09-19-2014, 12:19 PM
snorkle--
I'm pretty sure nobody wants to give up on having energy at their disposal. But if the aim is to be independent, where do you get that 3-D printer (and the raw materials to feed into it)? And where do you get that noisy diesel generator to supply your power from? And where do you get the recycled vegetable oils to make your bio-diesel from? And unless the bio-diesel that you mix up in you garage is pretty well refined (which is difficult in a garage), you may be producing more particulates and more hydrocarbons than from ordinary diesel. OH yeah, and will you be making your own ethanol or methanol which is necessary for the production of bio-diesel?
My point is that you can't really disentangle yourself from the world-at-large without seriously compromising the comfortable lifestyle that has come with progress. I know all kinds of people in lower Puna who "pretend" to be self sufficient, but very few of them actually come close to it--and I wouldn't want to live the lifestyle of those that do get close. All the off-grid hippies that I know shop at Home Depot and Walmart, they buy most of their food from the natural food stores (at higher prices), they own (with very few exceptions) gas powered vehicles, and they get a lot of packages from Babylon via UPS and FedEx.
That off-grid lifestyle requires perhaps even more gadgets than life on the grid. And those big box stores, the pharmacies, the Post Office, the restaurants, the banks, (and even the natural food stores) aren't gonna be run by fuel cells anytime (if ever) in the near future.
I'm not trying to rattle your cage or dampen your enthusiasm for decentralized energy sources, and I certainly don't think that the big energy producers are any friends of the people. But the trend towards greater efficiency and convenience, in my opinion, still lies with a grid that is powered by renewable resources--especially solar-thermal, wind (to some degree), a new generation of clean nuclear, and--dare I say it--geothermal.
I'm pretty sure nobody wants to give up on having energy at their disposal. But if the aim is to be independent, where do you get that 3-D printer (and the raw materials to feed into it)? And where do you get that noisy diesel generator to supply your power from? And where do you get the recycled vegetable oils to make your bio-diesel from? And unless the bio-diesel that you mix up in you garage is pretty well refined (which is difficult in a garage), you may be producing more particulates and more hydrocarbons than from ordinary diesel. OH yeah, and will you be making your own ethanol or methanol which is necessary for the production of bio-diesel?
My point is that you can't really disentangle yourself from the world-at-large without seriously compromising the comfortable lifestyle that has come with progress. I know all kinds of people in lower Puna who "pretend" to be self sufficient, but very few of them actually come close to it--and I wouldn't want to live the lifestyle of those that do get close. All the off-grid hippies that I know shop at Home Depot and Walmart, they buy most of their food from the natural food stores (at higher prices), they own (with very few exceptions) gas powered vehicles, and they get a lot of packages from Babylon via UPS and FedEx.
That off-grid lifestyle requires perhaps even more gadgets than life on the grid. And those big box stores, the pharmacies, the Post Office, the restaurants, the banks, (and even the natural food stores) aren't gonna be run by fuel cells anytime (if ever) in the near future.
I'm not trying to rattle your cage or dampen your enthusiasm for decentralized energy sources, and I certainly don't think that the big energy producers are any friends of the people. But the trend towards greater efficiency and convenience, in my opinion, still lies with a grid that is powered by renewable resources--especially solar-thermal, wind (to some degree), a new generation of clean nuclear, and--dare I say it--geothermal.