Powering Your Entire Home By Bike?! The BBC Explores 'Cheap' Energy (Video)
From warm and toasty incandescent bulbs to inefficient refrigerators, there's little doubt that our moden lifestyle is incredibly energy intensive. And thanks to mountaintop removal, natural gas, and the occasional massive solar installation, we've so far been able to keep the lights on. But all this cheap, abundant energy means it's hard for the average person to picture just how much we are using. Now the BBC has taken a stab at illustrating what our modern energy needs look like in human terms. And the result is dramatic. The BBC's Bang Goes the Theory program decided to explore just what it would take to power an entire household by pedal power alone, and the results are illuminating to say the least. Rob Hopkins over at Transition Culture tells us that folks are saying this was "one of the best programmes in terms of an awareness of energy that they have ever seen."
Folks in the UK can view the whole show online for the next 7 days. Sadly, due to licensing restrictions, we non-UK residents are less lucky. But the BBC has uploaded the following clip to YouTube.
And before any trolls (seen any lately?) start accusing us of wanting to power every home by bike, or being anti-progress, that misses the point completely. Much like Copenhagen's pedal-powered Christmas tree, this is an exercise in energy literacy—not a model for how to power our world.