"Mr. Halpine, a soft-spoken, softly bearded 42-year-old descendant of penny-pinching farmers, dedicates his down time to a sort of game: outfoxing Big Agriculture and Big Energy.
“Haven’t bought oil in three years,” he said with a subtle New England kind of glee, pointing to the almost-full gauge on the heating-oil tank during a tour of the science lab that is his family’s basement."
NYTimes
Running a Home on Yankee Ingenuity
By DEBORAH BALDWIN
Published: July 13, 2008
There are some things not to be so jealous of -- they keep their temperature at 55 degrees in the winter -- that's pretty cold. I'm sure one of his kids is going to rebel one day and jack the heat up to 82. They also burn wood -- I love burning wood -- I have a fantasy about making myself a room in my garage with a little wood stove -- but it's dirty -- far dirtier than oil. Still -- they've done it. They supply their own energy -- they use solar power to run their TVs their computers, their washer and dryer...
But that ability -- to simply move outside of the system -- pretty amazing.
I was reading a different story this morning on The Oil Drum: "A gas supply disruption case study..."
"An explosion at Apache's Varanus Island gas plant in Western Australia on June 3 cut off 30 per cent of the state's domestic gas supply. Supplies to mines and industry in the Pilbara region (the heartland of Australian iron ore mining) fell by 45 per cent.
...
Overall, the reaction to the incident has been less than inspiring, with the response largely being to switch back to the dirty and depleting alternatives of coal and diesel."
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