Being energy wise is becoming more and more a part of our culture recently. There is a real payoff for concerving energy as we drive and in our homes. Even though oil prices have come down to half of their peak in mid-2008, we know that they could go up again in a hurry.
My vehicle is a large Yukon, which is great for hauling things. Mileage is not so good, but I’ve cut back to making three trips to the office weekly whenever possible. The fuel budget has been helped by that strategy. If it weren’t for the load-carrying capacity I would look for a more fuel-efficient, smaller automobile.
Several years ago we put in extra insulation in our home, and we use a whole house fan to reduce the amount of air conditioning we use. Energy talk on the news and in magazines slowly does have some influence on how we think and act.
Imagine the wasteful expenditure of energy in fighting a wildfire, with Diesel for fuel-guzzling choppers, planes and trucks. Even the evacuation of thousands of families is an unfortunate waste of gasoline. I found some discussion about wildfire prevention and other fire safety issues at the Minutemanfire site. Even when fire buffers had been created, homes with tile roofs have been destroyed in fires, surprisingly.
There’s a lot of wasted energy in the work involved in rebuilding homes demolished by wildfires. So there is a relationship between energy conservation and fire prevention, that we often don’t think much about.
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