hey folks.
I love Yes but i wish for LESS in my back yard.
how about coming up w a 2010 goal by looking at 2009 energy bills
-gas for car
-electricity for home
-heating for home
-perhaps even think about items purchased and their embodied energy.
-etc.
and cutting your 2010 footprint.
make it like a bowling league, a book club, a competition.
you vow, you make it happen, you celebrate! you publicize and have
utne rank you as top progressive city in the country, again.
don't just drive a hybrid, drive it half as many miles. that is a
quadroupling of efficiency. that is the reverse exponential we so
desperately need!
can't afford a hybrid, drive 55mph max with your tires filled (each
doubling in speed is a quadroupling of wind resistance reducing your
efficiency).
can't afford a car, well then, good for you. the human body is
extremely efficient. taking the elevator uses 16 times the energy
than if you walk the stairs - (plus it pumps oxygen into my brain and
helps me think.)
enlist others and showcase your results in 2011 so to empower others
to follow suit w your innovative ideas. make a book, a collective
blog, a "how to do what we did", design a simple accounting system for
others to follow... spread the efficiency like a healthy plague, a map
of nothingness, no smog, no warming potential. a victory of absence!
a celebration of not used! an insistence it is the most social
justice. a pride of ultimately sharing. an invisible assertion. the
making of NO THING, the slowing of gears not of content, but of
quantity. simplicity -she runs w a coy smile.
while NY ranks 4th from the bottom in per capita GHG emissions in our
country, that is namely due to the intense energy efficiency of the
city of New York. But as a whole state, we are FAR from producing our
own current energy needs, even if we include the biomass, wind and
solar potentials.
so, the most progressive thing to do, is to reduce consumption.
it saves the limited natural resources
it prolongs our chances to use these resources to support the
technologies we want in the future.
it reduces air emissions such as particulate matter impacting asthma,
dioxin forcing immune and cancer disorders, and CO2 for climate change.
it protects forests from being cut down for fuel, it reduces pressure
on agriculture, it puts less wear and tear on our roads which require
energy to rebuilt, etc etc etc.
saying nothing about war, global equity, or basic decency.
i know i am preaching to the choir. but with all my heart, we have
got to make efficiency sexy. put conserve back into conservative.
make small tasteful.
and as we become more efficient, all these other technologies such as
wind, solar, hydro, bioenergy etc will be able to play a larger part
(ie, you make the pie smaller, these small parts take on bigger
proportional slices) and as they play a larger part, they'll be more
financially viable. if you only use a little, you may be willing to
pay more. supply and demand curves can be read many ways. not just
more for less. let's take back the slogans and demand less for more!
mad love from afar...
j
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