GLOBAL WARMING? CLIMATE CHANGE?
How prescient is this photo immediately above? What unintended dark comedy from Madison Avenue! The first foto is, of course, the way to go.
Unless you've been stuffed in your cookie jar again, you will know by now that a major meeting of scientists and political leaders met in Paris yesterday and issued an unprecedented warning to the world about the destructive path we have trod all too well in recent years.
The Good News is that the meeting has occurred and the warnings have been heard. The Bad News is that what we have already done in the manner of shitting in our own nest cannot be readily undone. If every automobile on earth were junk piled today, poor Mother Earth and Sky would need about 50 years to clear her throat!
As everything starts at home, herewith is my own tragic little scorecard in the Global warming Shootout:
Good
I walk a lot. I rarely drive the car to pick up groceries, mail a letter or read a book in a coffee shop. (By the way, very few people read books in coffee shops these days. They are on their computers or on their cell phones or chatting with friends or all of the foregoing at once. Although we are told that book sales and library usage is up, there is little public evidence of this. People must be reading under the bed covers at night with a flashlight.)
My car is tiny, fuel efficient, old and well-maintained - a 1993 Mazda 323.
I'd like to own one day a Smart Car. I'd like you to own a Smart Car. I'd like the world to own a Smart Car.
I hate SUV's. Come visit the private school near my house some day. I call it "Our Lady of Perpetual SUV's." Tiny little mother with tiny little kid in giant claymation gas-guzzling, carbon-spewing Monster Truck. Hundreds of them every morning and every afternoon. These are the New Bourgeoisie, suffering as they always have from the disease of the middle class - "STRIVING." What did the Edward G. Robinson character in Key Largo want? As Humphrey Bogart teased him. "Rocko wants more! More of everything." And that is the pathetic, anxious middle class screeching for the latest shoes, stove, HDTV, hideaway. Nowhere is this obsession to climb the imaginary, illusory, unattainable social ladder more evident or more pathetic or more destructive than in the race for a bigger Dumb Car. Get some self respect, you fools and Go Small!
BAD
Most of my negative footprint in the race to destroy the planet comes with my home.
I live alone in a big house. No excuse.
My house is badly insulated and my heating bill in the winter is much too big. The house is heated by baseboard oil pipes, which are run by electricity. I don't often leave lights on needlessly, but I do run this computer all day and I have 3 sound systems and TV.
That's the gist of my score card. What's yours? And what can Industry and government do, or better yet, what might industry and government be willing to do, about this most urgent of problems?
4 comments:
Good idea to switch to a more fuel effecient vehicle. It's everyone making good choices that will have a long term impact on the environment. No more Hummers or SUV's.
The environmental gestapo method of telling us all what to do won't work.
Informed individual choice creates the best results.
The size of your footprint is more to do with where you live than the type of house you have. If (like me) you live in the 'burbs, where transit sucks, you either get on your bike or you have to drive. The nearest coffee shop (just to pick one place from your list at random) is a mile from here - not as the crow flies but in terms of the convoluted route designed by the engineers to keep through traffic out of a residential neighbourhood.
I would have though that upgrading your insulation and putting in programmable thermostats would pay back the investment quite quickly.
And while I like the idea of Smart cars, there are other choices - not just fuel efficient cars but car co-ops, and ride sharing, and so on. Car ownership for people who live urban places should not be considered essential - but it all depends on what your neighborhood density is.
To Stephen & Walter,
Thanks to both of you for your thoughtful comments.
I think what becomes clear is that there are 100,000 things big & small that we can all choose to do - CHOOSE being the operative word.
Many of those actions might be immediate and personal. Then, beyond that, we need to press upon the sleepyheads in government and the conquerors in industry to find new ways of doing what they do as well.
Cheers,
David
To deal with global warming, we need to challenge the status quo and get out of our comfort zone. Who do you think stands to benefit from fossil fuel other than Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, BP, and GM? Check this out: http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.html . The value proposition to the general public is not a matter of revenue but convenience. Face it, we are just too darn lazy to walk down the block for a quart of milk.
Technology is leap-frogging forward and many are being commercialized. As an engineer and enterpreneur, I am excited to be involved with solid-state lighting and renewable energy.
In a 2002 report on Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) for general illumination sponsored by the US Dept. of Energy, this new form of lighting has the potential benefits to the environment and the US economy as follows:
* A 50% decrease in the electricity used for lighting, or a savings of 300 TW-hr/yr, or US $25 billion/yr.
* A freeing-up of over 30 GW of electric generating capacity for other uses, or, alternatively, elimination of the need for 30 power generating plants.
* A 50% decrease in the carbon emissions created during generation of electricity for lighting, or 25 million tons/yr.
I challenge all your blog viewers to consider alternatives. Why do we buy more expensive organic vegetables? Because they are healthier and taste better. New technologies like solid-state lighting will be more expensive than your $1.50 light bulb imported from China or Mexico. But they are more energy efficient, waste little in heat, and have 50 times the life -span.
Remember, there are always alternatives and the choice is yours.
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