Energy contradictions underline some very strange attitudes.
I went for a bike ride this afternoon ….. there is a super 6km circuit that goes from our village Unterthingau along a country road, up past a farm with magnificent views over the Allgäu countryside then along to Oberthingau and back home …..  On the way there are horses and cows munching happily in fields and of course the snow-capped Alps in the background ….  The exercise and the fresh air were great, but during the ride I was struck by a couple of things. On the skyline in the direction of Kempten was – as usual – a line of a dozen wind turbines. All were – as usual – immobile, save one which was doing its best to turn languidly, and hardly succeeding.

Now the Germans do things properly, as we know. This area is pristine, hardly a blade of grass or a stone out of place; it is stunning.  So when it comes to energy-saving, they do it seriously (up to a point).

For a start, there are solar panels covering many roofs; the farmers get a subsidy for the installations and sell any surplus to the German National Grid. And then there are those windmills …. but the point is, they are usually motionless. There may be plenty of winter snow in this area, but there isn’t much wind.

This confirmed my view that windmills in most places in Europe are never going to solve the energy shortage. They are contributing almost nothing now, and of course only produce anything at all when there’s wind. Full marks to the Germans for trying, but it’ll never be enough.

Then as I rode through Oberthingau I saw a local resident blowing leaves off his forecourt with one of those “leaf-blower” machines ….  This struck me as bizarre.

In truth, I’ve NEVER understood those things. What is the point? You blow the leaves from one place to another and later on when there is a little wind it’ll blow them straight back again. If he had been hoovering UP the leaves, fine, but blowing them from one place to another? Why not use a broom? And what have they got against leaves, anyway?

And I thought, on the one hand we are rushing around like headless chickens trying to think of ways of generating energy and on the other we are totally wasting it on ludicrous non-essentials.

As has been claimed and to my mind proven for Africa, what is needed is not giant, national and international projects (though more nuclear power-stations would help) but micro-projects for the masses, and especially a cosmic change in the mindset. You only have to look around to see examples of humungous waste of energy.  Get rid for a start of most traffic lights! Dangerous? Errrmmm, no actually … experiments have shown that when there are no lights people drive more cautiously ….  Get rid of those barriers on motorways that go up and down thousands of times every day. How many people actually drive through a toll barrier without paying? And even if they do, the operator can take their number and report them; why on earth do we need an energy-consuming barrier?

It’s individual mindsets that need to change …  Do people really have to fire up their car to drive 300 metres to the baker’s on Saturday mornings? What happened to walking?  The British “school run” is a classic example; kids are driven to school, don’t get enough exercise and so get fat, the roads are clogged up (and dangerous) and loads of CO2 is produced. Insane …..

One thing is sure, insanity will not save us ….