More Of The Less

Friday afternoon seemed like the dawn of spring around here. My PV panels produced 8kWh as I rode the bicycle home in a t-shirt.

These two things (bicycles and photovoltaics) are the nexus of what this blog represents -- a critique of our energy use, and while I may seemingly deviate substantially from this, I believe that many of the social issues I critique can be either directly or indirectly linked to our energy use. That currently every level of government that represents me is deep in debt while following the two decade long borrowing fiesta by the consumers they represent, well, this culture helps to understand why we choose to remain ignorant on energy and why we import over half of it.

Nonetheless, I think bicycles and photovoltaics represent the two extremes of so-called environmentalism. One represents less of everything, while the other represents more of everything...while still seemingly trying to reach the same goalpost.

My PV installation:

• was born in the USA
• was designed locally (by me)
• was installed locally (by me)
• is operated and maintained by a US citizen (me)
• relies on insolation rather than importation
• decreases global insulation
• decreases natural gas consumption
• shields me from future utility rate increases
• is comprised of a network of complex inter-related components to function correctly
• will take sixteen straight years to pay for itself

Yet it doesn't come close, not anywhere close, to what a bike provides. I personally think my bike provides more of the things I'd like to see in our living arrangements:

• It will never become obsolete. Manufacturers would have to deviate from a half century of rim/tyre/bottom bracket standards to make this bike obsolete. I will never have to worry about revising its operating system to version 8.3.1.
• It is easily repaired. It doesn't have an in-dash nav system that'll break, antilock brakes with sixty components each, etc.
• It never costs more than a few hundred for even the most major of overhauls and if so would last for years afterwards.
• It doesn't take up 200 square feet of roof space to operate.
• It can fit with eleven others into the parking stall space of a single SUV.
• It requires substantially less asphalt and road maintenance to operate, and indeed doesn't even need any to operate.
• I never have to take it in for a $40 Bubble's wash and detail. Eight minutes with a faucet, a dab of soap in a bucket and a sponge.
• While the Elk Grove school district is concerned about the rising cost of health care for its staff and administrators, a fleet of bicycles would assist many of those overweight educators to reduce their health care requirements.
• The health benefits from a $1,800 bike offsets the cost of a $18,000,000 computerized hospital billing system ten thousand times over.
• A bike doesn't require $900 in advertising overhead to sell each one.
• It can take you down any road but also any single-track trail or down a mountain side.
• With my panniers I can still carry home my CSA box of vegetables, or two Mickey's forties...sometimes even flowers.
• No Iraqis died to fuel my bike.
• It is accessible to nearly everyone while not everyone can drive a car. There are few unable to ride, as many Europeans ride well into their eighties.
• There aren't 42,000 bicyclist deaths each year in the US, nor the medical overhead of a half million injury accidents. If you crash, you very likely will agonize for some time, but you can pull the grit out from the roadrash and ride on.
• A flat tire doesn't require the services of a mobile nationwide association fleet just because you are unwilling to get your hands dirty changing out an icky, icky tire.
• You can avoid the dire warnings of conservative pundits on your car's AM radio about how our nation is turning to liquid shit. No, you can see it directly for yourself by observing the driving habits of those around you while on a bike, as your neighborhood streets become NASCAR ovals, as irate impatient assholes honk to move faster through the turn lane, make illegal u-turns to save a nickel on a gallon of gas, bypass stacked traffic down the bicycle lanes, on and on. By bicycling you become a better, more responsible driver.
• You won't likely kill anyone else but yourself with even the most irresponsible behavior -- riding while drunk, stoned, on Oxycontin, or with low blood sugar.
• The Big Three bicycle manufacturers wouldn't need a half trillion taxpayer bailout because their sales fell below eleven million units per year.
• We'd save a few hundred billion on the growing type II diabetes epidemic via lowered insulin use and increased sensitivity.
• Tens of millions of subsistence class people who barely scrape by having to dole out $7,500 per year for automobile maintenance, fuel, insurance, licensing and registration just to commute to work could find other ways to blow that dwindling wage.
• A bicycle doesn't require a smog certificate, state registration and licensing, or mandatory liability insurance before you even get on the damn thing.

It's not all roses, however:

• You can still run out of gas -- it still takes energy but at least it's your energy. You don't have to drive your car to a $40/month gym to expend energy that you're admonished to do a few times a week anyway.
• You can still die due to motorized vehicles -- but with some awareness and training and riding on the right side of the fucking road you substantially reduce your chances of injury/death, and the more people who bike the fewer cars there will be to mow you down.
• It's not all-weather -- but you don't have to waste fuel idling for 7 minutes to defrost the window and you can ride in fog, light rain, and into the wind quite comfortably with modest preparation.

I think the bike represents the best of human achievements and culture (except for all those arrogant racing pricks). It represents less of everything, while our economic structure is based on more cars and, simply, more of everything:

• more debt
• more consumption
• more energy
• more war
• more healthcare and less health
• more technology (smart grids, 4G, CAT scanners, boysenberries, ThinkPads, 3D tvs)
• more imported poorly made Chinese consumables
• more driving to farther out suburban sprawl
• more productive job losses
• more services in support of a dwindling productive job base
• more financial services in support of a dwindling productive job base (fees, surcharges, derivatives, CDOs, REITs, credit default swaps, insurance requirements)
• more taxation
• more entitlement programs for "incapable" Americans
• more drones
• more 3,200 sq ft Garage Majals
• more anger towards non-Christians
• more roads, freeway interchanges, and bridges
• more mindless reality based entertainment featuring overindulgent wealthy socialites
• more something-for-nothing charades (Indian casinos, A Minute To Win It, who wants to be a millionaire)
• more share of total wealth for the top 2%
• more processed corn and soybean foodstuffs by multinational agribusiness
• more productivity by fewer workers and greater corporate returns for shareholders

The bike doesn't need or require very much of any of these things. You can avoid an hour of televised reality programming by bicycling for that same hour...while being in the present, in the now, by controlling your own actions, by breathing hard and working those quads, by remaining aware of your surroundings. It's personally liberating and it can be productive if you ride to work or the store. It is substantially less intensive than photovoltaics...yet by no means am I advocating a world without cars or electricity. To counter my arguments by suggesting this is nothing more than mindless, polarizing claptrap, but unfortunately this is mainly what we get these days. Shit like "You environmental wackos want to return us to the stone age," or "Liberalism is a mental disorder," or "Anthropomorphic global warming is a myth." I have my opinions, yes, but they are well founded and thoughtfully presented...with just a hint of sarcasm...


I simply advocate less of the more and more of the less.