Baby Steps

Everyone who has been replacing your old incandescent lightbulbs with the expensive curlyque swiggly ones, pat yourself on the back.  The Associated Press is reporting (via the Indy Star) that energy use in American homes is declining, despite increased gadget usage.  Turns out, more efficient gadgets (and microwaves, refrigerators, ovens, and - yes - slowly illuminating light bulbs) reduce energy consumption at a faster rate than adding new gadgets increase energy consumption.

Woot!  Way to go, people!  Who knows, maybe we can get energy consumption down to a point that we could seriously consider taking coal plants offline, instead of retrofitting them for natural gas, or even building new coal plants all together.  A couple more windmills... some innovative solar applications... maybe we can swift the demand curve down to where alternative energy is the energy option.