{"id":880,"date":"2009-01-31T15:38:44","date_gmt":"2009-01-31T15:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.com\/wheresjoe\/?p=316"},"modified":"2009-01-31T15:38:44","modified_gmt":"2009-01-31T15:38:44","slug":"13109","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=880","title":{"rendered":"1\/31\/09"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/em> \u00a0 today carried a front page article about Sacramento, California’s non-profit Municipal Utility that has come up with a creative strategy to get people to use less energy. \u00a0 On their monthly bills, the Utility \u00a0include a “Last Month Neighborhood Comparison.”<\/strong> \u00a0 That is, you are compared to 100 random homes of comprable size in your area. \u00a0 The 100 homes are dubbed as: “All”<\/strong> — and you are compared against their mean average energy use. \u00a0 Then there is another graph \u00a0where you are compared to \u00a020 neighbors who were “especially efficient in energy savings.” \u00a0 This is dubbed as “Green.”<\/strong> \u00a0 A social pyschologist interviewed for the article said the age-old “keeping up with your neighbors” is a strong motivating factor, even when it comes to conservation… \u00a0 Personally, our family tries to be as “green” as possible when it comes to home energy savings. \u00a0 Our family of five lives in a relatively small two-bedroom apartment in Cleveland, Ohio. \u00a0 We don’t use air conditioning. \u00a0 We use energy saving flourescent lights and only turn them on (Wait ’til you hear this!<\/em>) in just the rooms we’re using. \u00a0 We don’t use a television. \u00a0 Our refrigerator is half the size of most regular refrigerators. \u00a0 For winter, we put plastic on all the windows. \u00a0 Instead of using the central gas heating, we have a couple portable heaters that we just turn on in the rooms we’re using, at the time we’re using them, \u00a0during the day. \u00a0 And in those rooms, we generally keep the temperature between 55 to 62 degrees, and often wear sweaters and hats. \u00a0 (I read once that you lose 70% of your body heat through your head. \u00a0 My wife Liz will say that with the ‘hole’ in my head, that might be closer to 90% for me.) \u00a0 Sure we get a bit cold in the winter, a bit hot in the summer. \u00a0 But in the face of \u00a0potentially more and more \u00a0global warming catastrophies, we think it’s worth the sacrifice. \u00a0 What’s more, in the context of our spirituality (Catholic), sacrificing is actually a spiritually good thing, period. Note: \u00a0 We would do well to become a Society of Conservers vs. a Society of Consumers. \u00a0 For more on our environmental position paper…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times \u00a0 today carried a front page article about Sacramento, California’s non-profit Municipal Utility that has come up with a creative strategy to get people to use less energy. \u00a0 On their monthly bills, the Utility \u00a0include …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}