Metroroomies

Okay, so Metro has some friends--don't look like that, of course he does. Now said friends through a combintation of bad judgement and bad luck became abruptly homeless a couple of months ago.

Now he-friend, let's call him Nom, is heavily in debt. Like, going-into-bankruptcy-looks-like-the-only-option debt. She-friend, call her Jet, is earning a ridiculously low wage flogging footwear at a local schoppingplatz.

So you'd think they would have long since adopted habits of frugality.

In their short stay in the Metrobasement, they have manged to come to personify every FSM-would-rather-you-didn'ted negative aspect of North American energy use.

The Metrohome has never had a problem supplying Mme and I with hot water. Jet takes a bath every morning, and I've learned not to do dishes while that's happening.

They have brought into our home another computer and a giant-screen plasma TV. I have been down in the basement and seen one of them using the computer as the TV lectures the empty sofa not ten feet away. It is a rare day that only the computer is left running. I have never seen both devices shut off at the same time.

Lights ... all the friggin' time. I went downstairs to get something one night and found every light in the main area on, despite the fact that Jet was at her job and Nom was at his, and they would be gone for at least eight hours.

One Monday after Nom's kids had visited, I went downstairs to the room they share when they're here. The laundry room lights were on, as were the bedroom lights. And to cap it all, a string of Christmas lights was gleaming brightly on the wall.

Yesterday Nom went to the place where Jet works in the evenings. He was intending to stay there until she left, six hours later.

He took his car.

She had taken her car.

Her workplace is roughly 1.8 km from the house.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the thinking that's going to have to change. And we have a choice.

We can:
a) Change it now, while there's still a fair bit of oil and energy kicking around.

The net effect will hopefully be to slow the rise in fuel prices. Knock-on benefits will include lower pollution and carbon emissions. As we continually improve our energy performance, we'll also reduce our oil dependency.

b) Change it because we're forced to as we hit Peak Oil and begin to see the first few wars (and I'm talking blood and bullets, not prices) that will be the result of us insisting on maintaining our current consumption patterns in the face of the facts.

The net effects will be horrid. We're talking famines. We're talking infrastructure failures. We're talking water supply failures and all that jazz.

In fact, we're probably talking about guys with guns and spiked shoulder pads hijacking fuel tankers. Hell, we've had that since long before gas cracked $3.80 a gallon US.

And so much of it could be avoided if I could persuade them to just turn off a couple of dammned light bulbs!

Well, maybe a few million other folks too. But you have to start small.