Hey, 2GreenEnergy — Start Doing and Quit Whining
Bruce writes:
Wake up, if you want to stop pollution, stop polluting yourself and quit blaming the people that enable you to do the dirty work yourself. Take some personal responsibility. Environmental issues are never going to be solved as long as we concentrate on what others should do instead of what we ourselves can do. You have a choice. Stop talking and start doing or quit whining.
Ahem.
It’s certainly true that we form the world in which we live with our purchasing behavior. And I have to admit that, while I’m fairly decent in this department, I could be better.
But, Bruce, I did feel compelled to make a point here on behalf of the entire 2GreenEnergy team. We actually ARE doing; we ARE making a difference. In fact, we’ve helped hundreds of people in countries all over the world connect up and form businesses based around energy efficiency and renewables. I have emails from people in countries I didn’t know existed thanking us for our help. At the same time, we’ve communicated what we believe to be the truth in this space to many hundreds of thousands, creating a better informed, more energy-literate student population and electorate. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished — and we’re just getting started.
Right on, Responsibility is needed not rights to complain. My water bill reflects the 100 gallon per day total for my home having 2 full time home based biz. and 25 people per day visiting and using the restroom! 1.28 GPF and zero drain line blockages. Lets grow up or not complain when mommy (big government) tells us what to do.
Thanks for the response. I did not mean to imply that 2GreenEnergy does not do good things. I’m sure that you do. My post was more to get people in general to see that when they are talking about what other people should or should not do, they are not doing anything of substance in most cases and usually the only result is a lot of anger and no progress. Instead of attacking what others are doing, if people want to change the environment (or for that matter anything) then they should approach it from a positive position. Say here is what I am going to do, here is how you can join in and together we can make a difference by doing these things. In other words, do something positive instead of using up your energy trying to get other people to stop doing something you see as negative negative. You’ll get more done. That kind of leadership will be more productive over the long haul.
Again, when I say you here, I don’t mean 2GreenEnergy in particular, I mean everyone.
This is wonderful advice. I know I post a great deal of rant, and I wish I had more good stuff to write about. That’s why I’m so keen to get started on our “corporate role models” blog which (I hope) is right around the corner. There are so many fine people in corporate settings working their butts off to improve the world whose work needs to be promoted. Again, thanks for you participation.
I am one of the people who actually does things. I have a half dozen projects and experiments going that either save energy or make energy which I use to reduce the amount of grid or fossil fuel energy I use and I have made some fair progress. I don’t have a company. I am just one guy working on everything I can think of all at once so that I can pass along information to others about what does and does not work. It is just a little disturbing to be ridiculed by people that are not doing anything and don’t actually know how any of this works at all. There was a recent article about the ongoing disaster at Fukushima Japan and the celebration the Japanese were having about having shut down the last operating nuclear plant. The comments were pretty eye opening. It turns out that nuclear power amounts to about 1/3 of the total power used in Japan. Some 50 plants. I believe some of these plants will come back online after maintainance but for the moment they are not generating any nuclear power. Comments were made about how much they would regret shutting them down when summer got hot and there was not enough power for air conditioning. I remember that AC is a fairly new development in the history of man and that Japan managed for thousands of years without it. I would comment that they could replace this capacity with solar, wind and maybe tidal power and geothermal and certainly increased efficiency. Questions were asked like “how much power is that?”. A few rough calculations and I guestimated about 38 gigaWatts and further went on to state that was about 173 million solar panels at the current efficiency rates. Well that started up a whole big thing. One guy says I should say that out loud so I can know how crazy I sound, another guy says that is impossible to do, another guy says it’s too inefficient, another guy asks if I realize how much land that would have to cover. So Japan is a leading manufacturer of solar panels and their close neighbor China makes quite a few of them also and are big time manufacturers of wind turbines. Japan is an island and therefore has plenty of shore to have offshore wind and also some substiantial mountains. Last year Japan made 14.3 million panels which is 3 times what they made in 2007. If their production rate does not increase and the panel efficiency does not increase and they don’t buy any panels from anyone else, they will create the replacement capacity in about 12 years. Of course things are always getting more efficient and production is always increasing and I did find articles that they were importing panels and they have been installing wind for years now. So that’s how crazy I sound. AS to land coverage I calculated roughly 50,000 acres but I don’t believe in covering land when you have roofs so based on the fact that I can fit 38 panels on my modest roof which is more than 2 times what I need I figured slightly less than 4.6 million homes and even less if you take advantage of large flat factory and industrial roofs. I know it will take more than that and the sun doesn’t shine 24/7 but wind will help and storage will be developed and efficiency will increase and maybe they will learn to do as I do which is “make hay while the sun is shining”. It was just frustrating to be ridiculed by people who plainly had no idea how this could work while I was typing my responses to them using pure solar power just as I am doing here at 2:30 in the morning using solar power stored in batteries. I am obviously crazy and have no idea what I am talking about.