by Elaine Gallagher, via Rocky Mountain Institute
Where does your energy come from? Although I live in Colorado now, I grew up in East Tennessee, where many people still assume their power is fairly clean, dominated by 90-year-old hydroelectric plants. In truth, more than 50 percent of my family’s electricity was generated from coal, and still is. I didn’t think about it much.
What price are we paying for energy apathy? What price will our children pay? As a child, I watched coal-seamed mountaintops disappear in the face of an energy crisis. Potentially potable water now goes to the highest bidders for gas and oil extraction, despite recording-breaking drought. Last month marked the second anniversary of BP’s Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, and the Gulf Coast ecology and economy are slowly recovering. Deforestation, now contributing more to greenhouse gas emissions than transportation, is increasing in previously protected areas as a result of oil and gas exploration and extraction.
n an age of anthropogenic deforestation and wetlands loss, with only about 61 trees per capita on Earth, can we really afford to pay the price that this industry demands? Can we guarantee that our descendants will inherit a thriving planet? A recent survey says that only 24 percent of Americans are knowledgeable about energy. We know more about Kim Kardashian than about the energy that directly affects us, whether we want to or not.
To overcome energy apathy, the best remedy is knowledge. Understand the evolution of energy and its path from conservation of limited natural fuels such as whale oil, to the height of conspicuous consumption throughout the industrial age, to the innovation of 21st century clean energy, and finally to efficiency—beautifully engineered systems, buildings, cities, and machines.
Efficiency is yet a relatively untapped energy source—often forgotten in the face of shiny solar arrays and wind farms. RMI’s research for Reinventing Fire reveals $5 trillion (with twelve zeros) in U.S. energy efficiency savings sitting on the table waiting to be claimed—more if we can move more quickly toward efficiency. That’s $3,205 per person in today’s dollars unrealized—a high fiscal price to pay for energy apathy and just the tip of the iceberg.
We can choose not to pay that price.
Energy efficiency is a powerful economic driver in the face of a slow recovery. It has the potential to generate many jobs in a struggling construction sector. Deep energy retrofits increase property values and revitalize neighborhoods, because this requires a comprehensive approach to reducing energy while improving the owner and occupant experience. Efficiency drives research and innovation, resulting in new technologies with potential for increased American manufacturing and continuous job creation.
Well-engineered, efficient buildings, cities, and systems reflect the highest evolution of energy. They are beautiful and simple, often emulating nature’s own processes and improving quality of life. Energy efficiency isn’t only about high-tech air conditioners; it’s not just batteries and electrons. It is manifested in living and work spaces turned to the outdoors, walkable cities, bike paths that keep us connected physically and culturally, eating fresh and delicious regional foods, daylight pouring into a workplace where ideas bloom like the trees that shade the building.
Some say energy efficiency isn’t sexy, so it’s a hard sell. I think it’s very exciting, and it’s why I come to work every day. It carries tremendous potential for good things, including the potential to cure the world of energy apathy.
Elaine Gallagher is a Senior Consultant with Rocky Mountain Institute. This piece was originally published at RMI’s Solutions Blog and was reprinted with permission.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
I was in New York wandering around the UN Headquarters and I came across an exhibit about climate change. I was expecting the usual: 300 ppm, melting glaciers, rising seas, and charts and graphs! There would definitely be charts and graphs. But there was none of that. The exhibit told the story of how weird weather patterns and animal migrations were devastating these small isolated communities all over the world. People were actually dying. I thought “someone should really do something about this!”
When I got home, I decided to do my part and try to convert 1 climate denier at a time. So I read enough about the subject to know more than the average person and took to the streets. I tried arguing with my conservative friends, didn’t work. I tried arguing with relatives, didn’t work. I tried arguing with coworkers, didn’t work. It got to the point where I was picking arguments with random people at bars. Still. Didn’t. Work.
I had failed. Some poor village in the Andes was going to starve to death because I couldn’t convince 1 person. So I stopped trying and decided to think about something else.
A few things I think I learned:
A) The only people that agreed with me were already on my side. The people’s opinions I was trying to change had had their viewpoints hammered into them for years, by politics, religion, media, w/e, and a few facts weren’t going to change their minds.
B) People only pretend to be rational. I’m really not sure how people do make their decisions, but I’m pretty sure rationality plays a very small role.
C) Aim for the heart not for the head. This is the part I messed up on. If you want to raise someone to action or convert them from the other side, you need more than just solid arguments. You need really impactful stories in order to win people over. Better yet if they are true.
tl:dr: people are irrational and don’t listen to arguments, but really like stories.
The people you really need to convert are the Senators and Representatives in the US Congress who are blocking the actions that everyone knows are urgently needed.
It’s not difficult to convert them. All you need is millions of dollars with which to make campaign contributions.
No sadly, it would take far, far more to buy the Senate. The millions of $$$ is just the current bid in the power auction some refer to as Elections.
Big Oil could easily spend 1,000x more and still remain profitable. People act in their self-interest, as does big business. Now if you could change their perception of what’s in their own self-interest, well then…
That’s the trick, isn’t it?
Yep, a lot of apathy and ignorance about energy for our homes and businesses but that ignorance is not limited to energy. Most of us also don’t know much about our food, water, waste disposal, and fuels to power our vehicles. All vital for our children’s future and there are no guarantees our posterity will thrive.
I’m pretty sure no generation in all of history has had any form of guarantee for a thriving posterity. (Thriving posteriors are another matter.) Alas, what “we” (including the vast majority of younglings) seem to be doing now is, in fact, generating a writ-in-stone guarantee that the posterity of the current generation(s) will not only not thrive, they probably won’t even live. I think it improbable that our species will go extinct, but the possibility is quite real, there are too many of us too widely scattered. There will be some havens of relative livability but where those will be is presently indeterminable.
And crowded.
No creature ever existed that requires so much of Earth’s resources to live and creates such a vast waste stream. I agree humans will survive but I am doubtful about civilization as we know it. This window of time from the development of vaccines and chemical fertilizer I think will soon close unless some new technology is developed that will allow us to continue. That technology will need to address a long list of problems with global climate disruption at the top, writ large in bold type.