Editorial

The next big thing

It is really strange, with gasoline at $1.30 a litre, to see vehicles still left idling outside stores in Slave Lake.
It must be confusing, too, to youngsters who have been hearing messages about conservation, wise use of resources generally and of course the evils of pollution.
Yet this seems to be the lifestyle of a certain number of our friends and neighbours, even in summer. God forbid that they should have to go for more than a few seconds without the comfort of air conditioning. Or in winter, without the comfort of a warm truck cab three seconds from the door of a warm building.
It’s all about maintaining a certain lifestyle, and if you can afford it, so what?
Some people can’t afford it. Others have come to some kind of awareness that pumping carbon into the atmosphere when not strictly necessary is irresponsible. Immoral, even.
Deciding what is strictly necessary is the big question. The trouble is, a lot of people haven’t even come close to asking it of themselves. Others may have and answered it thus: ‘Why should I walk 10 minutes when I can drive in three?’
Not to harp too much on a theme here, but unless human ingenuity comes up with a cheap and safe alternative to fossil fuels, we may be facing either a massive environmental disaster, or a drastic change in lifestyle. Oh, well a drastic change in lifestyle regardless.
But say we get smart and kick our unsustainable addiction to fossil fuels, in favour of non-polluting electric cars. So far, so good.
But not so good, once you start multiplying the amount of power needed by the number of people who currently drive. One commentator at least figures only wall-to-wall nuclear power plants could come close to meeting such a demand.
Who wants that?
Or, as recently warned in a Science Daily article, increased reliance on plug-in cars could seriously deplete water in drought-prone areas (via hydro-electric demand).
Back we go to square one. There are already thousands of dams on our rivers, changing eco-systems, or wrecking them. Do we want thousands more? Some kind of super-battery might be one answer.
How about bio-fuels? Their new popularity has already been blamed, partly, for a worldwide increase in grain prices, to the point that the poor in many countries are feeling the pinch. How is that a solution to anything?
One begins to realize that the premise is wrong. The real problem is we’ve fallen into the trap of believing we should drive all the time, everywhere, with no restraint. Same goes for air travel. And unless somebody learns pretty quickly how to fuse atoms, or harness the sun’s rays efficiently, or something we haven’t thought of yet, we’re going to have to learn how to drive and fly less. The thing is, we could do it, and pretty easily, if we really wanted to.