America’s Best?

    I remember when there was a gasoline shortage, not once, but twice in the same decade. Energy supply, economics and our environment started to enter the minds of several Americans. As an Environmental Studies Major, I realized everything was connected.
    Ten short years earlier, America's team at NASA had humans walk on the surface of the moon. All came home safe. However, after that second gasoline shortage answers to the "energy crisis" came through stickers. Team work was in the past and for everyone too young to remember, here is an example of America's Best team effort to save energy in the late 1970s:
    We had a move to conserve, but that conservation move was all about sacrificing. We were told to put on a sweater and lower the thermostat to decrease the amount of heat used in our home and put a sticker on the wall with a cleaver saying like:

"DON'T SHOWER BY THE HOUR!"
(To save on the fuel used to make the hot water)

"TO SAVE MORE, DRY DISHES WITH AN OPEN DOOR!"
(To save with Dish Washers and not run the electric heating elements to create hot air for drying the dishes)
"SET AIR CONDITIONER AT 78! 
DON'T USE IN AFTERNOON!"
(Yeah, right)

"LIGHT NOT NEEDED? TURN ME OFF!"
(Because they couldn't do a rhyme with: Shut The Light Switch, You Wasteful %!¶@#!)

"FOGGY HEAD STAY IN BED, 
SHUT THE DOOR!"
(To save by shutting your refrigerator door, not the dish washer door that you left open to dry the dishes and tripped over when you went into the dark kitchen for that midnight snack.)

    These stickers stated one word: "sacrifice," and these "marketing steps" were a failure simply because they didn't embrace or set out to solve the issues like Americans did in the past. Sadly, these are still the conservation steps many think are necessary to save energy today.
    With all of America's issues, we must learn all the facts, so as one team we find and implement long term non-greedy solutions. Just as our country did with a spirit of freedom, to stop slavery, expand our compassion to go Over There, to drive down pure evil in WWII, to refuse governments that made their people dependent or controllable, reach skyward with our intelligence to put men on the moon, find cures for diseases, and always hold a torch high toward a brighter tomorrow. The world’s future is up to us.