Here’s irony. I’m living here at the edge of the treeline in what is without a doubt the coldest place in the United States. We use about 380 gallons of diesel each year as the only source of heat for our home. (It’s a toasty -19 degrees outside right now; we’re actually wasting energy, since the freezers out in the garage are keeping the food 20 warmer than the air around them.) So we use a little less than twice the amount of fuel that he uses in a climate that is literally Siberian, and I’m not talking about southern Siberia.
I’m sorry for the poor slob in balmy (gardening zone 5) Connecticut. If his home had been built to the same standards as our house, he could probably keep warm simply with the residual heat from his appliances, the sun, and his body in a climate that’s a lot more forgiving than interior Alaska. The reason our house in Alaska is built this way is a decision made by the builder, not the government. We have no housing code out here. I’ve lived in Connecticut, too, most of my childhood and early adulthood, and the place is crawling with regulation and taxes - and that has a tendency to atrophy the section of the brain dedicated to thinking ahead and planning for yourself.
I don’t know why this guy didn’t insulate and build and plan for winter. He had enough money to pay for 200 gallons of heating fuel, which at the current price is about $500. You can buy a lot of insulation for that money. In fact, if you work at it a little at a time, year after year, you could really get your house set up to survive what they call cold down there in my former home... if the code enforcement department allows that, if the regulations allow that, if he didn’t have to spent hours and dollars filling in paperwork to do it.
I’m up with ANWR oil, too. Believe me when I say that I wouldn’t be in favor of ANWR drilling if it would harm the environment. I’ll bet Pres. Obama or Pres. Rodham Clinton would lock it up for decades, too. *sigh*
The problem with ANWR and why the State is less than excited about producing the fields is the 90-10 which is even worse than the 75-25 producers get in the ME, and that’s our FedGov out-arabing Arabs.
So many houses owned by the elderly were designed and built during the era of cheap energy. They didn’t or couldn’t afford to retrofit. In California we have had rebate programs to encourage adding insulation, double pane windows, and attic fans.