Lexington, KY - I've always thought that the Captain Planets and other eco-warriors have, more often than not, handled the ongoing affront to our home planet in a pretty ineffective manner.
Any struggle needs a strong propaganda machine to drum up support from the home base and maybe even convince some naysayers. It's all about branding. It's all about the message. And, unfortunately, at the onset of the green movement, cheerleading "Save the Earth" just didn't do it for a lot of people, for a lot of reasons.
For starters, that battle cry is missing an all-too-important enemy for people to rally against. It's too vague. Save the Earth, but from what shall we save it? Deforestation? Mountaintop removal? Carbon emissions? Suburban sprawl? Disappearing bees? A monstrous island of plastic in the Pacific Ocean?
The answer, of course, is all of the above, but most people don't realize they have the ammunition to fight all of these battles. It's too daunting. That's why orchestrated and specific local initiatives have always been much more successful.
Second, that war whoop is a bit of a misnomer. You have to take a big spoonful of self-importance if you think the human race can drastically alter the course of the third planet from the sun. The real inconvenient truth is that we're the expendable ones. If things get too "bad" here on the surface -
pick your own doomsday scenario -
the Earth can shut down, reboot and start over again. Mother Nature always bats last. She'll be just fine in a couple million years. It's happened before, and life went on -
just not all forms of it.
Instead of "Save the Earth," maybe the bumper stickers should have read "Save the People," because that's what's really at stake here -
humans' ability to survive in an environment that we, as a whole, are influencing.
I think the green movement would have gotten better footing, instead of getting politicized, if the eco-champs had pandered to people's true inclinations. Which isn't altruistic, it's economic. Maybe the bumper stickers should have read, "Save the Money" to be more effective.
It's a sad truth, but people by and large are more concerned with the size of their pocket books than they are with the size of the rain forest or how they keep their homes heated or cooled.
Though it may not be blatantly obvious, all of these things are connected -
especially the correlation between money in the bank and energy at home.
In this issue, we have two stories that deal with energy at home: a feature on Richard Levine's Raven Run Solar House, a beautiful active solar power home -
over 30 years old and still revolutionary -
built by a true pioneer of solar energy here in Lexington; and a feature on home energy audits, where a professional energy consultant will come to a home and evaluate its "envelope" to make suggestions on how the homeowner can, affordably, make changes to reduce wasted energy (and reduce their carbon footprint).
For the home energy audit feature, our Smiley Pete Publishing colleague Sheli Mays graciously opened her home to our editorial team and two energy auditors as a guinea pig for the feature.
Our thanks go out to her and her family, especially her husband, Tommy, who suggested, as a later editorial feature, we come back and hammer out some of the energy auditor's recommendations.