Haiku of earth sea and sky

This a magic place
No Witch, Wizard, Genie, Jin,
Just Technology

Yet a dark side here
From burning the rocks and tar
Poisons gas and heat

Nunuck bear home floats
Bed of ice on open sea
Melts nanuck to die

North Pacific Gyre
Toxic plastic looks like food
Bags we use but once

Turtle sees plastic
Floats like jelly but not food
Turtle eats to die

Death food in the sea
Dumb animals eat plastic bags
Why it look like food

We burn coal and oil
Mercury hot gas carbon
We burn rocks for heat

We strive for more stuff
Nuclear is still claimed safe
Safe if you are dead

Chesapeake near death
Algae grow on chicken waste
Oxygen all gone

Baby Orca dies
Endocrine system failure
PCB's in food

We kill for more stuff
Won't never have enough
We must kill for stuff

Iceberg floats submerged
Waters dance from ice to sea
Deep, Cold, Wild and True

Still waters run deep
Tuna Burgers Water Song
Breathe feel ride the waves

Children of the west
To live sustain the garden
Must learn harmony

Negawatts and Eco-Watts or Killer-Watts

Back in the late '1970's Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute coined the term "NegaWatts" to describe the energy that could be saved with conservation and efficiency. "The cheapest energy," he said, "and the cleanest energy is the energy you don't use."

Lovins' associate, Marvin Resnikoff, PhD, then teaching physics and environmental thinking at SUNY University of Buffalo and Rachel Carson College, used the term "nuclear constipation" to describe the nuclear waste problem. It's an apt metaphor - the waste doesn't go away.

We struggling not only with nuclear constipation, but carbon constipation. We burn carbon, liberate the energy in chemical bonds, to get from place to place, to heat and cool our homes, but the carbon doesn't go away. It goes into the air from under the ground. To paraphrase Al Gore,

We are borrowing from China to buy oil from the middle east and rip coal out of the ground to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. But enough wind blows through the midwest corridor in a day, enough sunlight falls on the earth in FORTY MINUTES to provide the power we need for a year.

Harnessing the wind, the sun, and the earth eliminates these problems. Rather than burning a fuel; wind, solar, geothermal harness a process. The sun shines whether or not we use solar panels to capture some photons. The wind blows regardless of our decision to use a few particles to spin a turbine. We are hitchin' a ride on a moving train.

This is the choice: Wind and Solar or Coal and Nuclear. "Negawatts and clean pure Eco-Watts or Deadly-Watts, Morta-Watts, Killer-Watts.

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Negawatt - unit of energy you don't use.
Ecowatt - unit of energy generated in a clean sustainable way, such as via solar power or wind power.
Killer-watt - unit of energy generated by burning or consuming fuel such as coal, oil, gas, or radioactive material.