By Carin Skoog, global warming solutions coordinator, Fresh Energy

This week every year, we take the time to stop and think about the impact we humans have on our planet. Many of us carve out time from our busy schedules to participate in various Earth Week events such as beach clean-ups or recycling days. Even the national media has picked up the drumbeat over the past few years, highlighting green business initiatives and promoting green marketing around Earth Day. This is the week when Americans feel inspired and empowered to leave the world a better place than we inherited—but do we really understand the consequences of our energy choices and how much it matters?

Unfortunately, Americans seem to be missing basic energy education, including where our power comes from and at what cost. A recent national survey, Energy Pulse, found that two thirds of consumers do not know that nearly half of all electricity (48 percent nationally) is produced by burning coal (in Minnesota, approximately 75 percent of our electricity generation comes from coal). And less than four percent of Americans know that coal-fired electricity is the largest contributor to global warming pollution, instead assuming vehicle emissions are the biggest source. Suzanne Shelton, a consultant who conducted the survey, points out, “People hop in their cars feeling guilty about their tailpipes but are completely oblivious to the 10 lights left on at their house or their 65-degree thermostat in the middle of August.” How can we expect consumers to make smart energy choices when they hold these critical misperceptions about our energy system?

This problem clearly illustrates the need for policy solutions to global warming. While it’s important for consumers to educate themselves and use their consumer power to drive the market in the direction of cleaner, more efficient technologies—we can’t leave it all up to our neighbors, family, and friends. Building even one new coal plant cancels out the best personal efforts of thousands of people, and the only way to move power generation in a cleaner direction is through state and national mandates. We need a national policy that will limit and lower global warming pollution over time, as well as policies that regulate global warming pollution from vehicles.

As consumers, we have the responsibility to understand where our power comes from and how we can make better choices to reduce our energy consumption. As world citizens, it’s imperative that we call for strong government action to reduce global warming pollution both here in Minnesota and at the federal level.

Let’s make every day Earth Day.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 8:34 am by Fresh Energy and is filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.