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["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

 On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 9:58 PM,  <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com> wrote:

> Ah, well, and more's the pity, something along those lines is what I would
> suspect.
>
> I wasn't referring to conservation, but rather a perpendicular, right angle
> turn away from a life whose quality is measured by the extent of energy
> consumption.

If you expect that from any presidential candidate, don't hold your
breath. That sort of thinking and action is going to come from people
who are looking at energy costs in their own lives. It's going to work
its way up. I know, I know, the Lynda-James contingency is going to
froth about politiicians and their evil ways. But, the best thing
about the the Obama campaign is that he's adopted the Howard Dean
approach of going for every state and going for local empowerment.
People who are not just sending in their dollars, but canvassing door
to door are a lot more tuned in to what their fellow citizens are
saying, thinking and doing. This is going to give ordinary people
extraordinary influence.
>
> As you can see, in this, I am from another planet entirely.  I mean taking
> satisfaction, pride, accomplishment in NOT using energy, not mirthlessly 
> hitting
> our toe with the hammer of conservation.

I'm happy to tell you that you aren't really, from another planet that
is. I can't believe how rapidly the people at my workplace have
figured out what has to be done. Even our brain-dead management is
thinking that a 4-day work week, shut the building down for three days
might be a good idea. Some state agencies now allow their employees to
work from home many days of the week. Our contract permits 4-day work
weeks already, but HR has recently acted like these were invented by
the devil. Several of my coworkers have applied (I haven't only
because I'm still flexing my time so I can go to physical therapy, but
once I'm done with that I will too).
>
> Not that we need higher MPG but rather reexamine our desires to go zipping
> about everywhere all the time.

For my job category, the state of Georgia allowed eveyone to work from
home all but one day a week. Because of this, they were able to clear
their backlog up in a couple of years. We cleared ours up by working
in the office for 15 and 20 hours at a time. I spent 20 years
freelancing before I became a cubicle slave, and I totally understand
why not coming in made a backlog go away. When I was billing freelance
hours, I worked about 6 hours a day (with suitable breaks to milk
goats, go for a walk with the border collies, etc. If a pressurized
situation arose, I could work for 15 hours, no problem. But, if I have
to drive a half hour to town and deal with other people that 15 hours
of work time gets reduced and so does my output even when I'm working.

> Not that we need new sources of heating and cooling, but that we get some
> thrill out of being made of sterner stuff.

We could use some better engineering in our building. Summer and
winter, the top 3 floors of the building I'm in (I'm in the 3rd, which
I hear is paradise compared to the 6th floor) are so hot that people
who don't have to great the public wear shorts. Some of those do too.
One would think there was an energy savings in here, at least in the
winter.

Marie