Finding answers to the climate crisis

"As I travel in Canada from coast to coast to coast, people are always asking me: 'Dave, what is the answer'? And I say the same thing to them all: What is the question?" -- the late comedian Dave Broadfoot, a member of the Royal Canadian Air Farce.

Ten years. That is how much time is left to cut our carbon emissions by 50 per cent. How are we going to do it?
I am reminded of a line by former U.S. vice-president Al Gore in his ground-breaking movie An Inconvenient Truth. It was something like, "We not only need to find new answers but also look at things we know for sure that just aren't so."
Transitioning toward a carbon-free economy is a challenge, for sure, but remember that opportunities are always disguised as problems. The biggest obstacles to solving any problem are inertia (we don't  like change) and psycho-sclerosis (hardening of the attitudes.) Change is always frightening unless it is goal-oriented and attitudes aren't something we are born with.
We know our goal -- cut fossil fuel usage 50 per cent by 2030. An attitude that we need to change in order to reach that goal is that this is all someone else's responsibility -- the government, for instance. Governments, unfortunately, are reactive, not proactive. Politicians must get re-elected and so they wait to see what a majority of voters want to do before they decide to "lead."
So it is up to us, average guys, to take the bull by the horns. When enough of us do it, "suddenly" the government will get involved.
I started the ball rolling, vehicle-wise, a couple of weeks ago when I got a call from my Nissan dealership in Thunder Bay. This was a new salesperson who wanted to introduce herself and say she noticed my Frontier pickup was now 12 years old! Wouldn't I like to trade it in on a new model?
Well, I said, it is still low-mileage and runs great. Anyway, I added, once we pay for our other vehicle, a Grand Caravan, our next vehicle will be an EV. I'm pretty sure I heard her gasp.
Ninety per cent of the miles we put on our vehicles is commuting from Nolalu to Thunder Bay and return, I explained. Round trip is 100 kilometers (60 miles). We can easily do that with an EV and charge it at home.What we hope happens in the next couple of years while we pay off the Caravan is that someone will come out with a higher EV, like an SUV. Automakers don't seem to have twigged to why so many older people prefer SUVs and vans -- the seats are higher off the ground and thus are far better for those of us with bad backs. There are hybrid SUVs and vans -- the Pacifica -- out there right now, to be sure, but they don't have the all-electric range of an EV.
I hoped she passed on our conversation to her boss and then her boss to Nissan Canada. We need to start stocking EVs.
In other news here we have succeeded this winter in reducing our propane usage by about 50 per cent, just by using a woodstove. The furnace only comes on after we go to bed and the stove runs low. I am surprised that this stove, a Napolean high-efficiency model that is rated for 1100 square feet, heats our 2,000-square-foot home easily. It isn't even located in the home proper but rather in a wing in the sunroom. A small, quiet, fan moves the heat out of the sunroom and into the main house.
Up at the cabin on Red Lake we already have a solar refrigerator and starting this summer will have a solar water pressure pump. We will still use propane to cook with and heat hot water, however, I hope to eventually pre-heat the water with a solar system (a black tank sitting in the sun).