Each year as the calendar moves toward the new year, I find myself thinking about Dick Cheney. The vice president once called energy conservation a “matter of personal virtue” not part of a national energy plan. It was a backhanded compliment, likening people who practiced conservation to some quaint religious sect — pious but outside the American mainstream.
But just a few years later, public opinion polls show that Americans view energy conservation as patriotic. It’s something we do to preserve our way of life, not lose it.
Cheney is right, though. Conservation is virtuous. It’s what my parents, who grew up during the Great Depression, call being thrifty. They raised seven kids on a pipe coverer’s wages and sent them all to college through their thrifty approach to managing cash — an envelope for groceries — one for bread and milk, another for incidentals, another for things we kids needed. We lived pretty well for a working-class family, and my parents retired young, all thanks to thrift.
Energy conservation offers the same kind of thrift. You save to enhance your life, not yuk it up. In reality, a lot of energy produced in the United States is not used at all. It’s wasted like produce forgotten in the fridge. Here are a few examples from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Your television uses more electricity during the hours it’s turned off than the time when it’s turned on. If you watch television four hours each night, your set actually draws slightly more energy during the 20 hours each day because modern televisions idle in standby mode. That way the picture lights up instantaneously when you turn it on rather than taking a couple of seconds to warm up. This slow draw on your power is called vampire energy. If you can live with a two-second warm-up, you can save a lot of energy and not miss a single show. Those little clocks on microwaves and VCR’s are another example. They suck energy without adding to your quality of life.
An outlet with an on-off switch or a power strip is all you need to eliminate phantom energy drain, even if you just turn all this stuff off at bedtime, you’ll save a lot.
Your washing machine uses 90 percent of its energy to make hot water. Says the DOE: “Unless you’re dealing with oily stains, the warm or cold water setting on your machine will generally do a good job of cleaning your clothes. Switching your temperature setting from hot to warm can cut a load’s energy use in half. Energy saved; way of life intact.
About 20 percent of your house’s electricity goes to indoor lighting. Just using more efficient bulbs can save 50 to 75 percent on energy usage. Same amount of light — no cramp on your way of life.
For outdoor lighting, common sense saves even more energy. That’s because most outdoor lighting does a better job of lighting up the sky than the ground or sidewalk. And the big myth about outdoor lighting is that it deters crime. Evidence, some of it from the U.S. Department of Justice, suggests otherwise, DOJ found no statistical correlation between street lighting and crime. In San Antonio, law enforcement officials have found that darkening the area around public schools had the direct affect of lowering the vandalism rate. Since they reduced the level of lighting on schools, the annual cost of repairs due to vandalism went down from $160,000 to $41,000.
Why the difference between conventional wisdom and reality? Without getting too technical, it boils down to two things. First, the human eye can differentiate only so much contrast between darkness and bright light. When night lighting is too bright, as it usually is in shopping centers and car dealerships, the eye is literally blinded by light. And because a brightly-lighted parking area usually lies between “protected” stores and, say, a police cruiser on rounds out on the road, it can be impossible for police to see criminals standing right in front of a shop.
Full cutoff lighting fixtures point the light on the subject, not up in the sky. Using the right fixtures cuts crime and saves energy, and they cost less to operate but cost the same to buy as other lights. In short, saving energy preserves our way of life.
This list of examples goes on and on. So as we ponder anew year, ponder this. Personal virtue, national energy policy and old-fashioned American thrift go hand in hand.
David Lillard is co-editor the Blue Ridge Press, and he turns off the lights when he leaves the room.
Columns
COLUMN: Time to see the light and save energy
- Columns
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HAMILTON: The SPCA and the pineapple upside-down pie
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GLYNN: Slim chance now for a real thick ice bridge
If you’re not convinced about the unpredictability of Western New York weather, consider that this area was experiencing temperatures in the mid-40s on the 100th anniversary of the ice bridge tragedy in the gorge.
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BRADBERRY: Is Black History Month Still Relevant?
I am uncomfortably recovering and slowly recuperating from a relatively minor, but medically necessary procedure which has kept me out of circulation, out of touch and essentially on my back for a lot longer than I have personally believed was justifiable; however, in this case my opinion matters not; the doctor’s diagnosis and promising prognosis trumped mine, so here I lay almost completely befuddled, nearly unable to pen a clear sentence.
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CONFER: Time to end the NFL’s blackout rule
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CITY BEAT: Stuck on traffic
Sometimes I feel like the traffic signal reporter in Niagara Falls.
Traffic signals have been making a lot of news around here lately. There’s the whole flap about what to do to improve public safety near the Como Restaurant in the 2200 block of Pine Avenue. -
HIGGS: Discussing crime and punishment in the Falls
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GLYNN: Hotel Niagara plan exciting for the Falls
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HAMILTON: BOE and kids, or the SPCA dogs?
There is example after example of otherwise qualified Niagara Falls’ board of education members and staffers lending their time and efforts to organizations outside of the school district’s core business.
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GLYNN: Trust in SPCA shelter must be restored
Stories about the operations at the Niagara SPCA shelter shape the image of sickening and disgusting treatment of animals.
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BRADBERRY: Old medicine and new challenges
Having suffered and recovered from my fair share of illnesses and injuries over the years, I have come to believe that sometimes the treatment and the cure of my condition can seem to be far worse than whatever I may think is ailing me at the moment.
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