CONDON’S CORNER
We Must face the Environmental Reality of Our Energy Usage
[Published February 24, 2026, by The Daily Progress, the daily newspaper of Charlottesville, Virginia.]
While in grade
school, I lived in an area with a large municipal park. Named Forest Park, it
contained caged wild animals in addition to picnic tables and other amenities
for people to enjoy. Schools brought children there for end-of-the-school-year
picnics, but I never truly enjoyed myself.
The housing
conditions for the more intelligent animals were truly deplorable, the worst being
that of a lone Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus) housed in a ridiculously
small cage. The poor thing could do nothing all day except pace back and forth
or cool off in summer in an equally ridiculously small pool within the cage. Even
as a child, I found it hard to understand how people could be so oblivious to
the cruelness of such conditions.
It broke my
heart to watch that bear, but I felt helpless to do anything about its inhumane
situation. I don’t know what became of it, but perhaps today I can somewhat
make amends by writing about the plight of its Arctic “relatives” that now face
poor survival odds due to global climate change.
Polar Bears
depend upon floating sea ice to catch seals, their main food source. Unfortunately,
the Arctic has warmed so much that ice floes do not last long enough for the
bears to catch sufficient food to build up their fat layer. Without adequate
fat on their bodies to provide needed nutrition throughout the year, bears die.
Thanks to the
burning of fossil fuels (such as coal and oil that our current president wants
the country to return to using), polluting gases that contribute to global
warming are emitted. The burning of gasoline in internal combustion engines releases
carbon dioxide that traps heat in the atmosphere, and as its concentration
increases, we get rising global temperatures. The result is more frequent and
intense weather events, as well as rising sea levels, all of which impacts our
lives and that of our wildlife.
You might think driving an electric car
gets you off the hook for causing environmental problems, but although
electric-powered vehicles significantly reduce greenhouse-gas emissions
compared to vehicles using the traditional combustion engine, you must consider
the entire lifecycle of the electric engine, including resource extraction and
manufacturing to electricity generation and battery disposal.
The environmental cost of manufacturing
the battery requires the mining of lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese,
employing much energy and contributing to wildlife-habitat degradation and
water pollution. The energy-intensive refining of these materials increases
their carbon footprint, and if your electric vehicle is charged using
electricity generated primarily from coal-fired power plants, the
reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is probably minimal or non-existent.
We need
electricity to live comfortably and gas-or-electric powered vehicles to get to
work and other activities, but some folks contribute far more than is really
necessary to climate change by enjoying luxuries they could easily live
without.
Some people shop
every day to buy fresh food, rather than plan ahead and shop for several
days’ worth of groceries at a time. Life is more demanding when you need to
spend time planning ahead, and you may need to adjust your menu choices because
some things need to be fresh and used almost immediately. But isn’t it worth
doing?
I’ve seen able-bodied people drive to
their mailbox when they could instead do their body good by walking to the end
of their not-very-long driveway. Parents are often seen in winter sitting in
their heated cars with their children to save them from the “hardship” of
waiting outside in their driveway for a few minutes until the school bus
arrives. (Throughout my
elementary-to-high school years, I needed to walk down the road—no matter how
freezing or snowy the New England weather—to catch the school bus, and I
survived.)
And, the most egregious practice for many
years now is that of parents driving their children to and from school every day
rather than having them take the bus!
The best way to minimize climate-change impact is to minimize as much as possible the use of gas-or-electricity-powered vehicles in addition to minimizing as much as possible other uses of electricity.
Consider the
energy-efficient light bulbs people have been pushed to use. Many people feel
it’s okay to leave them burning all day and all night, which not only wastes
energy, but also attracts insects during the warmer months of the year that end
up starving to death.
In point of
fact, anything that uses energy should be turned off (and unplugged, if
possible) when not necessary to be on, such as computers and associated
equipment, such as printers and scanners. Although computer updates are often
set to come in overnight, the reality is that they can be gotten the next day
when you are done using your computer.
Consider reality
and act accordingly.
