Uncle Roger's Notebooks of Daily Life

Energy Gluttony

Texas oil man and would-be dictator King George spoke out yesterday about energy, including the rising cost of fuel and his belief in the need for more nuclear power plants. Last night, Karel talked about this on KGO. His point was that Americans have gotten into the mindset that we somehow deserve cheap and plentiful power, simply because we're 'Murcans. Of course, this is not the case.

We have no more right to cheap power than anyone else and we really ought to learn to share a little better with the rest of the world. Unfortunately, it seems that our area of expertise these days is, as George Carlin put it, killing brown people. We especially love to do that when we get an economic benefit from it as well, as is the case in Iraq.

We whine about gas prices reaching record levels, even though those levels are well below what the rest of the world has been paying for years. Instead, we allow our government and the oil companies to strong-arm the rest of the world to keep our costs low. Changing our habits -- taking public transit, walking, using appropriately-sized vehicles -- is simply not an option.

One of the most egregious examples of our cultural sloth is something most of us never think about. I'm referring to the automatic doors you find in malls, grocery stores, and so on. How lazy have we become, that we cannot open doors for ourselves? I don't know how much energy is required to open a set of mall doors, all day long, day in and day out, but I'm willing to bet it's a noticable amount. Multiply that by the vast number of automatic doors we have in this country and you have a huge energy cost.

Wait, you say, it's not our fault! We would open doors for ourselves if only we were given a chance! Is that so? A lot of restaurants, stores, and office buildings, in order to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, have fitted manually operated doors with switchplates that will cause the doors to open automatically. This is a wonderful service for those who need it.

Unfortunately, I have watched with continual amazement as, time after time, able-bodied people, both in groups and individually press the switch and wait for the door to be opened for them. This generally takes longer than opening the door manually, but these people do it nonetheless. So accustomed are we to having our lives spoon fed to us that we would rather stand in a doorway and wait for a door to be opened than to exert the effort to do it ourselves.

So, while most of us cannot do much about the fully automatic doors at the local grocer's, but we can make a choice not to misuse the powered door intended for those unable to open the door manually. If you have the strength and ability to do so, open the door yourself, rather than wasting energy to have it opened for you.