Soon To Be Sung

Enbridge, the natural gas supplier, has begun telling  us how we are doing in terms of energy efficiency. On our latest invoice, they say we used less gas than 70% of the neighbours. Good for us! I was hoping we were better than average since the installation of the heat pump and high efficiency furnace. I was also surprised that 30% of the neighbours are doing better than us, and I want to know how they did it so I can raise our score. 

However, I am a bit put off by this transparent attempt to manipulate us by appealing to our competitive instincts. I have to admit that even though I avoid game playing on principle, I have the same operating system as the rest of our species, which means I like to win. Anyway, they seem to have me figured out.

On second thought, that doesn't surprise me. We have recently watched the PBS series entitled Hacking Your Mind. The last presentation pointed out that manipulating and being manipulated is part of living in community. Knowing this, we can deflect malevolent manipulation and submit willingly to the good stuff. Furthermore, we can control our own behaviour using a few simple tricks. I'm not going to explain in a couple of paragraphs what took PBS four hours of dense programming. Take a  peek on your own: it is straight out of the operating manual for the human mind. (If you can't get it live on TV, you can purchase a DVD.)

Here's a spoiler. When you set out to modify your own behaviour, take baby steps and reward yourself when you make progress. 

Excuse me. There's ice cream left over from Fathers' Day.

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OK, that was lovely. Let me just suggest a song that I have yet to compose. 

The first verse is paying attention to how things are, how they really are even if it stinks.
Second verse: make a plan to make things better.
Third verse: do something to make things better; baby steps are best.
Fourth verse: there's ice cream to celebrate success, and when there's failure, there's what you have learned, which is also nice.
Last verse: repeat and don't stop until it's over.

I hear someone in the back row asking 'what if things are hopeless? Why sing?'

I've been through this hope thing. Let me suggest a refrain in case we find out how bad things really are. If, in spite of our best efforts, we fail, we want to sing about how we tried. Not having tried is not a song we want to sing.

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Pay attention to the way things are at Our World in Data: GHG emissions by sector (as tonnes of CO2 equivalent per annum) and lots of other information.