Environmental Talk

Walk this way…

The folks over at ClimateCare.org note that “sometimes the best source of renewable energy is the human body itself.” This appears to fit quite nicely with their slogan: “Helping You Help the Climate.”

As it turns out, you can help the climate by doing more work. And the folks at Climate Care will be kind enough to give you tips on exactly how you can work harder, longer and less efficiently to achieve that end.

What’s not clear is why you should be working harder for the climate, as opposed to harnessing the climate to work harder to improve human life? This whole way of thinking is just so Alice-in-Wonderland.

Do you “owe” a good day’s work to the climate? Does the climate somehow “employ” you? And, if so, why does the climate have such a lousy health care plan?

The concerned folks at Climate Care are even nice enough to describe how the process works:

How it works
Every source of human energy will be different, and the number of applications are hugely varied … our project in India [is] promoting treadle pumps for irrigation, to replace diesel power.

The treadle pump is a simple device which uses human power to pump water from wells, streams and lakes. One person - man, woman or even child - can operate the pump by manipulating his/her body weight on two treadles and by holding a bamboo or wooden frame for support. These pumps displace the diesel pumps that are more commonly used.

Using women and even children for manual labor has been tried a couple times throughout history with some interesting results….
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Earning their Cheops
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The whole arc of human progress has been characterized by the invention of labor-saving devices to increase the most precious and most perishable commodity you have - your time.

Sure, you could walk to work, cut your grass with a scythe and build your own house by hauling stones by hand from a quarry … but why the hell would you?

Your time can be much better spent composting your garbage, harvesting your own vegetables and spending 45-minutes feeding your returnable bottles into a sorting machine.

Oops, wait, we better have midgets or even a child behind the slot at the bottle-return kiosk … just to make sure we’re totally carbon efficient.

global warming, climate change, human power, Great Pyramid of Egypt, slave labor, returnable bottles and cans