Making Climate Change Fun for Blog Action Day

How gloomy do you get when you read, hear and see all the effects of climate change?  Well cheer up.  You can have fun with climate change.

My wife knows that if she wants my attention she only has to mention the latest gadget. Well now I have discovered that I can have fun with gadgets and help cool down climate change at the same time.

Governments and big corporations may have their grand plans but in the end it comes down to you and me.  We have to do something.  This blog isn’t about all the standard things an individual or homeowner can do, like using the bike and insulating the house. These are all important but I just want to have fun.

Now if I had one of those new Toyota Prius with that super energy dashboard, I could compare my energy usage with others and we could compete to see who is managing to reach the lowest energy reading.  How about that then – fun, competitive and social and helps alleviate climate change. This is becoming known as the Prius Effect

There are a number of devices for use in the home to monitor your energy consumption. The latest monitors can be quite sophisticated with inbuilt storage, multiple detectors and linked to a computer and the internet.  So not only can I monitor my consumption device by device over time I can also share my performance with my mates on the internet.

Take a look at Joe Baguley’s item on HomeCamp Joe ends up with Trio from Green Energy Options which monitors gas as well as electricity, outputs the lot to a MySQL database and then serves it to the internet.  Once again fun, competitive and social.

GO ON        HAVE SOME FUN     WITH CLIMATE CHANGE

CleanTech

I was interested to see that Thomas Powers on ecademy was drumming up support for a UK CleanTech Forum and has started an ecademy club called Cleantech Meetup.  

I have long had an interest in New Energy and started a page on my website KnowYourTechs of‘Future Energy’ companies. I like to fnd out what is distinctive about their products or services as much as their financial performace as I believe companies with a distinctive technical advantage can have an edge over others in the market financially.

I have even put my money where my mouth is and invested in the BlackRock New Energy Investement Trust (FTSE: BRWM) Now it looks like I shall have to investigate putting some money into the the Powershares CleanTech ETF (AMEX: PZD) that follows the CleanTech Index

There is always a discussion as to whether technology will saves us from climate change. The new clean technologies generate less if any CO2 and use no fossil fuels and therefore have the potential to reduce our dependence on CO2 producing fossil fuel consuming resources and thus make our world a cleaner, cooler place. And of course I hope to make some money out of it as well.