Post by Dave on Jun 8, 2011 11:09:39 GMT -5
Power
not exactly green
My local electrical utility will stop at nothing to
get me to conserve energy. In today's mail was a
report comparing my energy usage last summer to
that of my neighbors. The amount of kilowatt
hours I burned up is evidently in stark contrast to
the anemic consumption by other families up and
down my street. Not only was my flagrant devil-
may-care electrical usage exposed by a
comparison to the entire town, but also to those
people near me who the utility company calls my
Efficient Neighbors.
All of this is confidential, according to the power
company, but I can guess the identy of most of the Efficient
Neighbors because it's quite easy to pick them out.
They have sweat stains under their arms (and
sometimes elsewhere) on just about all of their
summer clothing. These are the folks you
sometimes see sleeping out on their porches or on
the roofs of their garages on hot and sticky August
nights. Rather than run their air conditioning,
Efficient Neighbors choose instead to tough it out
and find their cool elsewhere while the rest of us
are safely tucked in our beds with a blanket over
us, the air conditioning turned up to high. Now
that the Power Company has exposed these poor
folks as conservationists, I no longer worry their
A.C. is off because of lost jobs or other financial
setbacks.
My Efficient Neighbors turn their heat down in
the winter and sit around watching TV while
wearing those Obi-Wan Kenobi robes as seen on
TV, the kind in which you can hold and sip a Hot
Chocolate while keeping your hands covered if
you're careful. You can bring the cup inside the
robe if you like danger, but that voids the
warranty. These same neighbors achieve gasoline
efficiency by looking for routes to the Organic
Store that are mostly downhill. Sure, they have to
drive back home uphill, but to save fuel they make
the kids get out and walk.
The Power Company didn't announce a name for
my kind of power glutton. Maybe they would call
me an Energy Abuser. I leave lights on in the
cellar because I'm planning to go right back down
as soon as I grab another cup of coffee from the
pot I keep running continuously. I turn the heat
and the air conditioning up to high, not usually at
the same time, and let my engine idle in the
driveway to warm the car up before taking off by
flooring the accelerator. I throw away batteries
before they become exhausted just to be sure my
flashlight never starts to go dim and I've been
known to fall asleep in front of the TV late at
night and let it burn up the kilowatt hours until
dawn.
Just as you can pick out the nerdy Efficient
Neighbors by their sweat and tears, us Energy
Abusers are also apparent to all but the most
casual observer. Usually our homes are well lit by
incandescent bulbs and our eyes are not all
squinty from trying to read in dim light or the
yellow glare of the new bulbs that look like soft
ice cream cones. We leave the porch light
burning all evening because our kids will be
coming home at eleven. And if we just stopped
by your house to drop something off, we left the
car running in the driveway. Often, our power
bills are hand delivered by an officer of the power
company.
"We're here to help you save," says my power
company's advertising. "We're not a company of
businessmen," it goes on, "we're a company of
conservationists!" This always makes me feel like
vomiting. Their plan calls for embarrassing me
into using less power while they appeal to the
State Utilities Commission to raise rates to “help
customers to conserve.” Then they can do less
work to produce less power and make more
money while we’re getting screwed.
David Griffin Copyright 2011
not exactly green
My local electrical utility will stop at nothing to
get me to conserve energy. In today's mail was a
report comparing my energy usage last summer to
that of my neighbors. The amount of kilowatt
hours I burned up is evidently in stark contrast to
the anemic consumption by other families up and
down my street. Not only was my flagrant devil-
may-care electrical usage exposed by a
comparison to the entire town, but also to those
people near me who the utility company calls my
Efficient Neighbors.
All of this is confidential, according to the power
company, but I can guess the identy of most of the Efficient
Neighbors because it's quite easy to pick them out.
They have sweat stains under their arms (and
sometimes elsewhere) on just about all of their
summer clothing. These are the folks you
sometimes see sleeping out on their porches or on
the roofs of their garages on hot and sticky August
nights. Rather than run their air conditioning,
Efficient Neighbors choose instead to tough it out
and find their cool elsewhere while the rest of us
are safely tucked in our beds with a blanket over
us, the air conditioning turned up to high. Now
that the Power Company has exposed these poor
folks as conservationists, I no longer worry their
A.C. is off because of lost jobs or other financial
setbacks.
My Efficient Neighbors turn their heat down in
the winter and sit around watching TV while
wearing those Obi-Wan Kenobi robes as seen on
TV, the kind in which you can hold and sip a Hot
Chocolate while keeping your hands covered if
you're careful. You can bring the cup inside the
robe if you like danger, but that voids the
warranty. These same neighbors achieve gasoline
efficiency by looking for routes to the Organic
Store that are mostly downhill. Sure, they have to
drive back home uphill, but to save fuel they make
the kids get out and walk.
The Power Company didn't announce a name for
my kind of power glutton. Maybe they would call
me an Energy Abuser. I leave lights on in the
cellar because I'm planning to go right back down
as soon as I grab another cup of coffee from the
pot I keep running continuously. I turn the heat
and the air conditioning up to high, not usually at
the same time, and let my engine idle in the
driveway to warm the car up before taking off by
flooring the accelerator. I throw away batteries
before they become exhausted just to be sure my
flashlight never starts to go dim and I've been
known to fall asleep in front of the TV late at
night and let it burn up the kilowatt hours until
dawn.
Just as you can pick out the nerdy Efficient
Neighbors by their sweat and tears, us Energy
Abusers are also apparent to all but the most
casual observer. Usually our homes are well lit by
incandescent bulbs and our eyes are not all
squinty from trying to read in dim light or the
yellow glare of the new bulbs that look like soft
ice cream cones. We leave the porch light
burning all evening because our kids will be
coming home at eleven. And if we just stopped
by your house to drop something off, we left the
car running in the driveway. Often, our power
bills are hand delivered by an officer of the power
company.
"We're here to help you save," says my power
company's advertising. "We're not a company of
businessmen," it goes on, "we're a company of
conservationists!" This always makes me feel like
vomiting. Their plan calls for embarrassing me
into using less power while they appeal to the
State Utilities Commission to raise rates to “help
customers to conserve.” Then they can do less
work to produce less power and make more
money while we’re getting screwed.
David Griffin Copyright 2011
