The United States uses more energy per capita than any other nation. What are the outcomes of this “addiction” and what can be done in sustainable communities to turn this around?
The environmental impacts of our high energy consumption lifestyles include ozone layer depletions, acid rain, smog, climate change, other forms of pollution and environmental degradation and habitat loss. Our "addiction" to energy is also seen in society with congested roads, urban sprawl, Heat Island Effect, costly inefficiencies in commercial and industrial equipment, weaker local economics and excessive taxes.
Things can be done to turn around our current situation and go towards communities that use less energy which are not dependent on oil and fossil fuels . Citizens and their governments have a ton of power to change current patterns of consumption in two main ways:
-By being energy wise and altering individual behaviors. A large collective amount of individual behaviors equals huge impacts. I got an example of this from the Energy Star website "If every home in America replaced just one incandescent light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified CFL, in one year it would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes. That would prevent the release of greenhouse gas emissions equal to that of about 800,000 cars" (Energy Star site).
-By governmental policies that promote green energy and energy efficiency. This can be seen in several different ways, the government could have rebates for people to get energy efficient products or government could invest in buying green energy.
I learned a new term form the Roseland chapter, "economic multipliers," which is situations where people save money on things that are to business or companies outside the community and instead re-invest the saved money back into the local economy that circulates several times over.
Renewable energy technology is still more expensive then our conventional methods but is getting competitive and more prevalent. Renewable sources of energy can be seen through solar, wind, water, biomass and geothermal. We can get solar energy through photovoltaics or solar thermal energy, water from micro-hydro systems, and biomass energy comes from agricultural plants or organic wastes that we can use as fuel such as bio fuels.
Fun Fact for today: October has apparently been declared National Renewable Energy Month!! You can check out the article about it: www.reuters.com
:) Great post Rebecca!
ReplyDeleteNow you mentioned that a way to change consumption could be that of governmental policies that address green energy and energy efficiency such as rebates for the purchase of such energy reducing products, but I would think that this would only benefit the individuals that could afford such items. I do completely understand that this was merely an example :), but sometimes I feel that when government or communities try to implement such proceedings that they neglect to consider that individuals within lower income brackets that may not be able to make such purchases.
Do you feel this is correct?
How does energy waste and addiction to cheap fuel relate to Senator Lugar's topic of energy security?
ReplyDeleteYes I do feel that is correct, that governments can communities overlook low-income residents. There are some ways that this can be remedied such as through Habitat for Humanity projects and linking up with Energy Companies to do low-cost to free audits.
ReplyDeleteSenator Lugar is addressing energy waste and addiction by implementing this new initiative on the topic of energy security titled, Practical Energy and Climate Plan. The goals of this plan are to reduce US foreign dependency on oil, invest more in clean energy, and save people money on energy bills.
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