Simple engineering
As average Americans, my family tries to minimize our energy bill. Not only is it good for the environment, but we also like to save as much as we can. Anyway, over the summer, one of the things I did was to thoroughly insulate the the one floor in our house from the crawlspace under the house. Yes, it was a pain, but that's not the point; the point is that last year our energy bill(s) for the month of September, for example, was over two hundred dollars, and this year, we only spent about seventy dollars. We used technology at hand, nothing fancy or state-of-the-art, and we sliced off nearly two thirds of our spending.
I think this relates readily to the book The Shock of the Old. I am sure our house is not the only house in the area, even on our block, that could have used better insulation. If everyone were to simply use the technology (insulation) we do have, an "energy crisis," such as the one we find ourselves in now, would be laughable, and no one (no politician, at least) would ever think to cover the expenses of, for instance, the proposals of President-elect Obama. Ultimately, when presented with a problem such as the enery crisis, we need to recognize that research is not the only answer. From the viewpoint of "human advancement," however, it probably is the most appealing, but from a simple economic viewpoint, effeciently using stuff that we already have in ways that we already know is considerably more than just another option.
Posted at 12:08AM Dec 03, 2008 by advargas in General | Comments[0]