in his refrigerator.

That’s so green it’s mouldy. But how green is she, what about his agonists? He’s..:

Greener than the social worker who last year commuted 16 miles a day by bike in the dead of winter.

Greener than the woman whose rooftop solar panels generate so much electricity she donates the excess to Commonwealth Edison.

Greener than the Chicago apartment-dweller who composts his own urine and excrement.

He is so green, he’s almost brown:

The toilet is a bucket, with a 30-gallon garbage can nearby for storing human waste layered with sawdust. Vickers has a friend in the suburbs who allows him to park the cans when they fill up. The contents decompose, forming compost.

And this is the future:

Dunn produces only 3,800 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, as compared with the 44,000 pounds produced by the average American

And so will you:

Dunn is already living at roughly the level of carbon emissions that scientists at the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say the average human must achieve by 2100 if we are to avoid dangerous effects of global warming

If you’re looking to invest in the future, go long on buckets, sieves and nosepegs:

On a recent weekday morning, a fitted sheet—hung to dry from the living room door—greeted visitors to Dunn’s upstairs apartment in a Hyde Park two-flat.

Visitors?

Posted: 29th, September 2008 | In: Anorak In New York, Global Warming. Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0