Dave Butcher - 05/08/08
Every weekday morning you can find Dave Butcher cycling on the information superhighway. Drop into his pedal powered chat room and you get the feeling you’ve entered something similar to the Matrix; a strange parallel universe which follows a very different set of rules then the world you and I know. Butcher is an oracle of alternative energy, and during a recent visit to his webcast, powered 100% by his specially designed stationary bicycle, he offered interesting insights through the huff and puff of his morning workout.
Butcher embodies the environmentally friendly, socially conscious citizen which California is known for. Seeing the devastation caused by the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969, Butcher began on a life long passion in tinkering and experimentation in alternative energy. It started with a hydro dynamic science kit given to him by his parents, and developed into the building solar cells which he dreamed could cover and power a car.
By the 1980’s Butcher had graduated from Lewis and Clark College with a degree in Natural Science. Around this time he launched a solar business and started to tinker with a pedal powered energy generator. Twenty years later, with gas prices beginning to rise to astronomic levels, Butcher returned to his pedal powered generator, and found that is was just as exciting as he remembered. Butcher rigged the pedal power device up to a power strip, and each morning he worked out on his bicycle that generated energy to recharge batteries and power his laptop and light bulb. Soon he was broadcasting himself to the world wide web.
What Butcher says about the future of pedal power is that we must not focus on the energy it creates, but on the energy it avoids using. “The bicycle is the most efficient form of transportation man has ever created” Butcher explains. “Its importance is in the trip where the bicycle replaces the car. Typically a car is used to lets say, pick up a pizza. You drive alone, the car is not warmed up and does not get up to its maximum gas mileage, and at the end of the trip what you get is the pizza. If this trip takes one gallon of gasoline, then it would take two whole years of bicycling to equal the energy you just used”.
In addition to energy saving, Butcher points out that his pedal powered generator inspired him to get back on his bicycle. The stationary bike workouts combined with the additional bike rides around his home in Los Gatos helped him drop 30 pounds. “The best way to compare bicycling to driving is holistically, not by an Excel Spreadsheet, but through quality of life”.
Butcher, whose house is entirely powered by solar energy, understands that for long journeys and in poor weather, bicycling is not practical. However, he is also able to paint a broader picture of being a more informed and responsible consumer. When asked about what “going green” meant he explains “It means understanding the opportunity to choose alternatives in everything you do, from heating your house, to choosing the food you eat, the clothes you buy, and the car you drive…it doesn’t always mean making a sacrifice, it means making informed choices, and always making the choice to lower the negative impact on the people around you and the planet.”
You can find Dave Butcher every morning approximately 8:00am – 8:45am US Pacific Time in his Green Virtual Gym