North Kona Home Sales

When it is the 4^th of July, you will find me in Waiamea at the Parker Ranch for the annual Independence Day Rodeo. This year is the celebration of the Paniolo (Hawaiian Cowboy). Later in the day an estimated $40K was raised for charity during Waikoloa Beach Resort’s annual Fourth of July Rubber Duckie Race and Extravaganza. In Kailua-Kona, our annual parade was the largest in my memory with about 50 entries. After sunset all other fireworks paled beside Madame Pele’s magnificent display at Kilauea. It is tauted as the most spectacular eruption in decades.

At Mauna Lani Resort hundreds of spectators looked on as five honu were released into the ocean. There they will live out the rest of their lives, free to do whatever turtles are inclined to do. In the aftermath of all that celebration, I find myself contemplating how well it suits my nature to live where independence is cherished. Is it any wonder I work as an “Independent Contractor”? I just don’t like being controlled.

Lately I am feeling irritable about being dependant on oil. You see, I am old enough to have lived through the last really big oil scare. I recall most of the details of the passive solar home I hoped to build. I remember American made muscle cars giving way to fuel efficient foreign imports. I wrote articles on making solar collectors. Like so many “Baby Boomers”, I had great ideas about changing our dependence on fossil fuels. We knew in the 1970’s that we were depleting the ozone. We understood about acid rain, global warming and the greenhouse effect. Funny how much more oil we seemed to find in the 1980’s and 90’s. We got busy with other things and failed ourselves. I guess we counted on the catalytic converter and earth day to save the planet. We all had good intentions but we did little or nothing to make a cleaner world happen. We looked to the EPA to take care of our world and complained when it tried.

When Hink Rogers, founder of Blue Planet Foundation, recently said his goal is eliminate the use of all fossil fuel, it was a just shocking. Later I started thinking, what more perfect place to make a serious effort to do just that, than The Big Island.  The higher gas and electric prices climb, the more convinced I am, the time to start is right now. I’m not talking about just recycling cans – mercury filled light bulbs - solar hot water – hybrid car - every little bit helps ecology. I’m thinking we should set our goal at full blown – geothermal – photovoltaic – electric car – Fossil Fuel Independence on The Big Island!

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 5th, 2008 at 3:08 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.