Question Earthority!

I apologize for the intermittence of recent updates — technical difficulties of a mysterious nature have been intermittently preventing me from posting. This week’s editorial is short and sweet. I could reduce it to one word: Winterize! But then it would be a headline, not an editorial, right?

Here in St. Louis, the leaves are starting to turn … and the first chill winds of autumn are beginning to blow. As I sit at my computer in front of the window providing the best view from the house, I can feel the draft. Time to hunt up some weather stripping.

As always, my concerns are of both the environmental and “practical” variety. I don’t relish opening the envelope on the first winter gas bill, nor do I want to huddle under blankets with chattering teeth until spring. My desire to remain comfortable — affordably — happens to fit in nicely with my desire to both keep energy consumption to a minimum and avoid venting a bunch of waste heat into the atmosphere. I can use that heat, and the environment doesn’t need the extra pollution produced in the process of generating extra.

So, it’s time to start closing off the draft conduits around doors and windows, making sure that vents in unused rooms are closed, and do a little crawling around to see if maybe insulation needs to be replaced or added to (not to mention roof shingles — I get on the roof as infrequently as possible, but I’ll be doing it this week.

Winterizing isn’t just a set of preemptive household chores, though — one should thing strategically. If your house is empty during the day, why keep it at human “comfort levels?” You might want to look into thermostat timers that keep things cooler while you’re gone and warm up the house just in time for your arrival home. If one or two people are at home during the day but not generally wandering the house, a space heater might be more efficient than the furnace.

Save yourself a few hundred dollars and minimize your environmental impact at the same time — winterize!