Save money, energy and pollute less. . . welcome to the New World

Reposting some oldies. . . .


Welcome to the New World. I've been saying that a lot lately. Since the election of O-Man, I feel like we really are living in a New World. Imagine what it would be like right now if we'd been relegated to the hell of looking forward to a McCain-Palin administration? What would be different except there would be so many more of us who felt desperate and hopeless. So yes, we really have entered into a New World, but that new world has broader ramifications than just having a liberal, intellectual, person of color in the White House. The two biggest things I see in our future, on a personal basis, is that each and every one of us is going to have to learn to behave in two new and different ways.

1. We've got to start working in a personal way to protect our environment. Each of us can do things in our daily life to make a difference. We can cut nack on the amount of electricity we use. We can cut back on our gas consumption. We can cut back on the amount of trash we send to landfills. We can eat more wisely which will benefit the Earth and our bodies. There are so many things we can do and if everyone does, it will change the world. Welcome to the New World.

2. We've got to quit spending money like mad idiots and riding the merry-go-round of consumerism. Yea, it will fuck up the economy for a while. A lot of rich people will lose their asses and a lot of not so rich people will lose even more than their asses, but we've got to stop this insanity. We don't need all the bullshit we're buying.
We also don't need our government to fund all the bullshit they're funding. These motherfuckers are spending 100s of billions of dollars like my granddaddy used to spend nickles on his grandkids.

Here are some of the things I'm doing:
I'm driving less. I'm consolidating trips. I'm just not making a lot of trips I used to. It's difficult to do when you live 2 miles off the hard road and over ten miles from the nearest convenience store and 20 miles from the nearest town, but then again, if I can cut out one or two trips a week, it really mkes a difference.
i've got a light fixture in my dining room and another in my bedroom that have six bulbs in each of them. When I'm home just doing regular stuff, I don't need six, sixty watt bulbs burning over my ass, so I've unscrewed all but one of them in each fixture and replaced that one with one of those newfangled flourescent screw in bulbs. So instead of burning six sixty watt bulbs, I'm burning one 40 watt flourescent. When folks come over for dinner I screw them all in. . . the lightbulbs. I've done the same thing with the light over my bathroom vanity. I don't need all six of them burning so I've unscrewed four of them. That will not only use a lot less electricity, it will cost me a lot less on my electric bill. See, all this works both ways.

The less bullshit I buy, the less industrial pollution is occurring. The less electricity I pay for, the less pollution occurs.

There are lots of things I really need to do. I need to quit using so many plastic bag and use more of those cheap reusable plastic containers. I need to put some more insulation around my front door. I need to change the air filter in my truck. I need to quit buying gallon jugs of drinking water and start using reusable containers (my well sucks).

Other things I've done. . . turned down the temperature of my hot water heater. Nobody needs scalding hot water coming out of their faucet. Close off rooms that aren't in use. I've got two rooms that don't need to be heated since nobody uses them regularly and no water lines run through or under them. Turn down the heat at night.

Bottom line: There are lots of things we can all do to save energy, cut pollution and spend less money.