Eric Banford wrote:
So we say no to coal, nuclear, gas and oil. Then what? What are we saying yes to? Some rail against wind mills saying they will ruin there view or kill too many birds. And wind mills and solar panels take more energy to create than they produce over their life. Where does that leave us? What do we say YES to?
I've been known to rail against giant windmills - see <http://simonstl.com/random/2008/02/wind_power_as_extractive_indus.html> - and I certainly have my doubts about nuclear power. Solar is appealing, though I have concerns about the availability of ingredients needed to make it giant scale.
At the same time, though, I think a lot of us are saying yes, on a regular basis. It's just that saying yes generates a lot fewer headlines than a protest. What kinds of things am I talking about?
* Passive solar home design. Probably the cheapest, most reliable, and easiest approach to energy savings, though a difficult retrofit - clearly not something the builders of my 1929 house thought about. I'm not sure why this hasn't been built into code, frankly. There are lots of other techniques for house siting and design that make a huge difference as well.
* Wood and other biomass heating. Yes, district heating is hard to do unless you have dense populations, but district heating is only one of many options. Perhaps best of all locally, there's reasonable hope for sustainable forest biomass that doesn't involve clearcutting.
* Insulating, weatherizing, and upgrading. My house uses only 1/3 of the natural gas it used to use, thanks to adding insulation, upgrading the furnace and water heater, and a thermostat that drops the house temperature at night.
* Little things that matter. "Vampire" power drains have been growing for decades, but over the last couple of years people seem to have noticed. Maybe it's the exciting name? It's become a lot easier to find energy-efficient devices than it used to be, and to evaluate which devices actually are efficient.
There was an interesting IJ article last week on a visit from a Danish company talking about "thermal energy district heating" and their country's 30 year shift from a 99% energy importing country to an exporter of energy. In 30 years! While also "decreasing its noxious emissions by 13 percent in 20 years." How's that for leading by example! http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20091118/NEWS01/911180356/1124/Taking-a-lesson-from-the-Danish But we missed that boat. If we had continued on that track in the 70s when we had the chance, maybe we would be in the same boat. But the political climate of the 80s derailed all of the good work spurred by the energy crisis. And here we are today, trying the squeeze gas out of stone and swallowing mountain tops to satisfy our energy thirst.
I was more amazed by the article they had on Corning, and remembered a similar 1970s story around Sunmaster, which collapsed in the 1980s for similar reasons.
There is no silver bullet that will save us, only partial solutions that will ease our decline. Investment in wind and solar seem the only viable direction, even if they are only "energy stores" that hold current input for use 50 or more years from now when fossil fuels are scarce. Maybe they will let us down slowly. Maybe a break through will make them more viable, cheaper to produce. Without focused investment and effort, we will never know.
It's definitely all partial, and perhaps more challenging, only part of the population seems all that interested. I worry that that's actually the bigger problem. As I've cut my bills, the average use has still gone up.
So I implore you, rather than just saying no to fracking and nuclear and coal, think about what you want to say YES to. What do you want in your back yard?
Chickens, ducks, vegetables, trees. That may be too literal a reading of your question, but I think a lot of the answer here will require us all to take a different look at the space around us and how we want to use it.
-- Simon St.Laurent http://simonstl.com/ _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins Questions about the list? ask [email protected] free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
