Baby, It's Cold Inside

For most of the past three weeks we have been in an extreme heat emergency. Last Thursday it was 94 degrees outside when I entered an administrative office in a large County facility and noticed that is was much warmer there than the comfortably air conditioned corridor and other areas I had just passed through. I soon realized that the receptionist had an electric heater by her desk running on high. I thought this must be a bizarre anomaly-- perhaps a secretary with a large position in Exelon stock, trying to help her company boost its profits in the third quarter. I tried to forget the incident.

But that wasn't the end of it: the next day was again an extreme heat emergency. I went into a branch of the Wachovia Bank, the image of the space heater still crowding my brain. While depositing a check, I told the story to the teller, and she immediately pointed to the drive thru window, and said, "Oh, she runs one all the time." Sure enough there was a space heater running full blast at the drive thru window. I said, "Well the Wachovia stockholders might not be very happy, but at least it's not being paid for by my tax money."

Now I have become obsessed. How many offices are there across the country where people-- instead of being appreciative of having some refuge from the heat-- are running space heaters? How do you educate people? What will it take for people to grow up and begin to realize their perilous situation, living in the most spoiled and energy dependent country on the planet.

When we produced a symposium in Doylestown in April about the coming energy crisis, oil was at a record high of $50 a barrel. Four months later it has passed $64, and we're running our space heaters in August, as if energy were free and infinite. Will we be known someday as Homo Americanus or Homo Clulessnsensless. Sapien is not just losing, it's been deleted.

I checked the County office again today, just to be sure I hadn’t been hallucinating. The space heater's still cranking away.