I was also talking with my students about our energy use. One student proudly declared that he doesn't really use all that much energy. So we started to look at the ways we all use energy just by existing in the US. I had them imagine a walk through the produce section of the grocery store and look at all the stickers on the fruit. They looked up the countries of origin of some of their favorite fruits and started to make the connection with the energy used in shipping those foods. Then we thought about all the food in packages. They thought about how that food gets packaged in a large industrial energy using facility. We backed up to where the food is grown and made the connection with getting food from a farm to the packaging facility.
They had all known the torture of ordering a product that is shipped from Asia and having to wait literal weeks for it to arrive at their house. We talked about the ship burning diesel fuel across the entire Pacific Ocean and the overland journey of their product across the US from there (we are on the Eat Coast.) This helped them see the hidden energy use in our daily lives.
This conversation was part of a lesson I do where we compare energy consumption across countries and analyze overall vs. per capita energy use. They are surprised at how much more energy we use per capita here compared to other countries like China or India. The statistic that inspired this lesson for me was that the US population is only about 5% of the world but we use 16-20% of the world's energy resources.
Perhaps OER can make a lesson that's better than mine where students can delve into all the ways energy is used just to get our products into our hands. The hidden costs of consumerism.
