Are Wildfire Prevention and Everyday Energy Awareness Related Issues?
Being energy wise is becoming more and more a part of our culture recently. Conserving energy in our homes and driving is very worthwhile. Crude oil prices could go back to their peak in no time if demand exceeds supply.
My vehicle is a large Yukon, which is great for hauling things. Unfortunately it does not get great gas mileage so I have trimmed the number of trips I make to the office as much as I can. That has helped my fuel budget. I would get a smaller car, but this baby is pretty useful for carrying loads and large groups of people on a trip.
Several years ago we put in extra insulation in our home, and we use a whole house fan to reduce the amount of air conditioning we use. Energy talk on the news and in magazines slowly does have some influence on how we think and act.
Talk about a waste of energy—the fuel spent on airplanes, helicopters and trucks in fighting wildfires in California is insane. Also, think about all the gasoline used by folks vacating their threatened homes. There is some related discussion of this on the Minutemanfire website, which includes wildfire prevention in its sphere of interest. Even when fire buffers had been created, homes with tile roofs have been destroyed in fires, surprisingly.
There’s a lot of wasted energy in the work involved in rebuilding homes demolished by wildfires. We may not think about it much, but in fact there is a connection between fire prevention and conserving energy.
