Urban Options

MY VISIT TO “URBAN OPTIONS”

On January 5, 2006, I drove down the cloudy streets of downtown East Lansing in my dad’s partially rusted ’94 Ford Ranger XLT, finally resting in a quaint old house behind City Hall. The sign out front read “Urban Options”. I was enamored at first; not quite sure what to expect of this place. I had been to many different science museums in the past, from planetariums to full-size museums, I wasn’t sure what to expect to find here. As I opened the silly yellow door, I walked into a lobby-style room, lined with brochures on Energy. I was somewhat interested, but I surely I had a paper to write, and knowledge would be helpful. (F***ing enrichment…)

All of a sudden, a grey-haired man wearing a button-up shirt and a matching fanny-pack stepped down the stairs holding a bag of what I assumed to be his lunch. He greeted me with a smile, and after isolating himself in the kitchen for a few minutes (Allowing me time to snag up a few brochures), he introduced himself as Jim Meyerle. After he politely directed me to move the unattractive white pickup in the next-door student housing parking lot, I sat down with Jim to discuss what Urban Options was all about, and to gather some information to throw into my paper, only to forget in the next few days…at least those were my intentions…

Jim explained that Urban Options is an establishment directed to environmental awareness, and offers many resources and information on how to conserve our rapidly decreasing ecosystem. Having just blown $20 on a meager eight gallons of gasoline at the local Admiral station, I snapped to attention. The way that Jim described on how wasteful our country (in particular) uses its natural resources awakened me to a powerful discovery; this would be no uninformative expedition. Jim explained to me the origins of the house in which we sat. He said that the house was a five-star energy rated home, meaning that when it comes to conserving energy, this house was top of the line. From massive batteries, solar roof shingles, and special windows that trapped an Argon gas in between the planes, the house really impressed me.

Jim continued to deliver information on how fast our environment was depleting, going into detail on the inevitable decline in natural gas. He explained global sustainability, which is, in a nut shell, described how the global energy and resources should be distributed evenly throughout the world, since our country (5% world population) alone