Incentives, not dictates, will spur energy conservation

As the child of Depression-era parents who still save bits of string, used gift wrap and the plastic trays from candy boxes, I too am emotionally incapable of seeing things go to waste.

This confounding compulsion to conserve goes well beyond the usual household flotsam. When I'm dining out, not only do I feel guilt at leaving food on my plate, I also feel bad when the stranger at the next table leaves half his steak dinner to be thrown out.

I'm always annoying my wife by turning off lights, because in the back of my mind I imagine how much oil, gas or coal is being burned to keep that bulb lighted for no reason. Likewise, I shower under a relative trickle of hot water because it bothers me to think of all that hard-won energy pouring down the drain. I also keep the temperature setting on my water heater so low that I can shower with only the hot water faucet turned on.

As an admitted basket case in compulsive conservation, though, I feel entitled to say that I'm getting pretty sick and tired of having the government tell me exactly how, what and where I'm supposed to conserve.

I've got nothing against well-crafted energy-efficiency regulations, such as California's Title 24, which for the most part leaves designers plenty of latitude provided they meet an overall energy budget. On the other hand, some government micromanagers just want to issue marching orders. For example, earlier this year, a California congresswoman introduced a bill that would effectively ban the sale of all incandescent bulbs by 2012.

However well-meaning this edict might be, it utterly fails to harness the power of self-interest that, for instance, a well-designed tax credit might. Instead, it simply breeds popular resentment and widespread attempts at circumvention. Rest assured, it wouldn't be long before people were buying cases of 100-watt bulbs out of the back of vans.

Enlightened self-interest is a far better motivator than laws that attempt to dictate a social conscience. Hence, I have to trust that the mindless consumerism that's overtaken the U.S. in the last couple of decades will eventually be reversed by the same old-fashioned capitalist forces that created it.

There is already a glimmering of this trend. For example, as photovoltaic panels continue inching their way toward economic viability, more and more of us are looking into their use -- not because we're pious but because we'd love not to be dependent on our local utility. Ditto for the idea of owning a hybrid car that keeps us slightly less in thrall to our well-fed friends at the oil companies.

Such developments, modest though they are, make me believe that all Americans will eventually see the economic sense, if not the philosophical beauty, of cherishing everything Mother Nature gives us. Not because some law demands it, but because we'd be crazy not to.

Arrol Gellner is an architect with more than 25 years' experience in residential and commercial architecture.

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source: latimes.com