by Doug Coulter » Wed Aug 22, 2012 1:43 pm
I hear ya loud and clear. I justify (rationalize?) my stuff not as a green thing, but as a sensible thing, and my mantra is freedom. When you depend on an outside company/personality/interest, you're not as free (in the freedom sense, not the free beer sense) in my opinion. You might pay more, but you get something for having paid more - more personal freedom to not need further income to have what you want.
In my case, going solar was one of those gut decisions I then rationalized (man is a rationalizing, not a rational, animal). I got really screwed over by a power company while I lived in DC with their estimated then real bills - had I known what I was running up, I'd not have chosen to use that power, but too late (4 months) I get hit with a huge AC bill, just before heating season and that bill, and threats to my credit rating, which used to matter to me (no more). So, out of not liking that deal, and being an EE - "if not me, who is going to be the early adopter", and having a fresh start here in Floyd, it all just came together, and I'm now glad it did - I need make no excuses anymore. I DID have some hardship along the way - the solar was all I had and quite often not enough to do what I wanted to be accustomed to, but hey, even then the money saved allowed me to have a better lifestyle than otherwise, and take a longer break from "engineering slave labor" to recuperate from my burnout. So, all good from my POV.
Everyone's mileage will of course vary on this one. I am reminded of a new-age parable that goes like this.
The truth (nirvana, heaven) is at the top of this mountain, with people all around the base. The Catholics are shouting "go west", the Buddhists are saying "go east", the Jews "go north" and so forth and so on.
Perhaps the Vikings are saying go southwest. You get the idea.
Each is correct for some of the people involved, because depending on where they begin, going west, east, north might take them to the truth. But the real message, which is rare indeed, should be "go up".
Which compass direction that is might not be as relevant as where you are at the moment. Up is the same way for everybody involved, though it might be north for some, south for others.
I am further struck by people's resistance to simply pulling up stakes and going to where things would almost certainly be better for them. Heck, I'm guilty of this too - I was born in DC and am still in VA, though as far from DC as you can get in VA. Yet people continue to live in places where nature really isn't their friend most of the time (or their government, or other things like that), and this kind of thing won't/can't work or be economical for them, and stick with the devil they know - even though that devil might be quite harsh in other ways too.
It's a head-scratcher for me, anyway, and I'll probably figure it out at some point just from my own innards - why am I still near my place of birth? I rationalize it this way at the moment. My jazz band toured all over, and believe me, some of the places we went were pretty darn nice. I was even offered a cherry job doing power for a small island in the Bahamas on one trip. But when we toured here for a festival (kind of our own woodstock), the people I met - it was clearly "home" - my tribe, where I belonged, out of a lot of other places even nicer on the surface. So here I am, and I got lucky in that the climate, the government, etc, are mostly on my side here.
Yeah, solar ain't gonna be great in UK, famed for its bad weather. I'd be wanting out for the bad weather reason alone. If I have to live in "the world of indoors" all the time, I think there might be better places that have better tradeoffs in other things, but that's just what I think, and it might not be true for everybody. So I keep saying "go up" and hope people know which way that is!
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.