How do we Keep Warm

I am of an age when I can remember a rural community where wood heat was the norm. Every year my father would hire a local youth, provide him with an axe, and send him into the bush ½ mile away to cut the next winter's firewood supply.

In 1956 my parents built a new house. In this house they installed an oil burning furnace. I don't recall the rational that justified this shift from wood heat to oil heat, but I expect it was considered a sound decision, based on economics. On the one hand there was the time and cost that went into felling the trees, getting them to the yard, cutting them to length, getting the dried wood into the house, and stoking the fire. On the other hand, all that was needed was a call for the fuel delivery truck, and the fuel would be pumped into the storage tank. Marvellously, a thermostat controlled the room temperature. Viewed that way, the fuel oil option made sense. But I do not think my parents even considered, at that time, that they were substituting a non-renewable, fossil energy, transported thousands of miles for a renewable, local energy source.

But that was the beginning. That was followed by the Trans-Canada Gas pipeline in 1958, and in 1967 the Nelson River power stations were first connected to the provincial power system.

Today we are more or less dependant on Alberta natural gas and hydro electricity generated in northern Manitoba for our home heating. Were either of these energy sources to be seriously disrupted during cold weather, people in southern Manitoba would die! Is it that hard to envision an accident, a terrorist attack or a natural disaster that would result in such a disruption? Is it reasonable to expect gas from Alberta to keep flowing for ever?

But we don't need to be that vulnerable. Last week I wrote here about an energy policy of Fee and Dividend. Such a policy would significantly increase the cost of energy from distant sources, but it would also put money into our pocket that we could choose to use to improve energy efficiency. I find it exciting just thinking about where that might lead.

But it seems unlikely that we are going to get the political leadership that will give us a rational energy policy. So what can we do? Ought we to go back to the way things were being done 75 years ago? No! We have learned a great deal about many aspects of energy efficient design since then.

There is much that our local government could do to encourage preparedness. 95% of homes being built today are built with today's energy picture in mind, rather than a reasonable projection towards the future. Visionary local government leadership could give us building codes that would provide an incentive (both negative and positive) to builders and developers to orient houses for solar gain.

And there are things we can do as individuals. Join us for a discussion of this on January 18 at Steinbach 55 Plus. For more information check our web site.

Eric Rempel

This column is prepared by the South Eastman Transition Initiative, advocating sustainable lifestyles in southeastern Manitoba. Go to southeasttransition.com.