Every time I get on my bike I learn something new about riding long distances. As a touring cyclist beginner, I’m coming to find I enjoy steady up-hill climbs. I now know how to pack my panniers so I don’t spend twenty minutes looking for my peanut butter. I know how to fix a flat tire. Two weeks into this course, viewing life from atop two spinning wheels feels almost natural, but what I’m still best at, what I continue to relish and excel in, is breaking. No, not breaking in the sense of squeezing the levers attached to your bike when flying down a hill at 28 miles per hour, but breaking in the sense of enjoying a day where the schedule does not include spending hours on a bike. Having a layover in White Sulfur Springs today was a breaking at its best. I spent the afternoon alongside my program mates traipsing around town, checking email, grocery shopping, and laundering clothes in dire need of a wash. All in relative sunshine, too. What bliss!
Besides some time to ourselves, we also had a class In the morning to discuss the previous night’s reading on geothermal and solar energy. We spent some time hammering out the technical details of the two power sources — to my great benefit. I am exceedingly terrible at understanding anything to do with wires, magnates, or electrons, tending to focus more on policy, ethics, and…feelings. Damn my staunch liberal arts education – and then went on to examine A Grand Solar Plan from Scientific America by Ken Zweibel, James Mason and Vasilis Fthenakis. In the article, the authors outline a plan to provide 69 percent of the United State’s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy, including transportation, with solar power by 2050. The plan includes the development of massive solar power plants through heavy federal support, and even allows for a one percent annual increase in energy use.
A Grand Solar Plan got my mind meditating on issues of scale throughout the day, especially after a conversation in the late afternoon with Gene Gudmundson, owner of a acupuncture and chiropractic clinic as well as a hot springs spa and motel. On a tour lead by Gene, we saw how he powers 10 – 15 percent of his business with electricity from two solar panels and a wind turbine (which is currently broken, though he has plans to repair it). This may not seem like much, but for someone who pays $1000 per month energy bills, it makes a difference. Besides using solar and wind power for electricity, Gene uses the sulfurous water from a well practically right outside his door to fill the two geothermal soaking pools at his spa, as a source of heat for his home, clinic, and his motel’s 21 hotel rooms. He estimates that about 50 percent of the total energy he uses is from renewable sources, lowering his carbon footprint.
In the face of global climate change and the rising cost of oil (have you checked your local gas station lately? I hope you don’t drive a diesel, for your pocketbook’s sake), the United States (and the rest of the world) needs to utilize renewable resources such as solar power. But is the solution to build utility size renewable power plants such as A Grand Solar Plan suggests? Or, should renewable power be used on a community or individual level like Gene is doing? I tend towards being an advocate for small scale power production. Allowing people to connect more intimately to their power source and understand the process behind their constant flicking of a switch might make them more aware of the resources producing their energy. Sending renewable power from a large power plant to consumers far away does not allow for this. Then again some urban environments may be unable to survive off small scale renewable power.
The issues are, of course, not simple or complete for me or anyone else. And that’s rather frustrating, for I’d like for my ideas to be tied up neatly in a bow. But I know that’s impossible. For now, I’ll hope for a steep learning curve.
–Leora Stein, Whitman College
