Al Gore is really doing it, bringing climate awareness to the doorsteps of
opinion makers and forcing them to consider all of its implications. Of course,
no good deed ever goes unpunished in this country.
Aside from all the sniping about his annual home power bill (which turns out to
be so high partly because he spends an extra five grand or so to buy wind power
and might also have something to do with a vice president's security needs),
lots of the usual "free market uber alles" types are accusing him and all
green-minded folks of forcing them to wear the dreaded "hair shirt" of mandatory
reductions in their energy use.
Incredibly, those who aren't complaining about the sacrifices are indignant
about Gore making it all seem too easy. In Robert J. Samuelson's New York Times
editorial last week titled "Hollywood's Climate Follies," he accuses Gore of
painting the issue as "saints vs. sinners" and failing to acknowledge that "the
lifestyles that produce greenhouse gases are deeply ingrained in modern
economies and societies. ... Those who believe that addressing global warming is
a moral imperative face an equivalent moral imperative to be candid about the
costs, difficulties and uncertainties."
It's hard to tell exactly what triggered Samuelson's outrage, but it seems to be
a line from Gore's Oscar acceptance speech where he said, "We have everything we
need to get started, with the possible exception of the will to act. That's a
renewable resource. Let's renew it."
But what will it take to renew that resource? Everywhere the conventional wisdom
is that Americans will never give up their big cars, big houses, air
conditioning set at 65 degrees on hot summer afternoons and incandescent light
bulbs blazing throughout the house. This is the American way of life, and the
idea that it cannot last seems to drive some people into hysterical fits. Don't
just do something, panic! Al Gore and the greenies want to send us back to the
1970s!
There's no decade more reviled than the 1970s. Everything about it, from the
funky earth-tone fashions, to the granola-chomping hippies, to disco, has been
the butt of countless jokes. What I remember most about the '70s though, was
getting my driver's license and then having to wait in line to buy gas because
OPEC had decided to act like capitalists and charge what the market would bear.
That formative experience set me on a career path concerned with energy and the
environment. It also committed me to lifestyle choices that have led to me to
where I am now -- sitting on a hillside in Oregon just beyond reach of the power
grid.
With all the attention now on what are admittedly going to be the great
challenges and sacrifices that lie ahead, I feel it incumbent to serve as an
ambassador for the American low-energy lifestyle. It's really not so bad, folks.
That said, there's no way in which I feel I am some sort of paragon of
sustainable living. I'm not. I drive a car, I buy too many cheap, imported
consumer goods, and I take lots of hot baths and showers. In many ways, my life
is like that of any typical suburban homeowner of modest means. Except that I
make my own power for 11 months out of the year.
It's only 11 months, because after the rains start in November, it still takes a
month for the creek to rise high enough to run the small hydropower generator
that gets me through the cloudy winter months. So there's a month of running the
gas generator, at least part of the time. But from April to October, there's
plenty of sunshine to keep my batteries charged. And my system is a relatively
small one. I have 700 watts of solar power that cost me about $5,000 to purchase
and install.
My small power system is enough because I have taken several easy measures to
keep my energy use within my means. No. 1 is to turn things off when they are
not in use -- this includes light bulbs as well as the plethora of electronics
and appliances that sit around sucking up standby power. Seventy-five percent of
the electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products
are turned off. Across the United States, this equals the annual output of 12
power plants and costs consumers over $1 billion each year. Buy some power
strips so you can take back control over these "vampire loads."
Light bulbs are also crucial. Lighting is about 25 percent of US electricity
use. Compact fluorescent (CF) light bulbs use about one-third the energy of
incandescent bulbs. I hear a lot of griping about compact fluorescents -- the
color is weird, they're not as bright, etc., and I don't understand it. I've
been using them for ten years now and they have gotten so much better! The old
ones were an awful blue color and they cost 10 or 15 bucks a piece. Now you can
get them in a full spectrum of colors for less than two dollars. I don't miss
incandescents a bit. Except for the sauna -- don't put a CF bulb where it will
get too hot, like a recessed lighting fixture. I'm going to get one of the LED
bulbs for my wood-fired sauna.
My small power system won't allow me to run electric heat or air conditioning. I
have a wood stove for heat that also supplies hot water in the winter, and I
don't need air conditioning here in Oregon. I have a propane refrigerator,
bought back before we added the backup gas generator. I may switch to a
superefficient, electric-powered refrigerator at some point. That leaves
laundry. Luckily, the other member of my household seems to enjoy the trip to
the town laundromat. It's a chance to hang out at the bagel shop and socialize.
Does all this amount to a hair shirt? Am I suffering, or do I feel deprived? No.
When I need light, I have light. I've got a computer, phone and home
entertainment whenever I want it. I stay warm, and I eat good food. I have
friends and neighbors who share my values. We eat home-grown vegetables, play
home-grown music and celebrate life. We eat (gasp!) granola.
I think there was a campaign against the hippies -- I'll never understand why we
got such bad press, except that I think we were bad for business. We tended to
value community over consumerism. But despite the repression, there are many
ways that the hippie ideals have carried through into the mainstream culture.
The back-to-the-land movement may have started with the Foxfire series, that
wonderful compendium of Appalachian traditional arts and crafts, but it ended
with Martha Stewart. The American handcraft tradition is something we still long
for. When we can't afford the shipping for cheap Chinese goods, maybe we'll
support native handcrafters again. One person's hair shirt is another person's
hand-knitted sweater from soft, locally grown Merino wool.
Living with the earth rhythms the way you do off-grid isn't for everyone, and it
doesn't have to be. You don't have to like the hippie style or aesthetic. But
you might have to start looking more Euro or Japanese than you really want to.
The Japanese use half the energy we do, yet still maintain an affluent
lifestyle. Many European countries do the same. We can look to Japan and Europe
for models, but we can also do it our own way.
Now is our chance to develop the American low-energy lifestyle. You can see how
I do it. Multiply my investment by ten and you can outfit a regular suburban
house in California to meet all of its own energy needs plus charge an electric
car. See "The Near-Zero-Energy Home Makeover" in Solar Today. But not everyone
can afford to make that kind of personal investment in solar energy. We have to
pull together to make it happen. It's mostly a matter of changing our
priorities.
The Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has projected that the final
cost of the Iraq war will be at least a trillion dollars. I wondered how much
solar power that money would buy, so I made a quick, back-of-the-envelope
calculation. The installed cost of solar power is currently about $9 a watt, so
$20,000 would buy a 2.2 kilowatt solar power system. That is enough power for a
household with modest needs to spin the meter backward a good portion of the
time. A trillion dollars would put a system like that on 50 million roofs.
Our parents and grandparents rose to the challenges of WWII and retooled our
domestic industries into a finely honed war machine in a matter of months. There
was no whining about "hair shirts" and sacrifice. There's a part of us that
longs to make the kind of noble sacrifice we are called on to do in wartime.
Many, many people are looking at their children today and wondering what they
can do to leave them a world cool enough to live in. They are ready to do
something now but don't know where to start. Here are the first two things
everyone should do right now.
Start by turning things off. That's a very American mode from my growing up.
Parents who lived through the Depression were always telling you to turn the
lights off. Thrift is a virtue.
The other immediate sacrifice we all should make is to devote whatever amount of
time it takes to contact all of our state and federal representatives and
instruct them to start legislating Al Gore's 10-point action plan into reality.
Do it now. There is no time to waste.
Note: Here's my advice for anyone who wants to start investing in a home energy
system now. The variety of federal and state incentives programs is confusing,
so start by going to Findsolar.com, a website supported by the U.S. Department
of Energy and the solar power industry. There you will find a database of
qualified solar installers, along with a handy tool to estimate the size, cost
and payback time of a system that meets your needs, taking into account your
area's solar potential and the state programs you are eligible for. One word of
caution: The estimator asks you to input your current average monthly power bill
as a way of calculating your energy needs. This may lead to a much larger system
than you really need. If you haven't already taken steps to reduce your use, do
that first. In our experience of living off-grid, we have learned that it is
much cheaper to invest in energy-saving light bulbs and appliances than to buy
additional solar modules.