EcoWorldly

California is trying many different initiatives to make its contribution to mitigate climate-change, many different ways to reduce its GHG emissions- drop by drop. Diverse attempts themselves improve its chances of success. But what in my mind, greatly improves its chance is the ability of California to think on behalf of the consumer, the common person.

Picture: Solar Panels on California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco

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California’s Assembly Bill (AB 920) is a good illustration. Solar panel installation is encouraged by different cities through varied incentives — ranging from subsidies to financing; finally, resulting in a free solar system for a household in about two decades. Indeed, attractive. At around 25,000 solar homes, the majority still remains to be converted. To see their electricity meters running backwards had not been adequate reward for everyone. AB 920 will require utilities to pay for excess power generated by their solar systems (or at least carry-over the credit year to year rather than zeroing it at the end of the year). This will certainly enable more people – who might have, otherwise, found the costs (despite subsidies) prohibitive – to reconsider it.

Picture: E-Fuel MicroFueler: Backyard portable micro-refinery for consumer use

The E-Fuel MicroFueler has similar Californian outlook; with a goal of installing ethanol distribution systems (that will produce organic fuel from waste carbohydrates) in California residences. Such a system will not only generate alternate energy (lowering carbon-emissions) but – operating at a household level – will also provide consumers with another way to make a difference.  Using as it does algae, brewery-waste, etc., hopefully this system will also keep at bay concerns (like food price increases or shortages) that had become bothersome in the case of bio-fuel.

This consumer-orientation is all the more critical in the case of California’s new (& still a bit far in the future) exploration: digital textbooks. In deciding whether to shift from paper books to computer based texts and learning materials, evaluating like the consumers – the students, parents and teachers – must be innate in the process.  In a state like California, it is the expectation that in the future everything that can possibly go digital will go digital, therefore, saving paper and the environment. While saving paper, trees and our earth are in deed holy ambitions, their achievement may be a different matter altogether. The ease of the user must be borne in mind, in evaluating the new techniques. Will the transition be too difficult for students already used to other way? Will repertoire of well-practiced techniques that has been advantageous be lost for nothing? What is to prevent  parents, teachers or consumers who are used to marking their books and flipping pages back and forth from printing the downloaded books? How do resources used for computer usage or online access or electricity for accessing each text multiple times (by each student or parent etc.) compare to the printing cost of one text book that is used by students and their parents for seven years? And what about the precious gift of eye sight? Does reading-off a computer or staring at a monitor have the same impact on eyes as reading printed material? In considering the “hundreds of millions of dollars a year” that Governor Schwarzenegger says going digital could save California, hopefully, these costs too will be factored in.

Picture Credit: Solar Panels at California Academy of Sciences, Courtsey: MeganPru via Flickr under Creative Commons License.

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