It is important that people make changes for a more sustainable lifestyle for our future and for a healthier world. But if people just take baby steps, it will not be enough. People need to make big changes in the lifestyle in order for our world to have a future in which we will not destroy our lovely earth.
This is shown through David JC MacKay, Sustainable Energy-Without the Hot Air. For example BBC advice people on how doing a little bit can help save the planet like “switching off your mobile phone chargers when it’s not in use” (3) but MacKay says that a more realistic phrase is that “if everyone does a little, we’ll achieve only a little” (3). It is important for us humans to realize that making some small changes in our life will not be good enough for this world to achieve a sustainable and healthy world.
David also portrays why we have not been able to use alternative energy instead of using what we are currently depending on. He was able to come up with the maximum of 18kWh/d per person while using alternative energy compared to using 125kWh/d per person when using the typical energy that is polluting our earth (109). Through his graphs he shows how people make up lame excuses to change their lifestyle. For example an excuse for solar heating is that it does not have an appealing look. It is such a lame excuse because solar heating only will use 13 kWh/d compared to regular heating and cooling which is 37 kWh/d (109). This also demonstrates how people are not willing to change for the better of the earth because they are too lazy to change or they do not care.
While reading through MacKay’s Sustainable Energy-Without the Hot Air, it was obvious how we need to change our lifestyle in order for our earth to live a healthy life. But in order for this to happen we will have to make big changes, not small ones. It was interesting to see how using alternative energies can make a big difference in how much energy we are consuming. I think that this change could happen, the only problem is that we need more and more people educated about how they could make a difference to make this world a better place.
MacKay does make it quite clear that small changes will not add up and moreover that we don't really have time to wait for small efforts to accumulate over time. As we'll discuss in the next week, what is most heartening about his analysis is that armed with the numbers it becomes clear what is possible and what is necessary and that it is possible even if it will not be easy -when broken down into practical solutions that do add up it suddenly appears that a healthy and sustainable future is actually feasible.
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