These gas prices are killing me. We only drive places now that are downhill. We've had to relocate several times.
I'm shamefully ignorant about energy use and the environment, despite reading the occasional tipster book about being "green." I started using cloth bags for grocery shopping long before bag boys got tough about handing over a plastic one, but that can't be what the war is about. I wish there was a way to harness the energy I've used running back to my car from the grocery store when I forgot the bags, while my groceries slid unattended off the conveyor belt, and scooched perilously toward a genocidal leap off the check out stand. It's some of the only running I do and I hate to waste it.
I've heard that we're the biggest consumers of energy in the world and I believe it. I don't always know what to believe, but it seems wise to consider the source. I remember the first George Bush saying that the caribou in Alaska liked the pipeline, that they "rubbed up against it." I remember thinking that it sounded kind of gross the way he said it and I hoped, with that as the determinant, that he didn't like me. He was an oil man wasn't he? If he had a background in caribou studies I didn't know about it. Something seemed fishy there, and yet, when President Carter told us to wear sweaters, I never once thought that he was in sheep.
Someone told me that I should unplug the appliances that I'm not using until I need them. I wish I could harness the energy from the fit I have when we're about to be late for school and I realize the toast isn't getting brown because the toaster isn't plugged in. Americans have plenty of energy, it's the ability to power things with it we lack. My ten-year-old son has enormous tantrums, probably caused by lead paint in his lunchbox. If somebody could figure out how to plug him into stuff he could power the Electric Light Parade, I'm sure of it.
I'm doing what I think I can. I hang my laundry to dry now. It's time consuming, but there's something about my thick, cottony briefs hanging from a line like pizza dough, that powers the entire neighborhood.
I'm no expert, of course, but wind energy seems like a good idea. I've read Animal Farm. If some goats, sheep, and pigs can do it, why can't we? We're smarter than them. Aren't we? We eat them.
There's always a downside, though. Ted Kennedy doesn't want the wind turbines on the cape, wrecking the ocean view. He should talk to my neighbors. We're all going to have to sacrifice.
See you soon, if you're downhill from us.