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Letter from the Publisher, Nancy Rae Mallery
It was quite the summer for pretty much everyone around the world. How there can still be climate-change deniers boggles my mind. What will this season bring us?
Dr. James Hansen stated on August 14, 2023, we have entered “A new climate frontier. The leap of global temperature in the past two months is no ordinary fluctuation. It is fueled by the present extraordinarily large Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI). EEI is the proximate cause of global warming. The large imbalance suggests that each month for the rest of the year may be a new record for that month. We are entering a new climate frontier.”
In this edition of Green Energy Times, we did not cover the recent flooding in New York City and New Jersey because it now amounts to everyday news. We do not say thisto lessen the gravity of the situation. We feel quite certain that most of our readers know why this is happening.
The big question here is whether we all are doing enough in our own lives to become more resilient to the changes we are now experiencing — and know will only worsen. We cannot stand back and wait to see what the government will do. Yes, we need to advocate strongly a need for our governments to do more. Waiting for them can put all of us in harm’s way if we do not do more somehow, some way. Where there is a will, there is a way!
We have the colder winter months approaching. No matter how cold it does or does not get, we need to be ready for it. This is where it is so important to quickly try to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Using fossil fuels for heating only makes the future harder and harder to deal with. Then there are the ever-rising costs to continue to use them. We are very confident that making the change will mean more money in your pocket in the end.
How do we keep warm without using fossil fuels?
Tightly seal and thoroughly insulate your home or business.
Consider replacing your heating system with one of the many good options that we present to you in our “Heating without Fossil Fuels” feature (see pages 20-24).
Get some solar-electric to reduce the costs of electricity to any degree you can.
There are incentives, rebates as well as public and private programs for weatherization, solar and other improvements to help you do all of this. In the end, you will be saving yourself plenty of money that you will not spend on fossil fuels, from this point onward!
When that is done, replace your cooking range with an efficient induction cookstove and compatible cookware. (New cookware — with some ferrous content — just might go on your holiday gift list!)
The three biggest aspects of our lives that add to our higher cost of living as well as emissions into our atmosphere are: buildings leaking emissions, heating emissions and waste from leaky buildings, and our transportation. If you could focus on each of these sectors in your life and figure out a way to make improvements, then lower emissions and lower costs will result. And THEN you can focus on the “small stuff” like making your holidays more sustainable, and by that we mean, to create less or no waste. With many holidays ahead, we have many steps to take: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hannukah or Christmas and New Years — all before Valentines’ Day in 2024. Be sure to read our holiday article on the front page.
We all have a lot to do. I hope this edition of G.E.T. will help you as we watch the changing leaves turn to snowflakes piling up.
Act Local. Think Global. Think Climate.
– Nancy Rae
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