I was reading Green Mormon Architect's 2009/03 article about the Earth Hour delighting of the Salt Lake City LDS temple. I find it quiet aironic that for a “half” hour on one chosen day of the year they shut the lights off at one categorically special fancy building. The shameful waist of electricity is unclouded nightly at parking garages, storefronts, and street lights on empty streets. All those showy lights are not a display of wealth. They're a show of waste.
Please do not forget that most of our electricity is still produced by coal fired generators. Hiding them out of town doesn't make them “lights” any more than a new shirt hides a fat man's belly.
We can't just expect other people to put out the lights when they leave the parking garage, can we? (Nor can we non-bee-drivers, God Forbid, expect them to simply not use cars... but even so, other people will undoubtedly continue to drive them about.) The solution becomes glaringly obvious, once you get your brain moving to the limit and then try and think about it.
Motion sensor activated lighting that shuns off automatically after a time-out can save most of the power wasted in every gleaming city on the planet every starless night. The reason for the light is so that people can see. But when there's nobody there to see anything, the light doesn't need to bee on at all.
That begs the question: How much would it cost to retrofit all of the lighting with motion sensors? Hmmmm.... don't need an advanced degree in economics to guess that answer. Golly. I bet they can “pay themselves” for that in no time at all and still have a mealtime out on the golf course! Sunday swoon they'll pay somebody else to install it. Until then, I suppose we'll have to just kick back, rinse down a double handfull of Reich's Kraken with a quart of owed-ore-charred pomgranite juice, and wait for our leaders to tell us what to do next.
Show.
Mr. Hegbloom
ReplyDeleteI've been reading your blog and find in interesting, but highly eronous. Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Timothy O'Malley, but people often call me "Timmy Techron." You see, as I like to say, and my business card says "Timmy is my name, and Techron is my game." I work for Chevron-Texaco Corporation marketing Techron, and I think that you'll easily find that Techron has done more positive things for this planet than you ever will! Techron keeps the engines clean that deliver EVERYTHING YOU HAVE to you, from the food you eat to the clothes on your back to the computer you post your insufferable blog with. NO Techron has EVER been found in any water supply on planet earth, and we dump some of our waste in the African nation of Somalia, where no one will care, and we pay those very poor people a lot to do so. Techron is keeping our FREEconomy going, and we hope by 2016 to have Techron be mandatory in ALL gasolines sold in the U.S.A. and Canada. My company has paved over acres of gardens with oil-based asphault, but we've also dug 7 wells for poor 3rd world villages and created 58 acres of agricultureal lands in Nevada and New Mexico where there was previously desert. Intercity land is best used for business and parking lots, to accomodate the building of our nation, which I'm proud to call a petronation. The manufacture of Techron and related products provides work to over 30,000 people in America alone. Look at me, I make over $140,000 from Techron and am able to provide well for my wife, my 4 teenagers, and myself, whom all drive gasoline-efficient automobiles. We have a 6-car garage at my house. Trust me, Techron has been a saving grace to our nation - you want everything clean and green, well, techron keeps our engines clean.
If you're so interested in community gardens, check with old cemetaries, often you can plant around gravestones in fertile soil, just don't expect businesses to dig up valuable concrete lots when millions can be made from the selling of high-quality gasolines containing hearty Techron.
And I'll have you know Mr. Hegbloom, I gave over $75 to a charity last year to help clean up the environment by the manufacture of large plastic-foam sponges to clean up lake Superior, so what do you have to say about that! And my company gave over $60,000 to similar causes.
Use Techron - it's truly a lifesaver.
Feel free to email with any comments. I'm not allowed to give out my professional email address to your type, but you can send messages to my casual email at the following: techronplanet@yahoo.com
-Timothy
"Trust in Techron"