Thomas Friedman of the New York Times today on the matter. While I don’t think much of some of his other opinions I found this piece by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times very much aligned to my own thinking. At some point or another we will have to come to terms with actually conserving energy. In the meantime, however, there is a game going on, and the world consumer is a participant, whether we like it or not. Things you can do to not play include these:
- Don’t travel
- Telecommute
- Don’t use air conditioning
- Live in a house or apartment with good insulation
It was about 29°C outside and 23° inside my home office as I wrote this post. Here’s a little piece of humor I alluded to earlier: we have two gas guzzling cars, but how much does it matter if you don’t drive them? That first bullet is hard for me and for our family, with relatives and friends so far away. My recollection is that an efficient airplane gets you about 20-30 passenger miles per gallon of fuel. As I travel to New Hampshire this week that will be a round trip distance of over 7,500 miles, which equates to about 250 gallons of fuel. Put another way, I normally use about 13 gallons of fuel per month in my car, and so one plane trip to the United States is greater than my entire year’s use of gasoline. This is one of five trips I’ll make across the pond this year, nevermind those we’ve caused relatives to make. I’m as bad as the next person, I suppose.