For decades we have been pumping all these hydrocarbons into our atmosphere and now we are on the brink of a global disaster. Now almost everyone understands that something must change, and pronto! As for myself, well, I don’t have a car and live on a (as I see it) bare bones budget; so what can I do as an individual? Moreover, what can we all do as individuals for one another? To start, it all begins with where you live.
My house is basically a Cracker Box quasi-suburban model; one of those built after WW2; probably the very latest in efficient living, then — but now? Hardly! So, what do I do now? Certainly just changing over to more efficient light bulbs and lowering the thermostat are not enough.
The costs of every necessary commodity are so outrageous these days that the only practical thing to do is to plan ahead, and that means making a small investment in the present. Ah, but the present denotes that one act in the immediate. That wasn’t a riddle..lol
So, what could be more immediate and (well) efficient, than the web? After all it is worldwide (or so I’m told). Thus, taking into account that the energy crisis not only effects me and my cat (though, she’ll never tell), but the planet; putting one and the other together + what my ultimate objective was and is, I Googled ‘Efficient Energy’. Of course, I had to slog through a couple hundred ads and various fragmented posts before arriving at Efficient Planet.com.
To make a long story short: given, the inefficiency of my own (and cat’s) domicile, I thought that looking into Solar Paneling might be the direction to go (I don’t have the backyard space for a windmill or Nuclear Power Plant). Apparently, I was correct in my somewhat random choice of the Efficient Planet site. We have great exposure to the sun here (cat upon her window-sil, especially) and I am kind of a D.I.Y. person, so the Efficient Planet e-book: ‘ConvertYour Home to Solar Power’ was really a welcome surprise.
However, as opposed to all those other build-it-yourself ‘talk fast/ see you later infomercial TV spots, Efficient Planet’s ‘Convert Your Home to Solar Power’ is a seriously explicable guide to building and installing your own solar panels and power generators. It is systematic, and has great illustrations, and schematics, to boot!
Not to say, that it is all so easy to convert; there is some labor involved, and I can tell you from experience: your cat will be of no assistance at all! That is unless your plan is to install a scratching post, rather than solar paneling on your roof.
Nonetheless, if you are stuck with ever increasing and decidedly unreasonable home energy costs, like I have been (I won’t count my cat in the mix — for now, anyway), to that degree where you are just about to give up the place, then, by all means do check out the Efficient Planet line of e-book titles, not just ‘Convert Your Home to Solar Power’, but the others, as well.
December 10, 2008 at 3:12 pm
I agree with this article.