Dickens had an unsurpassed ability to create and make us fully dislike despicable characters. Ebenezer Scrooge was one of the best / worst.
Mean. Stingy. Crabby. Bereft of emotion and humor.
We love to hate Scrooge. And he deserved to have his scorn scared out of him by those ghosts.
Didn't he?
Except, once he is scared into reforming he goes on a spending spree to make everybody happy and to keep Tiny Tim from an early grave. That makes him a good guy.
Doesn't it?
We all love the big spender! Big spenders are especially popular at Christmas, right?
Maybe not.
I stumbled upon a 2004 Slate column written by Steven E. Landsburg titled: What I Like About Scrooge. Landsburg's premise is that being stingy is a good thing from a resources standpoint:
"In this whole world, there is nobody more generous than the miser—the man who could deplete the world's resources but chooses not to. The only difference between miserliness and philanthropy is that the philanthropist serves a favored few while the miser spreads his largess far and wide."
I don't want to overstretch the point but, thinking about energy, we could all probably be more sensible in what and how much we use. Especially at Christmas -(or whatever holiday you may celebrate but Christmas seems to bring out the worst in energy wasters).
How about this for a simple lighting display?
For more interesting and some freakish examples have a look at uglychristmaslights.com.
Even with the overdone and wasteful displays, the environmental and energy efficiency messages seem to be taking firmer root. Maybe even more sincere.
To promote sustainability, Gorman Richardson Architects in Hopkinton Massachusetts, have been sending me a daily "Holiday Card" email. The series called "Twelve Days of Green" promotes conservation, energy efficiency and opportunities for individual action.
"On the first day of green...
...my true love replaced all the light bulbs in the house with compact fluorescent bulbs. Each bulb will save over $30 in electricity costs and save 2000 times their own weight in greenhouse gases.""If every household in NE changed just one light bulb to an Energy Star rated bulb, the savings would equal over $45M in energy costs in one year."
They say that when General Electric activated the energy saver mode on every PC, fax and copy machine, they saved about $2.5 million in annual energy costs and freed up enough juice for about 23,000 US homes.
Scroogish of them. Be a miser. Use less energy. Oh, and make some available for the masses as a sideline.
Other tip sources from GR include:
- http://www.thedailygreen.com/going-green/tips/7060 :
" LCDs are up to 66% more energy efficient than CRTs, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. LCDs are also upwards of 80% smaller in size and weight, leading to fuel savings in shipping. LCDs produce less heat, meaning you'll need less AC to keep cool."
- Choose green products when renovating. Recycle used materials, appliances, etc.
www.usgbc.org for more information. And www.greenhome.com for ideas.
- http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/sq3.html to find out how
much water you use each day.
- www.fueleconomy.gov for gas saving tips.
Lots of tips in the newspapers recently too. For example, LED Christmas lights use about 10% of the energy compared to the standard incandescent type. The national tree behind the White House is lit this year with LED lights. So is Rockefeller Center. Their "tree's 30,000 LED lights are strung on five miles of wire and will reduce the tree's energy consumption by about 63%."
I found a great bit about Rockefeller Center at the Dept. of Energy site.
For Rockefeller Center,... the Christmas tree is just the most visible aspect to an energy efficient makeover. Up on the rooftop of 35 Rockefeller Plaza is ... a new 70-kilowatt solar power system, using 363 solar panels provided by GE Energy. And any airborne sleighs will have to avoid landing on Radio City Music Hall, because it now sports an 18,000-square-foot green roof The green roof, consisting of desert plants that require little water, will have a cooling effect on midtown Manhattan and will keep more than half a million gallons of water out of New York's storm water and wastewater system. And last but not least, a new ice making and storage plant will make ice at night, when energy demand is low, and use it for cooling Rockefeller Center during the day. So even when the skating rink closes for the year, there will still be ice at Rockefeller Center!
Getting pretty creative in mid-town, aren't they?
Pretty soon, there'll be more Scrooges in Manhattan and all the boys on Wall Street will be conserving away so there is more of everything to go around.
Misers.
That's the spirit.
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