Sunday, May 1, 2011

Good movie about where electricity comes from


We attended a green expo today, and one of the sessions was a 1-hour video called "Kilowatt Ours: A Plan to Re-Energize America", which was made in 2007. I hadn't even heard of it before, but I was very impressed with it.

The movie, created by Jeff Barrie, explores the source of our electricity and the problems caused by energy production including mountain top removal, childhood asthma and global warming. He walks through step-by-step how you can reduce your energy usage in your home and learn more about "green" renewable energy. 

One of the better parts of the movie was the discussion about energy conservation that many cities have taken on. Instead of building new power plants to address their increasing energy demands, the city of Austin, and the state of California spent a fraction of the power plant construction costs on education and rebates. In Iowa, we are having the discussion right now about building a new nuclear plant to meet our increasing energy demand, so that really hit home for me.

You can also download a classroom exercise for grade school kids, that corresponds with the movie
http://www.kilowattours.org/curriculum/KilowattOurs-Challenge-Activity.pdf

You can learn more about the movie at http://www.kilowattours.org/

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