Physician, heal thyself: Amusing revelations from left-wing planet healer Andy Revkin

After lecturing us for decades about global warming and the evils of fossil fuel, he reveals that since 1996, he's been living in a house with substandard insulation, heated by an unmaintained oil burner.

A Snakeskin Where Insulation Should Be - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com

I’d long sought to cut our energy appetite, but often ran into inertia, confusion or — most often — costs. As a result, after considering expensive alternatives like a geothermal heat pump, I’d reluctantly bought a new tank for heating oil to replace the pair of rusting tanks in the basement of our house, which had been built in 1930 by the family we bought it from in 1996.
...Our oil burner was deemed a good choice, if we keep it well tuned and maintained (something I’ve let slip). Our major appliances were Energy Star approved. I said we’d finally break down and get a stove-like insert for our fireplace (something we sorely missed when the power was knocked out by a blizzard last winter, forcing us to live the “ imposed low-carbon life” for several days).

The biggest surprise was the snakeskin I discovered in a space beneath our attic floorboards where insulation should have been. Even where there was insulation, it was only about two thirds of the insulation value of R-30 that we would need even to meet the minimum modern codes.

Quote by P.J. O'Rourke

"Everybody wants to save the world, but nobody wants to help Mum with the dishes."