Power

Juneau Alaska, according to an article in The New York Times of May 14, 2008:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/us/14juneau.html

gets 80% of its electric power from a hydroelectric dam 40 miles from the city. This is a good thing, right? An avalanche, though, knocked out most of the transmission towers and the city had to fall back on other sources until June. Mostly, people had to come up with other ways of doing stuff; clotheslines instead of electric dryers, dimming lights, running only one elevator in places where there are two.

What I get out of this is that we probably can do with a lot less power and fuel than we are willing to admit. It does, however, take a crisis for folks to realize this. You would think that $4 a gallon gasoline would get people to consider alternatives but perhaps that will only happen when they just can't get gas. I'm sort of looking forward to that day.