Editor’s Note: This column was written prior to Obama’s decision to explore off-shore drilling
Barack ‘Don Quixote’ Obama should leave the windmills to Cervantes and look to off-shore drilling as a solution for our energy crisis.
If Obama really wants to win the golden ring to the highest seat in the land, he needs to change his “Just Say No to Drilling” campaign. His current energy solution includes his advice to keep our tires properly inflated and our cars properly tuned – Eh? What about keeping our homes warmed and lit in the winter?
Let’s face it, windmills and batteries just ain’t gonna cut it come the cold season. When the temperature goes down and we need to boost the thermostat up, it’s not windmill or battery power that will kick start Ole’ Betsy the Boiler — it’s fuel oil and/or natural gas that will do the trick.
In practice, we can limit how much we drive, we can walk or use a bicycle, we can even take public transportation to and from work. But if you live on Staten Island and you commute to anywhere else, public transportation can take days to get to and from, and not for nuthin’, but taking a bike or walking across the Verrazano in the winter is a little cold. And other than burning logs in the middle of our living rooms, the only way to warm up the homestead is fuel oil, natural gas or electric.
So exactly what else does Obama suggest we do? Put on extra clothes, cover our windows with plastic wrap, and bask in the glow from his pearly whites and warm inspiring speeches?
I don’t know about you, but I have come to enjoy heat in the winter, right there alongside indoor plumbing and electric lights at night. Call me silly, but it’s all those little things that make a house a home, especially a warm and comfortable one.
This summer, knowing that Con Ed was going to jack up their rates to the “Are You Serious-for real?” level, my husband and I made a conscious decision to limit our consumption. We kept the temperature on our air-conditioner between 78 and 80, we used fans, we limited the amount of time running the pool filter, we even shut every extra light off, living by candle light, as well as hanging clothes in the basement instead of using the dryer, especially for heavy items like jeans and towels. Even with all our conservation efforts, our bill from June to July skyrocketed by 50 percent. And that was without the 22 percent hike that goes into effect in August.
The other day I watched a show called “Off the Grid.” It’s on that new green channel and stars Les Stroud, AKA, SurvivorMan. It should be renamed Les’s Fairy Tales.
The show centers around Stroud’s purchase of a plot of land in the Canadian wilderness which housed three dilapidated and abandoned cabins, and how he and his wife and two children have converted them to live in. Now, after all his renovations, they are totally Off the Grid (self-reliant), by using only solar panels, windmills and batteries, along with a host of other eco-friendly options, like run-off and rain water for drinking and bathing (they have a well but the bed rock makes it difficult to drill too deep for all their water needs), a composting toilet (don’t ask), and abandoning their car on the main road and hiking through the woods to reach their humble abode. The total cost of the package, setting up the windmills and solar panels, minus buying the land and the renovations, was approximately $15,000 Canadian dollars (about $14,633.45 USD).
Does this Les ‘Grimm’ Stroud realize that there are a lot of people that really don’t have that $15,000 Canadian dollars or otherwise to retro-fit their homes? And besides, do you really want to live with a composting toilet and where would we put huge solar panels and wind mills – on the tops of apartment buildings nestled next to the cable dishes? Many of these eco-friendly celebs that are making a fortune on being “green” have the money in the first place. Everyday Jacks and Jills, you and me, struggle just to get on with everyday living. I’m having a hard enough time keeping up with the cost of food, let alone being ecologically correct.
Not for nuthin’, but if Obama is elected and gets his way, we’ll all be tilting at windmills just to have enough mega watts to run our TVs and cable boxes in order to view these modern Fairy Tales just so we can get more handy tips from Les Stroud.
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