Guest writer

Today, a special feature, a guest writer.This man is a friend of mine.  We were on the same ship together and got out of the Navy at about the same time.  He moved to Oregon and I drove across the country, from Providence, Rhode Island, to take my car to LA, and I stopped in Portland to see him.  That was the first time I’d ever been to Oregon, and I knew then that this was "my" place.  I moved to Japan with my wife and taught English, but to go further with that, I needed a degree and so I moved back to the US, to Portland to complete my Bachelor’s Degree in 1987."Beat laid plans" and all that; I stalled out on the college track, and my marriage floundered.  My wife went home to Japan while I stayed here… for awhile, but I moved to Japan myself in 1993.  I taught and worked there, but the marriage proved to be beyond saving, and I moved back here in 96 to finish the degree.  Various things happened and I did not finish the degree until 2000.  By that time, my friend had moved back to Minnesota. but he came back to Oregon a few years later and married his girlfriend and lives here now; we saw him when K* was here last summer.***I think this piece, which he emailed me, is well written and very topical, and I’m posting it here in hopes that his words will strike a chord, and I encourage you to follow along the path he suggests.

Dear Friend,

This is that familiar graph we all see in our monthly Electric bill 
here in Portland.    As you can see we cut our electrical energy use 
here at 9803 N Hudson in half compared to last December.  This change 
was primarily due to about 8 new General Electric brand compact 
fluorescent lamps we bought at Walmart for about $10.  I also fixed 
the glazing on a couple of windows and built a few storm windows this 
year.   And I did need to shop around a while to find some 
"candelabra" base, flame-shaped bulbs for our dining room fixture.

If you have been turned off by compact fluorescent lamps in the past 
because of their weird sizes and light; I would urge you to consider 
trying some again, and particularly I would suggest that you try them 
in your porch light and overhead kitchen or bathroom lights that are 
on for many hours a day and have lampshades or globes.  Even I do not 
care for the bare bulb application but we have found the newer bulbs 
to be quite suitable anywhere that we have a globe fixture or a lamp 
with a good lampshade.  The General Electric bulbs available at 
Walmart and A-boy  Hardware seem to have very good quality light and 
come on nearly instantly and up to full intensity within a short 
time.  We are paying about $1.50 a piece and less on sale.

You  may hear some people complain about the presence of mercury in 
Compact Fluorescent lamps.  I am here to tell you that far more 
mercury enters the environment, from the burning of coal to light an 
incandescent lamp, over its lifetime, than will ever enter the 
environment from a CFL.  Here in Portland we have a drive-through 
hazardous waste facility that will take used CFL’s for free;   But 
even an improperly disposed of CFL these days is likely to be placed 
in a lined Solid Waste Facility and would need to go through a lot of 
environmental protection systems to make its way into the 
environment.  Mercury from coal plant pollution comes back down from 
the atmosphere in the next rain storm and immediately pollutes 
surface water and starts its process of infiltration to aquifers 
below ground.

As we enter the new year I am asking you to switch out a couple of 
lights to CFL bulbs and I urge you to forward this email to whomever 
you like in an attempt to lower our national consumption.  It only 
takes one environmentalist to change a light bulb.  The summer 
Olympics are being held in China this summer and so any hope the 
Chinese government has had, of keeping its populace in the dark about 
the consumptive habits of westerners, is about to lapse.  If you 
consider how much of our foreign policy for the last 60 years has 
supported our access to oil and then add to that the fact that 
possession of automobiles in China and India is skyrocketing, you 
will easily see how we are about to have our consumption of oil 
turned on its head.  Ethanol is no savior as we are already starting 
to see food shortages brought about by the use of corn as a fuel source.

Nuclear power is being talked about despite the fact that there is 
still no long term repository for used fuel rods; and so thousands of 
these are still stored on site, right next to rivers, at the 
facilities that used them; waiting for an earthquake or a flood or a 
terrorist to pitch them into the river and pollute everything 
downstream for literally thousands of years.  And even if we had a 
place in the Southwest to put them, there are groups of people all 
along the freeway routes that these highly radioactive wastes would 
need to travel through; already organized, to fight the transport 
near their children and backyards.

So let reduced consumption be a key to 2008.  Consider a smaller 
vehicle.  Google "Carbon Footprint"  and peruse some of the links 
that talk about carbon neutrality.  Think about the turning of the 
turbine next time you flip the switch on; and also off, when you get 
up just after you sit down to dinner, because you notice the whole 
family is right there with you and yet lights are on all over the 
house; and it will take less than a minute to shut them off and slow 
the turbine while you have dinner;  And everyone will see you care, 
especially the kids…

And if everyone did it,  if every home in the whole country cut their 
electric bill by one half by replacing all of their outdated 
incandescent lamps wi

th modern Compact Fluorescent Lamps…  Well if 
everybody did it; maybe next Christmas all those Marines and Sailors  
and Soldiers fighting all over the world for oil…  The very same 
ones that are facing a very real danger of going now to Iran after 
they finish in Iraq… Well maybe they could spend New Year’s Day 
with their families.

Happy New Year

Davey

Some of you received this from me as I forwarded it to everyone I know.  This is not the usual forwarded email, it is serious and meaningful.  Our environmental problems did not happen overnight, and the solution to them will not happen that way either, but by taking the small steps we all can, they will add up to really change things for the better.  Please read this and adopt my friends’ suggestions and we can all play a part in saving our world  Small, individual steps add up into a journey we can all make.

Thank you, Woman in the moon, for suggesting I post this here on Open Diary.

*****