Portable Power

I was sitting on the bus this morning, reading my Times and scoffing at the people around me who had a mere Metro to keep them entertained. That was until I saw a story in one of the faraway Metros that seemed to have a pretty girl in the attached photo and all of a sudden reading Simon Jenkins, Matthew Paris and co no longer seemed so appealing.

Anyway, most people didn’t have papers and were staring out into space. Bored on the bus before, presumably, sitting bored at work. Life really is a rat race for most of us hey?

Up and down the country, infact across the planet, we have millions of people just standing or sitting, staring into space, between the hours of 7:30am – 9am and also 5pm to 6:30pm. Well, why not give these people something to do during this ‘down time’? And what more noble a displacement activity than saving the world?

So here’s where the wheels may fall off but stay with me, what if we gave all of these people mini-generators? A little contraption they could wind up when they had nothing else to do and, using the kinetic energy of their moving hands, could build portable power to use to contribute to the energy we use at work and home. Well, at home for me since I personally pay those bills. I’m kind of cheap like that.

As flippant as this may sound, I don’t see why it’s not a fairly logical idea. There could even be screens hooked up on buses and planes where the faster you can turn your generator, the faster your little stick figure runs onscreen. You know, make a game out of it. It won’t rival the Playstation 2 but it’s something at least.

Or think of the moving parts in vehicles, wheels spinning round, propellers doing the same and turbines doing, well, whatever it is that turbines do. Why can’t we harness that kinetic energy that is being wasted? We look to build wave farms out in the ocean and wind farms out in some remote hill range, but if we stop and consider it, I think we’ll find that the solution to global warming, actually, is all around.


(I also just think the image of a bus full of people all sitting/standing rotivating away like crazy is rather amusing)