I agree. I'm a lot of things, but I'm not a hypocrite. I'm not giving up either of my powerboats, or my truck, or my car, so I don't tell other people what they need to give up.
As with all things in life, each of us has to reach a balance we're comfortable with. We sometimes feel some guilt over what we spend, but then remind ourselves of those we employ and of what we do for others through charitable giving. We use a lot of diesel on the water, but we've reduced our electric consumption huge amounts over the last few years and more recently have done the same on our gas consumption. Our corporate offices are in one of the most energy efficient buildings there is. As to diesel consumption on the roads, we're participating in programs set up by manufacturers to test alternatives.
The truth in all areas is we could always do more than we're doing today. We're not going to apologize though for not giving everything to charities or stopping all use of fossil fuels.
I guess I think of the billionaires who have pledged 50% to charities when they die and the first thing I heard was those asking why not 100%. Then why not 0%? The point is they've found a balance and it's one that will help millions of people.
I think it's very meaningful that discussions such as this thread are taking place on boating forums. All diesel isn't renounced, but I think talking early will lead to a reduction. Maybe over the next five to ten years. Then will it be 25 years or what when we see it reduced drastically? I have no idea, but there are a lot of people working toward positive goals.
I believe there are areas in which major changes are decades away. Meanwhile we all need to be attentive to what we can do today, without huge sacrifice. In our case, we can use all LED and cut down tremendously on electric usage and for ourselves and others we've converted over 2000 buildings in the last five years. Unfortunately, the makes conversion to solar even less financially beneficial, but we continue to push to make it practical in the states in which we operate, while also developing knowledge. We've gone to all hybrid cars for company cars and employees love them. That will soon be over 100 cars. Will the next replacements be all electric? I hope so, but still has to prove itself in some areas.
One other thing I accept is that there will be some mis-steps. There will be technology that looks great on paper, but turns out not so wonderful in practice. We will see claims that are not real. I love the double counting. Had a solar proposal on one building but they compared to a similarly sized space not yet on LED. In South Florida we have two large electric usages, lighting and air conditioning. Convert to energy efficient air and to LED and the potential for solar savings is greatly reduced. We've already dropped consumption about 75%. Even if solar can reduce it another 50%, now it's only 50% of 25%. We got a solar proposal on our house. Only problem was they used an electric usage per square foot that was 4 times what we use. They also had a power cell to protect for outages, but no knowledge of how few days we've ever been without and the they had no idea how you're limited in bringing such live during an outage.
No one has all the answers, but the great thing is that we are all looking for future answers. That's all anyone can really hope for. We should recognize our accomplishments too. I can tell you as someone involved my adult life in manufacturing, how much cleaner industries are than 50 years ago, how much less they pollute air and water. I think of something as simple as catalytic converters and where our major cities would be today without them. Yes, bicycles would have been better, but people weren't going to make that change. I think we face serious challenges, but I also believe we'll address them one step at a time.