These were taken in 2004 — six years ago. In general, Europeans do several little things to conserve energy: motion sensors that turn on lights in public areas, such as apartment building lobbies, when people enter and turn them off when no one's there. You place your motel door key in a slot inside your room to power on lights; when you leave you must remove the card and that means you cannot leave lights burning while the room is vacant. I wonder how much energy we would save if this country did a few simple things like that — mainly, make it easy and almost automatic to save.
But, of course, we Americans don't do rational: We must have a crisis on which to blame a president and absolve ourselves of our profligacy.
You don't need to go to Germany to see wind turbines. Just take a drive across Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma, or the Dakotas. Huge wind farms everywhere with caravans of flatbed semis heading down I80 or I70 to put up even more. Folks in the county are just rubes.
ReplyDeleteGlad to know ... it's been more than 10 years since I've had to drive to Denver or Colorado Springs. I wonder if most of the turbines you see in those states are made by Vestas, the Danish firm that's been in the business since 1979 and has production facilities in Colorado.
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