Friday, April 20, 2001
For the recordbooks, NKU's 'Environmentally Concerned Organization of Students (ECOS) and AEA had a shared EarthDay table on NKU's campus on Wednesday 04/18/2001 from 1:00 to 5pm. We demonstrated solar cooking and solar battery charging, displayed AEA past hometour booklets, allowed people to look through books and magazines on ecology and renewable energy, and talked with many folks about the issues at the heart of EarthDay. The sun was out, even if there were high thin clouds, which kept the solar cooker from exceeding 260F, but this was hot enough for Ben and John to cook many batches of cookies which were shared with brave passers-by! A picture of Ben and our display is shown below.
ECOS was represented by Ben, Amy and Cathy. It looked like ECOS got a few students to sign up for its club! AEA was represented by me (John Robbins). I didn't try to compete with ECOS to get new AEA members, but encouraged ECOS members to become active members in AEA, to keep us informed on their progress and goings-on. I donated my little solar box cooker to ECOS to get them started with solar energy. Let me repeat that any ECOS students and faculty wanting to join AEA should send an email stating such to AEA co-chair Jeanette Raichyk at aea1@egroups.com.
Kristen Yount, Associate Professor of Sociology, brought one of her classes to see our displays and listen to our talks about energy and environmental issues, especially what we can do ourselves without waiting for or relying on governments. Ms. Yount is the NKU campus organizer of a "sustainable future program" aimed at helping NKU faculty to integrate sustainability into coursework! My main message to her students was that the biggest challenge to and opportunity for all of us trying to make progress in this quest is becoming educated consumers about our energy habits, about how our various power consuming devices use energy and cause pollution, about the best combinations of alternatives both on the supply-side (new solar and other power generation) and the demand-side (minimizing our need and use of energy).
I stressed how solar power was not just one thing, like solar electric or PV panels, but a whole series of choices to use solar in its various forms starting with the cheapest and least complicated. This is called 'appropriate solutions', a phrase I actually heard Ralph Nader use when he referred to third world development during his live address on C-SPAN Thursday evening. For instance, I mentioned how it would cost over $20,000 to put enough solar electric panels on a roof to operate an electric water heater, but that a solar thermal collector to use solar heat directly to heat that water could be as cheap as $2000. I also mentioned how learning to use solar daylight is way cheaper and easier, while equally effective for supplying needed light, for the average person than installing PV panels to run lightbulbs in windowless or curtain-shaded rooms. In this respect, I differentiated our shared goal of reducing our pollution demands by becoming more solar from some solar manufacturers' shared goal of selling the most solar panels. I hope my presentation convinced the students that our road to solar necessitates our becoming much more energy-wise consumers of energy-consuming devices AND the different kinds of solar.
Thanks to NKU for allowing us 'do our thing' on its campus this year! The last couple years AEA was on UC's campus for EarthDay and a couple years ago we were at Miami University.
If any body else in AEA has a similar report of an EarthDay event, please make your report to the rest of us!
John
AEA co-chair
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