posted 16 Jan ’06, 3.02pm MST PST on flickr
And now for something not related at all to blogging, twittering, or education technology at all.
Way too long after Al’s Keynote jived movie, I finally got around to doing my small bit and swapping out some of our incandescent light bulbs for fluorescent ones.
We’d already done our bedrooms/.offices, which each have ceiling fan/light combos (and we use 2 bulbs rather than three), but I’ve been eyeballing our other rooms… The kitchen has 6 R30 spots (1/2 were already fluorescent, forgot we bought them), 2 R20 spots over the counter. Then there is track lighting in the dining room and living room, each room with 2 sets of tracks each with 3 spotlights in the R20 size. Then there are these dressing room lights in our bathroom vanities (5 in one room, 6 in another).
Yikes, this is mounting up to a lot of bulbs. So I decided to do this in stages, taking care of the kitchen dining room now (and besides, i cleaned out our Home depot’s supplies of the R20s).
But now I am seeing more. We have sconce lights in the hallway that are halogen. There are some small lamps in the living room, on the end tables. There are some outdoor flood lights. Maybe I live in Times Square, with all this lighting??
So its a small step. With my shift to work from home last year, we already do a part of less impact by downsizing to one car; we’ve taken up composting and growing some of our own vegetables. It’s not nearly the off the grid effort my colleague Bryan Alexander is taking, but as a gleeful, pie in the sky optimist, I think the little efforts can add up.
And how appropriate, just flipped open this month’s Wired to the spread on Global Gas Gauge, that compares world wide cost of gasoline (and converting it to dollars per gallon for comparison to the US). I paid $3.15 recently, and have little complain compared to the $6+ prices in London, Paris, Berlin, Hong Kong. But wow, prices in Baghdad are at $1.19 (of course chances are you will get killed just driving to the pump), $0.17 in Venezuela (but dont be sporting any “W” bumper stickers); Mexico city is a sweet $2.34 (??), and heck Moscow is looking better than Scottsdale ($2.89 there, without the free vodka glasses with a full up).
flickr photo credit to MatthewBradley
The cold fluorescent bulbs also work as pretty decent stand-ins for the hot halogen spots in kitchen fixtures. Here’s a shot of one of my kitchen lights:
It’s pretty telling that high gas prices seem largely tied to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Mexico City should crank the price to about $10/Gal…
hm… wp didn’t like the img tag…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dnorman/519278895/