As a nation we are watching day to day as the Gulf of Mexico is overcome with oil from an oil rig explosion that occurred fifty miles off the coast. Carol Browner, one of Washington’s leading Energy Advisors, is calling the BP oil spill “probably the biggest environmental disaster the country has ever faced”. It can be difficult for our individual families across the country to concentrate on local day to day environmental responsibilities like consolidating trips to reduce our gasoline consumption when the Gulf of Mexico is being overcome by oil.

We can compare the national environmental disaster to the national economic crisis our country faced so recently. The New York Times offered an article that made the comparison of the large financial companies then to the large oil production companies now. On a similar note, we might see how our family responsibilities in both of these disasters could also be compared. We are accountable for our family’s actions during the financial crisis of managing our family economics responsibly just as we are accountable our family’s actions during this environmental crisis of managing our energy use responsibly. We just may end up helping our budgets and the environment.

We might take this time as a family to look at our past oil use in our homes, our cars, or our jobs. It may have been that when we were younger it wasn’t important to reduce our oil use, look for smarter ways to use our appliances thus reduce our family energy use, or look to car pooling to get us on our way to work. Looking at how we did all these things in the past may be interesting dinner discussion.

Next, we might look at how we managed these same pieces of our lives only a month ago. We would probably see we greatly reduced the energy we used in the last decade as we went about our personal daily routines. Interestingly enough, it was probably for the economic benefit that we changed our routines. Sometimes we didn’t even have a choice – appliances we wanted were manufactured to use less water and less energy – so we bought them and saved some energy in the process.

As we see before our eyes the amount of oil that is spewing into our ocean, we may consider looking at our future family energy use and see if there aren’t even more ways to save ourselves some cash while reducing our family energy use. It’s always an excellent idea to reduce energy usage to as a means to reduce costs for our new families. We’re not suggesting we all live in a tree house, but there may be a few extra ways to reduce our energy usage in our homes that we hadn’t thought about in a while.

Our family probably won’t be asked to sit on any of the President’s financial task forces to see what we know about solving our nations ongoing financial crisis. Our family probably won’t come up with the piece of equipment that can be used to stop the broken oil well piping from gushing out at the ocean floor. But, our family is part of this nation in crisis and each family should do our best to stay focused on what we can do today to help.

Posted: 2010-05-30