DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I had a chance to step outside my home environment for a week in December, during a visit with family. Their energy use was jarring: they have two refrigerator/freezers, plus a beer cooler behind the bar, yet someone goes to the grocery store daily (granted, they had guests in town). Dozens of incancescent lights were left on, most of the day. The thermostat is set a couple degrees higher than I’m used to. The washing machine runs once or twice a day (just for the few people who live there).

I’m not taking cold showers to save a couple more BTUs, but this was a different world altogether. This was a total disconnect between lifestyle and the big utility bill that comes at the end of the month. And, more to the point, with the cumulative effect of all those excess tons of C02 being generated on their behalf.

The point of this is not to pick on my own family. My green tendencies would have remained latent had I not moved to California and gotten involved with Care2.com. 20 more years in the Midwest and I would personally have regarded long-haired Californians with PV arrays as scary liberal treehuggers. And I sure as heck wouldn’t have been willing to visit such people, given that their houses would be cold and dimly lit. My family is much more gracious than I would be in this regard. For example, they’d never write a story about me in a public journal.

No, the point of this is that the global warming prevention movement has its work cut out for it.

Seth Godin recently challenged bloggers to write about compact fluorescent light bulbs. I’ve been doing that for over five years, but I haven’t even reached my own family. (Hmm, maybe they’re too busy doing laundry?)

I love Seth’s idea that the right story would help push CFLs as a mainstream, or even a trendy product. As an engineer I’m inclined to think that a higher-tech device that lasts longer, uses less power, creates less waste, and saves both time and money ought to pretty well sell itself. But logic has no place in the market, as both Seth Godin and George Lakoff will tell you. That’s why Wal-Mart’s CFL push is a big deal. (Does anyone have figures on its success?)

Here’s another engineering-centric solution to this small piece of the global warming problem: Put an Energy Cost gauge on the refrigerator door. Wire it into the main electrical circuit, so it measures instantaneous electricity usage for the entire house, multiplies by the local utility rate, and shows the result in dollars per hour in 4''-high numbers.

Part of the problem of CFLs is that consumers have to take it on faith that they’ll save money. CFLs are cheaper than ever but still a lot more expensive than incandescent bulbs; one needs a longer-term view to see the benefit — just as with solar electric systems, which take 8-12 years to break even.

I don’t know if such a device exists. The closest I’ve seen is the Kill-A-Watt, which completely and utterly fails the Mom test, and even for the adventurous will only measure single devices, and only those that are plugged into a wall socket.

Tony Robbins (to drop another name) has said, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” If people could monitor their moment-to-moment energy use like they monitor the ambient temperature, you can bet they’d start to manage it too.