Energy Usage
October 18th, 2007I saw a couple of things on my stay in Barcelona that caused me to think about our attitudes towards energy usage and recent attempts to conserve energy for environmental reasons.
I visited a fountain display of lights and music at la Font Magica near the Placa d’Espanya. Such a display that I found both impressive and enjoyable also struck me as an entirely frivolous waste of energy. Surely no real benefit could be claimed to be derived from this regularly repeated displays?
Of course I am not suggesting that anything that has no clear or measurable benefit should be banned or avoided but it made me wonder which energy (or any other important resource) consuming activities should be deemed acceptable and which should not. The doors on the metro didn’t open automatically, a minor inconvenience perhaps but a similarly insignificant energy saving.
How annoying does something have to be before it is deemed worthy of an energy consuming remedy? How impressive does something have to be before it is deemed worthy of spending our precious resources? Is there a metric we should be using to make these decisions?
October 19th, 2007 at 8:05 am
Surely the doors on the Metro weren’t manually controlled because of concerns about energy conservation?
I believe the issue is purely economic, in this case anyway. I would guess that the Font Magica tourist attraction pays its way, and that your Metro tickets were cheap.
Personally, the kind of waste I would like to see tackled is waste that can be overcome simply with existing technology. For example, energy saving bulbs are a great idea. More efficient fuel systems and hybrid vehicles are the way forward. This kind waste is pure in the sense that there really can be no claim, let alone a measure, of its worth.
December 14th, 2007 at 1:15 am
Cow’s account for 14% of all emissions of gas which causes global warming. There’s 1.4 billion of them. Let’s make it mandatory to eat as much beef as possible to stop them from farting so much.
December 14th, 2007 at 1:16 am
What is this nonsense? Whoooooooo do you think you are?
I also wasn’t aware that the doors were only semi-automatic as an energy saving measure, although I suppose it has some marginal benefit in this respect.
Personally, I find one of the biggest hurdles that the cause of energy conservation faces at the moment is the need for legislation in order to inforce the often very minor personal inconveniences that can overall have a large positive benefit on the environment (e.g. sensible recycling, energy conservation, responsible corporate waste disposal policies).
In many cases it is necessary for government or local authorities to make it cheaper to be green than to not be, usually through strategic taxation. The problem is that because governments tend to just dump this money in ‘the pot’ and not redirect it towards environmental projects themselves, this is usually seen as a cynical ploy to raise revenue. I suspect that it often is.
It may be at least partly because people are dumb, but the public needs to be guided and given a positive example, as well as given an incentive. As an illustrative example, people could be encouraged to buy more fuel efficient cards by penally taxing SUVs and other gas-gusslers, but this should be offset by offering grants or tax-breaks for installation of catalytic converters.
Similarly, punitive taxation of motorists needs to be balanced with much greater investment in alternative transport provision. If there is no viable alternative to using a car to get to work, people are going to feel aggrieved, resentful and persecuted by motor taxes and this will surely result in reflected negative feelings towards green policies in general.
Just some thoughts.