Being energy wise is becoming more and more a part of our culture recently. Conserving energy in our homes and driving is very worthwhile.  Even though oil prices have come down to half of their peak in mid-2008, we know that they could go up again in a hurry.

I drive a large Yukon XL, which is basically a Suburban.  Unfortunately it does not get great gas mileage so I have trimmed the number of trips I make to the office as much as I can. That has helped my fuel budget.  I would get a smaller car, but this baby is pretty useful for carrying loads and large groups of people on a trip.

We have tried to cut back on energy usage at home by installing extra insulation and double-pane windows.  Energy talk on the news and in magazines slowly does have some influence on how we think and act.

Imagine the wasteful expenditure of energy in fighting a wildfire, with Diesel for fuel-guzzling choppers, planes and trucks.  Even the evacuation of thousands of families is an unfortunate waste of gasoline.  Check out the Minutemanfire website to see if there are other posts about preventing wildfires and their effect on civilization.  Even when fire buffers had been created, homes with tile roofs have been destroyed in fires, surprisingly.

There’s a lot of wasted energy in the work involved in rebuilding homes demolished by wildfires.  So there is a relationship between energy conservation and fire prevention, that we often don’t think much about.