Someone did a better energy rant than me

Okay, Y'all know that a good energy rant is one of my reasons to get out of bed in the morning. I am living in a small-footprint way and constantly trying to reduce it further. I eat low on the food chain, buy organic and harvest venison and fowl from 40 acres of timber we own. We also harvest a lot of nuts and berries and mushrooms, wild honey, and peaches, pears and apples from wild trees. We don't live there so our gardening is limited to winter staples like squash and root vegetables.

In the city, we live in a half-earthen apartment that is naturally easy to climate control. We set our thermostat at 85 in the summer and 65 this time of year; and follow a whole bunch of other rules that normal people could not abide, and our total energy bills are about fifty bucks a month, including gasoline.

We took posession of a new Escape Hybrid last January. It has been driven less than 4000 miles. Pretty sure my bicycle and the city bus system have both logged a lot more miles than that for me since then. If I drove more, it would really reduce my quality of life.

I live in a beautiful area. My small-footprint abode, built during the ecology movelement of the late sixties, is in a stunning neighborhood, right between my two campuses. The campus of the University of Missouri - Kansas City is one of the more beautiful urban campuses around. It literally adjoins the campus of Rockhurst University, and the campuses of the Kauffman Foundation, the Stowers Institute and Midwest Research Institute all butt up against one another and the University. To get to the university I ride my bike past the Kansas City Art Institute, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Do you get to ride your bike past a Henry Moore Sculpture Garden every day?

Going the other direction, to the community college, I ride my bike through Old Westport, the community founded by mountainman Jim Bridger and Alexander Majors and John McCoy as a trading post at the head of the Oregon, California and Santa Fe trails. I enjoy the architecture of some really large-footprint living. The manses are grand and stately and some are pre-civil war. There does not exist a single dwelling one could call a dump in all of Valentine. Depending on whether I want to ride a couple of extra blocks, I can go by Thomas Hart Benton's house just for giggles. Just last month the gemologist who traded in metal ore, gems and minerals that had been in operation since the village of Westport was founded as miners came downriver with the bounty of their strikes, closed it's doors. It was quite sad, but quite inevitable. I can have a beer in a couple of bars that have been operating over fifty years in the same location and under the same name. And I can enjoy it all without turning a key in an ignition. I can get to feeling pretty damned smug and full of myself sometimes. I admit that freely.

Then someone comes along and puts me in my micro place by offering up some workable macro solutions. Not rudely, or even intentionally. Just by working a little harder at it than I have been. Go read the piece he put up Saturday, November 25th. It is awesome and definitely worth a thorough read by one and all. I am not expounding on it because I have a week and a half before finals and it is being bookmarked for further study. But what I've delved into thus far is right on the money. I'll be visiting the Ergosphere more frequently over the semester break and getting to know this interesting gentleman a bit better, and probably add him next blogroll update.