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Current Events Wednesday-My Energy Plan Is To Replace Cars With Dragons

Wow… the weeks seem to go by so fast anymore.  One of these days I’ll wake up old and gray sitting on my porch of my little old house in the middle of a construction project refusing to sell…

And then I’ll get fed up with it all and tie a bunch of balloons to the roof of my house and go on an amazing adventure…

Good movie.  Up!  Loved watching that.  One of my favorite movies…  Good memory associated with that movie... You know what else was a good movie and has that same good memory attached to it? This one...

10 points if you know what movie that is from…

Isn’t he just the most awesome little dragon dude ever!

ooooo an action shot!  Look at him go!

Maybe one day I’ll have a little dragon of my own.

If you think about it, really, dragons would probably be a very energy efficient means of transportation.  Also they would make great pets too!  So it’s like a two birds with one stone… or in this case two dragons.  But no stones… throwing stones is mean!

Better to roll stones.  Those rolling stones.

So yes today’s article is about energy.  NO, get your mind out of the gutter!  I didn’t say AN ORGY… I said ENERGY.

Yesh!  Come on now… Someone’s mind is elsewhere isn’t it?

So yes energy.   Tonights article is:

“An Energy Plan Derailed by Events Is Being Retooled”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/business/energy-environment/31POLICY.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

I’m going to cut the president some slack here.  We all do this… take on more than we can handle.  I always make a list a thousand things long and then end up passing out in the middle of typing on my computer.  I just run out of steam or energy.  It’s what we all do.  There’s just not enough time in the day, or year, or sometimes in this case term.  I think that there are a lot of important issues to focus on.  It’s definitely hard to get side tracked by life, especially when running a country.  Although I’ve never ran a country before.  I used to run cross country… does that count?  No?  Maybe?  Sorta close?

Well so mostly this article is saying what we already know and what’s been talked about a lot of the past few decades.  Basically we need to figure out a way to stop using dirty polluting ways of generating energy and need to focus on cleaner ways.  It’s a complex issue and a lot of it has to do with systems that have been in place for a long time, as well as costs associate with changing those systems.  There are all sorts of political issues as well.  Let’s just say it’s messy.  I think that the root of change comes more at the level of which the person who is using the energy and not the person who is producing it.

I’m just going to talk about what I’ve done so far with my new apartment to conserve.

1. I switched to wind power.  I pay 20 percent more on my electric bill to have my energy replaced by wind power coming from the wind farms in the Poconos and western PA.  I feel pretty good about that.  I think that wind is a great form of energy generation.

2. I bought surge protectors and put all my devices on these instead of plugging straight into the wall.  Even when devices like TV’s and microwaves and laptops are off they still draw a small amount of power.  If you put them on surge protectors and then power off the protector when you leave for the day or go to sleep at night you can save small amounts of power that add up.

3.  I keep my heat down low when I’m not at home.

Those are just a few things.  I think that probably the biggest thing we can do besides finding better ways to generate electricity is to use less of it!  Ultimately I feel like things will probably be slow to change no matter how much push or pull one attempts as far as new ways of generating energy or new ways of using less or creating more efficient devices.

I feel like what will happen is that as resources become more scares for traditional forms of energy generation (Oil, Coal, etc.) then it will become more expensive to use those.  As they become more expensive then the masses will favor the cheaper means… wind, solar, geothermal, hydro electricity.  I think that nuclear is simply too dangerous to be mucking around with.

But ultimately I don’t think it’s something that we need to just wait for a congress or the president to sign into effect.  I think people in general can think of ways to conserve energy!  I’m just super happy that my power is coming from wind now and not yucky coal plants, or dangerous nuclear generators OR from burning trash.  That’s probably the most yucky of them all!

Here’s my biggest thing that I don’t get:

Now, maybe I’m wrong… but check this out…

Look at that picture.  Just look.  Look at the size of the earth… and then look at the size of the sun!

I don’t understand why we can’t figure out a way to get enough energy to power everything on earth from the sun.

It’s like trying to power a watch from the energy provided by the hoover dam.  There’s LOTS of power just coming out of that thing.  We just have to use our noggins to use it properly!

Right?  Right.

I still think we should all just stop driving around in cars and start riding dragons.  Just saying.