In Defense of Nature

 

CONDON’S CORNER

We Must face the Environmental Reality of Our Energy Usage

© Marlene A. Condon 2026 All Rights Reserved

[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.