Climate Change

I have been reading a few books lately! no kidding!! I am devouring all kinds from Climate Change to Peak Oil, Organic Gardening/Permaculture, The End of Growth, The End of Food.... you get the picture - and its a pretty grim one let me tell you - but only if you let it!
Currently the book attached to the end of my nose is "Our Choice" by Al Gore. I devoured his "An Inconvenient Truth" (Which I found better than the doco BTW). Its about how there are solutions to climate change and mostly the carbon dioxide that we - the industrialised era - have made it increase exponentially that it is not even questionable anymore.

He touches on all kinds of things from wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear sources of energy. Living systems and how vitally important they are to our earth and climate, like forests, soil and population! and points out the good and bad of each - but the value I get is 'everyone should do something! and we need to do something YESTERDAY'. Obviously technology will change and things will get cheaper (I think that is debatable! if you count the cost of waiting), but why wait for the cheaper option when you pay in more ways than one today? it doesn't make sense.

I have a couple of one liners I want to share - quoted straight from his book.

HERE HERE - here here and everywhere does the addiction to oil have to be stopped! (Me included)

"The United States is still borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that's got to change."

"In just 10 years, citizens of the US wasted enough aluminium cans to reproduce the world's entire commercial air fleet 25 times"

My favourite and this is so because I am actually doing something (more than one actually) to reduce my footprint.

"The  International Energy Agency (IEA) found that, "On average, an additional $1 invested in more efficient electrical equipment and appliances avoids more than $2 in investment in power generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure"

Now I know that primarily means motors (big and small) - however I have out of my own pocket invested in 16 solar panels that happily, on a sunny day, send power back to the grid at more than double the price it costs me to buy it back at night.

And it doesn't only save me money! 

I love sunny days (although I love and need rain too). I also love watching our power metre going backwards!! I know I am a little weird like that :)

Our solar panels

I am doing my bit. Are you?

Till next I write, bye for now
BW

Not once! not twice - 25 times. That is an insane amount of soda pop! and food, wastage, fast food, subsidies, mass production of grain for fuel, distribution of food worldwide to keep trade deals going?? a whole other chat just waiting to blog out.