Going Green
Recently saw an article in a competitors paper (recall or note that I work for a group of newspapers) about a farm somewhere in Kentucky, I want to say to the eastern side of it. Anyway, the nature of the of the farm, with the little bit I read out of the article in passing, sounded a lot like a place for me. The owners/operators are running the farm using draft horse power, growing some produce, all intermixed with solar arrays along the drive to power the parts of the operation that draft power lacks suitability. The article made a point of referring to the 19th and 21st century mix that was involved with the seeming opposites of the operation.
I could so see myself doing just that kind of thing. I do think, as I have hinted at before, there is savings to be had to both the environment and the overall bottom line of a farming operation that uses horses. Of course there is also the huge satisfaction that is achieved with just using life animals with a living breathing soul. I have often thought that having a farm with solar arrays to power the house and the needs of a small shop. This leads me to the thought I have had a few times. How much energy and non-renewable resources are used to create the typical set of solar panels to power a large size house?
I do not know the answer for sure, but I suspect that the overall cost combined with the carbon footprint that is associated with creating the panel probably means it takes a HUGE number of years to fully recovery the total expense. Perhaps I am mistaken certainly I would need to do some research on this to confirm my hunch. Anyway, that has me thinking about a few other things from a green perspective that have really been bugging me for a bit.
Have you noticed the number of stores that have two doors, where you enter the first one in and in theory have a few steps, before opening and entering the second one? The idea here of course is that as you walk across, the door to the outside has closed, limiting the amount of air exchange (and hence energy loss). The loss of said energy is of course from the climate control inside the building. How often is it that one of the doors is propped open? Worse yet, how often is it that both of them are in a braced open position.
It gets worse. The local post office has automatic opening doors. I am not sure, but I believe the automatic opening mechanism was installed for handicap access – which I am 100% supporting. However, the problem is the doors detect a presence at the door and automatically open both doors fully, allowing a huge amount of air exchange, loosing heat in the winter or heating up the air-cooled in the summer.
Sure, right now you are thinking to yourself, what is the big deal about that. However, think about the number of buildings in a typical small town that loose this kind of energy daily. Multiply it by the thousands of buildings across the United States that engage in such an activity.
So where am I going with this? Good question, not so sure myself. I guess my point is, if you are doing things to make your life and world more green, think about just exactly what you are doing and consider a couple of things. First, does the net gain of greenness actually move us toward the more green state of the world or does it have a negative impact. Second, sometimes just the little things, when you add them up, can make a HUGE difference in the overall scheme things, especially if we just consider a few things and start to spread the word just a little bit and get a few more people on the bandwagon.
