Our challenges, opportunities, and solution paths are complex and interrelated. Yet, all too often, we see them individually, not linked and interacting.

Fishgrease has a powerful, useful, and well-worth reading discussion up on the wreck list:  Give Up Something You Love Or Go To Hell. In essence, Fishgrease is laying down that dealing with climate isn't simply a question of cleaning up energy sources -- with somewhat a strawman that this is all Bill McKibben / 350.org focuses on -- but that we must tackle consumption and reduce demand to achieve necessary change.  

Fishgrease is absolutely right but, in a form of the strawman challenge of McKibben, also wrong because the truth is that we must tackle "and" rather than focus on specific 'silver bullets'.

Several years ago, Timbuk3 posted lastminute.com hotel room shower shoot - Hotel Russell, LondonMy New High Efficiency Toilet to which dfarrah commented

I don't have low flow shower heads, but I rinse up, turn off the water, lather up, then rinse quickly.  I think this works out well. ...
My response, a recommendation to get a low-flow showerhead.
Do you really think that my method doesn't save as much as a low flow head running the whole time?
Well, actually, it likely does "save as much" ... and perhaps even more. But this is postulating an either / or situation when there is greater power in "and".

We have, in essence, a three-legged stool for a holistic understanding of our energy use:

  • Consumption:  Needs / wants -- what are seeking?
  • At the end of the day, I want (oops, many days, need) a cold beer ...
  • Lots of ways to control 'consumption' impacts. Do I drink less beer? Is the beer local or from far away? Can or bottle? (And, well, recycling of that material ...)
  • Efficiency: how do we get it?
  • Is the beer cooled out in an efficient refrigerator, out in the ice on a winter day, or drive 50 miles (fast) to a liquor store carrying the specific micro-brewery beer from rural  Tanzania and buy it from an open refrigeration unit ...
  • What are the power sources involved?
  • For the electricity, are we talking nuclear or coal or ...?  For transport, even 'store to home', is this foot/bike power or a suburban assault vehicle (or grocery store delivery truck)? Etc ...

Clearly, these three aren't 'the end of the game' (as above, recycling and 'cradle to cradle', etc ...) but thinking about and understanding the reality of these connections can help us achieve a better approach to our energy/environmental challenges and opportunities.

Follow me after the fold for a look at the three-legged stool in the shower ...