By Nadya Zhexembayeva

On February 1, 2006 President Bush delivered a new “State of the Union Address” (for all of us non-U.S. natives, it is a kind of long ‘talking to my people’ message many leaders of states do during holidays and such), where among many points, he spoke of the America’s addiction to oil. It must have been a big surprise to the media, as almost every newspaper and TV show reported it in their headlines; I, myself, found it to be a nice surprise, as well. After all, when was the last time George Bush actually pronounced the words “alternative energy sources”?

As others immediately responded to Bush’s invitation with big debates on what would that actually mean in practice, I, too, wondered about my own ‘Energy Star” strategy.

Well, there is none, really. I am driving a car, at a minimum, trying to walk where possible, and car pool where possible (thanks to 7 years in the rural US without a car, which taught me well about walking and car pooling). My tiny family is doing its best to conserve energy relevant to home heating. We bundle up instead of turning it up and have replaced all light bulbs with energy efficient models, although green roofing and solar paneling is well beyond our reach. We buy products with less packaging so that energy used on something we throw away is not thrown away; and we recycle religiously to conserve energy invested in the glass, paper, and plastics. We also have considered car sharing, a new service just being born in Cleveland, but between my husband, Vlad, and my 2-year-old, Lila, we have not reached a definitive conclusion about whether to participate. So what else is within reach? Hm…

This entry was posted on Monday, February 6th, 2006 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Business-in-Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.