I just raised the thermostat to 71. It’s cold and our old house has so many ways to let heat out and cold in that it’s a constant battle for comfort.
Sure, we insulated. When we built our family room, the guy who pumped the insulation in told us that we could heat that room with an electric light. We installed an electric heating system. Then, when we received our first winter bill, we unplugged it. That insulation guy lied.
We used a different company to insulate the attic. That insulation was done perfectly. Even the door to the attic and the stairs are insulated. That insulation was an effort to stop the snow from turning to ice at the roof’s edges, which would then melt and seep into the walls. Even with all that insulation, we still have seepage.
As I said, it’s a battle.
In the summer, it’s really no different. The insulated attic has a whole house fan that clicks on when the temperature up there reaches 80 degrees. It is supposed to pull cooler air up through the attic and out the window. It may be doing that, however, we do have to use window fans to be able to sleep at night … again, it’s a battle.
I often wonder how our ancestors weathered temperature swings.
My grandmother, born in 1887, lived a good portion of her life without electric power. When we lived with her in the summer at her little bungalow in Lake Carmel, electricity was available. We had lights, one 40-watt bulb in each room. Most of our life revolved around living without modern conveniences.
We swept the rugs that were covered with the wet tea leaves from yesterdays’ teapot to keep the dust down or we hung them on the line to beat with a wire contraption. We cooked on a kerosene stove …which is one of those two-edged sword things since cleaning pots cooked on this stove was a daunting use of arm power. We made jam and we canned what we grew in the garden on that stove.
There was a cistern of sorts, a giant tank that collected rainwater off the roof and several smaller rain barrels that provided us with non-potable water. My grandfather would heat water over a fire in the backyard for things such as washing dishes (and those awful pots blackened by the kerosene) clothes and bathing. The latter two were accomplished with the lye soap that my grandmother made every year. We washed clothing and ourselves in large galvanized tubs which hung on the back porch when not in use.
Fresh potable water came from a spring two roads away. It was a twice weekly chore to pack up the red wagon with glass gallon jugs to fill at the spring where we learned how to negotiate the nastiness of yellow jackets.
If it was cold, we would put on more clothing; if it was really cold my grandfather would hunt for firewood in the woods behind the house and my grandmother would start a fire in the potbellied stove
We had shelter, clean clothing, good food, memories and lessons to last a life time.
There remains a romance of a sort remembering the gentle self-sufficiency of those times as well as a memory of very small bills for electricity and kerosene.
Which got me to thinking about power, modern life and Puerto Rico. For most of us the power is electricity, which can be generated by any number of sources, some renewable, some not so much. Most electricity is dependent on another source of power, and that is fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels are the result of the power of compression of the remains of organic materials deposited during the Mesozoic Era, between 252 and 66 million years ago. These are non-renewable, finite resources.
I don’t know about you, but I do not have personal access to fossil fuels. I purchase them when I pay my utility bills or fill up at the gas pump. They are developed and controlled by private companies which receive support from government on all levels in various ways, from tax breaks to easements for drilling on specific land or the transport of oil through pipelines across continents. The cost of the electricity that powers our lives is the result of the development and control of fossil fuels by people other than ourselves. The good part of the cost of modern life is a function of the cost of the products that fuel it.
Over the last decades there has been a movement to explore the development of renewable sources of energy – solar, wind power, even the power of waves. It makes sense that solar power is a renewable resource, since without the sun there would be no earth…that’s pretty basic. And as for wind, well, wind comes and goes but there will always be some wind. Some areas, particularly higher elevations, experience a more predictable and stable source of wind.
It makes sense to me to explore finding ways to harvest and store that which is forever renewable rather than depend on something that is not. I am not sure about this, but there may be ways for the individual to manipulate acquisition of power from the sun and the wind without having to purchase it from a company. And then it may be possible to have businesses build wind and solar farms from which individuals can purchase power in the same way we purchase power today.
Some administrations have supported the idea of the development of renewable resources as a critical national interest, investigating how to harvest and store power. Some have not.
The latter make statements like, “when the wind dies down you won’t be able to watch TV.” Or that wind turbines are killing whales …which is simply not true.
Yes, there are aesthetic concerns, but aesthetics are mutable. I personally don’t find solar arrays or wind turbines as ugly. I do find the pollution of land and water with oil spills to be ugly and deadly for the enormous numbers of wildlife and the acres of ocean and land destroyed.
Now, I am not saying that we should give up our current use of fossil fuels. How we lived in the summers at my grandmother’s was an experience beyond value, but I am a child of my time and need the power that allows me to live my life. Our economic system and the maintenance of fossil fuels billionaires depends on this.
So, what about Puerto Rico?
Puerto Rico, basking in the sun of the Caribbean, imports fossil fuels to power its electrical grid. When storms attack this grid, the island and its services are without power, many times for months. Why not find a way to capture the power of the sun, the tradewinds and the sea to free the island from the necessity to import power? The caution to “follow the money” may have some value in understanding.
Today, it’s negative 5 degrees outside and I am still feeling a bit chilly inside. Should I put on another sweater or raise the thermostat? Or buy and install more weatherstripping? I have to deal with the reality of the now.
I have four grandchildren and I can’t pass on the verisimilitude of my summers with my grandmother, but, for their future, it does seem ultimately reasonable to be researching how to harness and store the power of the sun, wind and tides, if not for now, then for the security of future generations and their own versions of billionaires.