Ready or Not, A New Day is Dawning

Last month my electric bill was $102.

That includes all our cooking, lights, heat, and transportation costs. We powered two electric vehicles, and we both work from home using multiple computers at least forty hours a week.

If that sounds like bragging, I'm not. I'm stating facts. Since we included solar panels on our house (a rather modest 5KwH array) and went to fully electric vehicles we have saved a fortune. Not that the buy-in wasn't heavy, it was. The initial cost to change from fossil fuel to renewable energy is high, way too high. Tax breaks help, but if we weren't at a place in our lives where we could invest this kind of money, economics would have kept us paying more and polluting the planet.

So the reason I'm telling you about our amazingly low cost is simple; it makes sense for us to move to a cleaner, renewable, and safer energy system. What doesn't make sense is the resistance to making the change.

While some individuals are lucky enough (like us, and make no mistake this is luck, not some ability we have) to make the switch it wil take a concerted effort by Federal, state, and local government as well as a major change by the public to embrace the change we need to see happen in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change. We're running out of time, folks. And no amount of sticking our heads in the sand will save us from floods, drought, and wind that humans haven't experienced since the last Ice Age.

What can we do if we can't afford solar panels and electric cars? We can do a lot. One, start voting people into office who care about the crisis in front of us. Stop allowing people to justify using fossil fuels. Remind them that we share the planet, and their right to a big gas-guzzling vehicle doesn't supersede your right to live. We can be nice, we we have to be persistent with this message.

We can walk when we need to, cut down on waste, turn off lights when we don't need them. For decades, America has had five percent of the world's population and used fifty percent of her natural resources. We do not have the right to continue doing this.

And most of all, we can start telling government that we are sick of them playing politics with our environment. we need people who will actually help us survive what's coming. So, do what you can, when you can. We are all in this together, we might as well starting acting like it.

Sathwik Thomas