Author: Elizabeth Gaucher

Coal and the Space-Time Continuum

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 6 Comments

Albert Einstein said, “Things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”  This is a guiding principle the nation would do well to consider as we navigate planning for life after dependence on finite energy resources.

Clean energy transportation

Imagine West Virginia is a well-respected policy think tank that dove into the deep end when it issued its first formal policy recommendations in April 2008 with Coal: Energy, the Environment & West Virginia.  This report is a good example of keeping things simple without going too far in that direction.

Testament to what IWV did very well is that the report’s facts are not in dispute.  What one ought to conclude or support from the facts is a contentious issue, however, so there has been some heat in the kitchen for over two years.  I was reminded last week of the statistic that “projections suggest that there is sufficient coal to meet the nation’s energy needs for more than 100 years at current rates of consumption.”

What brought this stat to mind was someone’s comment that “coal isn’t running out any time soon.”  This is a verbatim phrase I’ve heard so many times I almost ignore it now, but for some reason this time it brought me to full attention.  Coal isn’t running out any time soon.  We have about 100 years.

On both sides of my family, 100 years is one human lifetime.  It is an exceptionally long lifetime, but it is one nonetheless.  When you see 10 decades that way, it feels like we have no business exhaling over the finite nature of coal as an energy resource.  If you have not yet read the IWV report, you may enjoy learning more about what a significant slice of the energy pie it is at home and abroad.  It is quite clear that even if one wanted to just stop the use of coal tomorrow there is currently no other developed alternative energy that is ready to fill the gap based on current demand.

Human beings can step up when they have to save their own rear ends.  We will most likely get it together to fill the coal gap before my child is a grandmother, but not if we continue to act like coal isn’t running out any time soon.  Einstein also theorized, “For objects travelling near light speed, the theory of relativity states that objects will move slower and shorten in length from the point of view of an observer on Earth.” 

I’m not 100% sure why I think this has something to do with the whole kit and kaboodle, but I think it might.  It’s also probably not simple.

Where We Are, revisited

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Mid Life. Crisis?

Written originally a year ago, this post seemed worth revisiting after a weekend away with old friends……..

Lots of my peers are wrestling with relocating their lives. There is frequent talk of “making a change,” and often this manifests itself in a laundry list of other places they and their families could live.

Looking for better schools for children; more variety in dining; more diversity in neighborhood; a change in commute; a change in climate; a new house; a more challenging job. The list is familiar and endless.

Pawing the ground at middle age is hardly new territory. The stereotype of the midlife crisis is not positive to say the least; but there is a strange degree of beauty in the moment. I like to believe that change is always available, that what we lose little by little is the will to make it. Midlife wrestling with where we are and where we want to go has an air of Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night.”

Where it can go wrong is usually two-fold. One, we repress our real feelings and needs for so long that when our conscience can’t manage anymore the backlash is a destructive taking of all our unmet needs we’ve left untended for years. Two, there is a lack of clarity about what it is that is really unsatisfactory.

Is it REALLY that we don’t have enough of this, that, or the other thing in the place where we are, physically? Or is it that we don’t have enough in other places where we are, like our relationships or our careers?  Here’s wishing all of us a good place to be today.