I was thinking the other day about how many electrical appliances run, even when they are not “directly” in use.
I don’t mean simple things like a television on standby, but things that in a sense need power, such as a video recorder or radio-alarm clock.
However much I attempt to reduce my power consumption (or “carbon footprint”), eg. by using bio-fuels or switching to renewable power sources, things still run on electricity.
Take the humble telephone. In the old days they used power from the phone line. These days I use a telephone exchange and cordless phones – all of which require power to run that is not supplied down the phone line. And I can’t turn them off, in case someone rings!
Thinking back to my childhood in the 1970s, I worked out that our house used almost no energy at night whatsoever. There was no video recorder waiting to record, no answerphone waiting for a call. Heating was provided for by a coal-burning boiler, which went out at night and had to be re-lit in the morning. My alarm clock had to be wound up before I went to sleep!
I am pretty sure that the only thing in the house consuming any power at night was the fridge!
Why can things not be so simple today? Our modern society is so reliant on electricity, that instead of finding ways to consume less, we seem to be looking for better ways of producing it.
How about looking into ways of saving it instead?
Low-energy housing – a thing of the past?
Being Green in Germany
Germany was one of the first European countries to start “going green”. Almost everything is recycled. I can remember seeing most things that are now recycled in the UK being collected here first: bottles, paper,…
We take batteries to a collection point at the supermarket and even now have to take electrical goods to a central collection point provided by the town.
A lot of the energy here comes from renewable sources – there are many houses here with solar panels and wind farms in the North where the wind is strongest.
But now we are being told by the German government that we should be doing even more: don’t fly on holiday, drive the car less, etc.
Well, I use the train to get to Frankfurt, because it really is the easiest way. But to get to Bad Homburg, which is 10 minutes drive from here, it can take almost an hour to get to where you want to go as it involves changing trains then maybe then taking a bus afterwards.
And although I like travelling long distance by train because I can relax, work, read, etc. – it’s not cheap, even to the stage where it can be cheaper to take a domestec flight than to take the train.
As far as holidays are concerned – I haven’t flown on holiday for 6 years now, although I intend to do so again soon.
What really gets to people here is seeing how much we do, and how little other countries do. We are getting to the stage where people are asking “Why should I cut back even more, if it just gives other states a chance to ignore the problem for longer?”
When you here officials from other countries saying that they have “reduced the increase in the amount of CO2” last year – ie. they produced more, it’s just that the increase was less than the year before, that is when people start asking if we are all on the same planet fighting for the same cause.
How long will this go on, before people in “Green” countries like Germany have had enough and go back to their old ways?
