One Light Bulb
July 18th, 2008The elevators at work all have little tv screens in them that go through little news slide shows to keep you entertained and give you something to get your mind off of how awkward it is to be riding in crowded elevators with strangers. Anyways, when I got back from lunch, I saw a little fun energy fact on this screen that said “Buildings in the U.S. use enough electricity to power a 100 Watt light bulb for a billion years.”
Okay.
I suppose that is interesting, but I’m not really sure what the point is. I don’t think it comes to anyone’s surprise that buildings in the US use electricity and there are, in fact, many buildings in the US. The only purpose I could come up with was that it was a subtle suggestion that we need to rethink how we are using our natural resources, much in the same way you’ll see an ad pointing out that tens of billions of dollars are being spent on war that could be used for education. Well, the logical next step for me is, “Are they suggesting that we reallocate our resources to a single light bulb that we can use for the next billion years?” That seems like a much poorer use of our resources, if you ask me.