Don't Save Energy

A Step Back From the Green Giant

The heading is an exaggeration, I admit, but is to give you a chance to examine your energy life and so, maybe, to make it more worth living. Now that various products, services, regulations, and persuasions are waving a green banner, I invite you to take a breather from this welter.

To do this, I think we need to see in ourselves two distinct motives that are being appealed to -- self interest and altruism. These are both natural enough, but they not only conflict sometimes with each other, they may each make us vulnerable to manipulation. I hope to refine and bolster your motives in such a way that you can use them in a manner that is personally, rather than politically, correct.

Saving Energy As Saving Ourselves Labor

Public utilities and the home appliances they run have developed from the interest we have in saving ourselves from strenuous or time-consuming physical labor. Technology in general serves this function, in fact. By now, when we speak of saving energy, we are referring to these utilities, not our own sweat. But our personal spending of energy is still the bottom line, because whatever kind of work we do is represented by the money that will be spent on utility bills, among other things.

Just as our personal energy is limited, we have found the sources of utility energy to be limited in practice too. So there is a certain scarcity of resources, at least compared to the level of desire we have for them. Pricing is not the only mechanism utilities can use to control the distribution of their limited resources; rationing is another, and sophisticated metering can now put specific energy uses within the long arm of the law to penalize.

Besides legal or direct pocketbook consequences, another energy-use constraint that hits our self-interest (often unexpectedly) is the maintenance and replacement of equipment, the more it is used. The life expectancy of light bulbs and furnaces corresponds to how much they have been run.

This suggests some complications for the person who is looking to "save energy." If widget A does the same thing as widget B, but uses one-fifth the energy, it sounds like a product worth buying. But buying costs you energy -- remember the energy you put out to make that money? And widget A doesn't happen to tell you that it is harder to install, needs more monthly attention, and gives out a little sooner than good old widget B. Some of this fuss is supposed to be made palatable by noting a "payback period."

On a personal level so much of saving energy does not feel like saving energy. Calculating the savings in measureable ways takes some more (personal) energy. Beyond that, so little is capable of being measured. If your body burns more food to keep you warm because you set your thermostat down, who knows how much energy was used to make the additional food you will consume now to make up the difference?

Saving Energy As Conserving a Planet

The other major point of view on saving energy seems more noble. It is concerned more with "we" than "me," more with the big picture than the power bill. Its slant can be environmental, political, or even religious. Though these viewpoints are not at the level of an individual's straightforward self-interest, they are not disinterested. The common good is still being advocated in terms of the self-interest of the community or the cosmos. Implicitly, my narrow interest is supposed to be included, if only I were enlightened enough to see how it is taken care of.

Climate Change

This enlightment is supposed to come though education, mainly in regard to certain issues of the day. Currently, the issue to do with energy that is being pressed upon us most relentlessly is called "climate change." I want to take some page space now to examine the line of argument that contends that our present energy uses are setting us up for catastrophe. Consider the progression of thought:

Assertions	Type of assertion	Comments
A.
CO2 in the air is increasing	Possible fact	Needs complex measurement over undefined time
Some of it is from human activity	Possible fact	Needs complex measurement over undefined time
The planet is warming up	Possible fact	Needs complex measurement over undefined time
Some of the warming is from the added CO2	Possible fact	Needs theory and complex measurement over undefined time
SO...humans cause some of that CO2-caused warming	Deduction	Depends on the truth of all of the assertions above
B.
The warming will cause major coastal submersions	Prediction	Seems probable but needs theory. "Major" is not defined. Note: other consequences may also be predicted, with perhaps similar certainty and similar opportunity for value judgments, both positive and negative (see next assertion).
This submersion is a bad thing	Value judgment	The degree of submersion affects the degree of badness; this is behind the next two assertions. There would be other consequences of warming, and good ones might offset bad ones. Also, some aspects of the submersion might be good.
SO...the part of it from CO2-caused warming is bad (though to a lesser degree)...	Deduction	Depends on the truth of the prediction above and the value judgment above
...and the part of that from humans is bad (though to a still lesser degree)	Deduction	Depends on the truth of the prediction above and the value judgment above
C.
The human part of the CO2-caused part of the submersion will be reduced if their part of the CO2 is reduced	Prediction	Has some probability, but the time frame may also need prediction. That is, a period of submersion might be inevitable even if all human-caused CO2 were stopped immediately. Therefore, some planning toward submersion could be as important as CO2 reduction.
Humans can reduce their part of the CO2	Possible fact	Assumes political will and alternate technologies
SO...humans should do so	Deduction	Depends on all the alleged facts, predictions, and value judgments in A, B, and C. Even so, the badness involved (see B.) would need to be weighed against all other values that humans hold.

I believe I have given the argument its only defensible form. As you can see, the line of reasoning relies on quite a number of steps, and several of these consist of "facts" that are so remote from our direct experience that we must decide which scientists to listen to and which spin on the statistics to adopt. For even if more scientists see a matter as fact, than do not, majority rule is a poor basis for judging truth. (Science isn't what it used to be.) And we don't have to be climate scientists ourselves to have the right to be unconvinced.

The central value judgment in the whole global warming concern is that the projected change in coastlines and regional climates must be bad. This shows an extreme conservatism regarding our world, a conservatism that the world itself has not insisted on. Rather, geologic history shows great, sometimes sudden, changes, and biological history shows great adaptability to those changes. The remodeling of habitats and the extinctions of some life forms are as natural as our own maturing, aging, and dying.

To this, many who are concerned about the environment would reply that they want the world to be spared only the changes brought about by us humans. This divorces human beings from the ecosystem of the world, as if we were an "invasive" non-native species. I grant that we are unique in the pressures we can bring into the picture and often oblivious to the ways this even bites us back. However, I think we distort what our importance is within creation when we imagine powers of destruction we may not have, and when we lose track of what our positive role is on this planet and in the cosmos. There is such a purpose, since we too were created on purpose.

By noting these things, I mean to encourage no return of liberty to the greedy or the careless. However, I am concerned about the new liberty of government to intimidate us with dubious demons like this terrible warming. As usual, the business world too is capitalizing, turning green into its kind of green. Advertisements are happy to hook us with the new vague buzzword "green," even though they won't appeal specifically with phrases like "global warming" or "carbon footprint," since they know many of us see these as inventions comparable to transfat and high fructose corn syrrup. Let the buyer beware.

Using Energy For Living

Saving energy is a notion that is a bit out of order for a living being to hold as a primary concern. By its nature, life involves using energy up, as well as replenishing it. It is not a viscious cycle -- only some of the energy of life is used to renew that energy, such as in gathering food to eat. The rest is for the other purposes of life. These purposes in life should not be neglected when energy use is spoken of or regulated.

We should not let considerations of saving energy enter so persistently into our minds that we forget how to use and spend ourselves (and our machines) for our loved ones and neighbors -- with passion and love, with courage and, yes, with abandon. I confess that I have sometimes, for the sake of saving gas, forgone the impulse to make a quick errand to surprise someone with a gift. Supposedly, I have helped rescue our planet, but I have not made someone gladder to be on it. What's the point of having a planet?

Wasting Energy

Along these lines, if every use of energy resources is now to be scrutinized, any "incorrect" activity of mine is liable to be considered wasteful. Against this I propose that we get used to seeming wasteful. It will seem like the teen at his big-screen game is wasting energy (and time), when he may be honing skills for his maturity. It will seem like I am gassing the planet with the fireplace I have lit, when I am just welcoming a new neighbor into my home. It will seem like a waste for me (or Abe Lincoln) to drive back ten miles in the name of honesty, to return incorrect change I was given (to my favor) at the store. Let your name be slandered for now. In the end, it won't be (Mark 14:3-10).