If you care about the environment, protecting this planet, our home, our livable climate, chances are you’re a little stressed out right now. But what if I told you that environmental action can open the door… to joy. Hear from a Wisconsin woman who started on a journey a few years ago to get fossil fuels out of her home. No furnace, no gas stove, no gas hot water heater. She takes us on a tour of her house and shares her perspective on activism and the joy she finds in taking personal responsibility for our impact in this world.
Host:
Amy Barrilleaux
Guest:
Susan Millar
Resources for You:
How to Defend the Inflation Reducation Act The biggest investment to fight climate change in U.S. history is under attack. Find out how you can protect incentives that are helping Wisconsinites save energy and money.
Where to Listen:
Transcript:
Amy Barrilleaux Hello, and welcome to The Defender, Wisconsin’s environmental podcast. I’m Amy Barilleaux. The Defender is powered by Clean Wisconsin, your environmental voice since 1970. In this episode, we’re talking about opening the door to joy through environmental action. If you care about the environment, protecting this planet, our home, our livable climate, chances are you’re a little bit stressed out right now, but instead of feeling overwhelmed or throwing up her hands and just giving up, my guest in this episode is finding joy.
Susan Millar Once that lens shift occurs and you begin to act in line with this perception that you want to minimize your footprint, so to speak, it’s actually a door opening to joy. You feel good.
Amy I recently met Susan Millar at her home in Madison, Wisconsin on a sunny January day. Her home is a showcase of modern energy efficiency that was built 94 years ago, and she told me how she transformed this old house into an all -electric, comfortable, sustainable space. It was a journey that came with some big hurdles, though. She’s a retiree, a widow, and contractors didn’t always take her ideas seriously or even listen to her, because Susan wanted to do something big. She wanted to get rid of everything in her home that burned gas.
Susan I felt a little bit angry, and partly it’s because I was a single older woman in an older house, and they were telling me, poor old lady, you’re going to get cold. And I was like, no, I’m not. You don’t know. You’re afraid to move to the new technology. I know these technologies work, because I’d read up about it.
Amy Yeah, Susan was not taking no for an answer. She was determined. In this episode, she takes us on a tour of her home and shares her perspective on activism and taking personal responsibility for our impact in this world. That’s right now on The Defender. Susan Miller has been working for a while to get greenhouse gasses out of her life. About six years ago, she could not stand hearing her furnace come on anymore, so she decided to get rid of it and eventually became one of the earliest adopters in Wisconsin of a new highly efficient heating technology called a cold weather heat pump. I asked Susan why she became so bothered by her furnace. So what what changed for you? You lived most of your life and it didn’t bother you when the furnace kicked on. When did it change?
Susan Well, I would say that that’s a super important question, Amy, because it’s it’s like a lens. It’s how you see the world. And I began seeing the world quite a while ago, but more and more so as I got older through what kind of demands, what kind of harm actually is my living behavior causing into the environment. And once you begin looking at the world that way, you can’t go back. I mean, you can’t like sit on a plane and feel comfortable just because you know about what it means. And so everything suddenly becomes about the resources of the earth that you’re using. So renewable energy is just like pops right up. It’s like way cool because otherwise, I mean, using fossil gas is just so awful for environment. You know, it’s just it is the key thing that’s heating up our climate. It’s fossil gas, both from CO2 and methane emissions, but especially the CO2. And we know that everybody knows that. Or, I mean, well, I don’t know, maybe not everybody, but it’s pretty well known. And so you begin to notice every time you’re burning it. And the more you notice it, the more it feels uncomfortable. So I was actually moving towards moving away from feeling uncomfortable and grumpy about this kind of stuff. I wanted to not do that. And the closer I got to growing all electric, and this has a lot to do with how much garbage I make and the gardening I do and the use of the farmers market and food miles and, you know, all this stuff having to do with awareness of energy use and harm to the soil and so on and so forth. So that just grows. And once that starts happening, there’s no way out. You know, it’s just the way it is. And I guess I have to say that once that lens shift occurs and you begin to act in line with this perception that you want to minimize your footprint, so to speak, it’s actually a door opening to joy. You feel good. So yeah, I just want to say that, you know, the awareness and then the action hooks up to a feeling of well -being. And my main problem is I have to not talk to people about it if they don’t want to hear about it because, you know, I don’t want to proselytize about this, but it is a pleasure.
Amy It’s so interesting to hear you say that because I think a lot of people, when they think about fossil fuels and burning coal and methane gas and all those things that go into our daily lives, they feel overwhelmed, depressed, sad. And it feels like there is no way out of that feeling.
Susan Exactly. And that’s exactly how I felt. And that’s why I was so motivated to do this. And believe me, I’m super lucky because I had the money and I had the time and I had the drive and I had the friends and the connections to figure out how to do this. And so it wasn’t easy to do this starting back in 2019 and so forth. But it’s so much easier now. And with the Inflation Reduction Act, with rewiring America’s resources, with the resources we get from the Dane County Office of Energy and Climate Change about how to do this, it’s easier. And there’s starting to be more awareness in HVAC and other folks who do construction and so on and so forth. It’s coming, but it’s still slow.
Amy On a tour of the house, Susan tells me about those early days when she started down the path that led her to rethink her home.
Susan My husband and I moved in here in 81. So I’ve been here for a long time. I lost him to pancreatic cancer in 2019. And starting in 2020 is when I really kind of went after changing this house. The main thing that happened is that the house has, it did get two layers of energy efficiency and insulation. One about 25 years ago when we put in new windows and insulated siding. And then once I began to launch into this going all electric thing, I had another energy analysis and even more insulation was done, substantially more.
Amy Let’s talk about this insulation for a minute because this home was built before there was such thing as an energy building code which required insulation. So what was it like when you first moved in? Did you have drafty spots or did you notice anything?
Susan The house was very drafty. Actually when we first moved in it had a fuel oil tank, which was awful. And we didn’t want to burn it so we actually put a wood burning insert in the living room and used wood for like two or three years just to avoid using that awful oil fuel. And once we could afford it, we got a high efficiency gas furnace. That was a long time ago.
Amy So there wasn’t even a furnace here when you first moved in. So the heat, you had to have people, I mean theoretically would have had people come and bring oil and then you would burn that in your basement.
Susan Right. And before that there was coal. There’s still an old coal chute in there actually. So this house has seen a few transitions. Yeah. And yeah it was drafty but we were young and we sort of just coped. And then as we got more aware things continued to change. So we were fine with the fossil fuel gas burner. And then after I lost Terry and was living alone, well this is the whole story in some sense. My whole awareness about energy and CO2 and harm to the earth just completely began to change everything for the way I looked at the world. And for the winter of 2019, when I was living here by myself, I started running the house in the winter at like 58 degrees. I just didn’t want that fossil fuel to start burning. It just drove me nuts. And so I began thinking about, well I don’t like this. What am I going to do? And all that while of course I’m working really hard to make sure that the shades are drawn when it’s cold out and open so I’m getting as much passive solar during the daylight when there is that option and so on and so forth. So all that was going on in my brain for a while and meanwhile I was using the electric vehicle and it was drawing, well it was drawing from fossil fuel based electricity for the most part. So that really bothered me. And so that’s why the first thing I did was, well actually there’s a little bit of a backstory, there was a huge silver maple in the backyard here that was shading the house, the whole, you know, had this fabulous southern exposure here. But it was shaded by this huge tree. In 2019 the neighbors cut it down and suddenly I had all this sunlight and so I contacted Full Spectrum Solar, a couple of other places, but Full Spectrum was obviously the one for me to go with, and they put the solar on. And so that was the first thing. And then I started charging the EV with the solar, which made me feel much much happier. And then I went out and I got a fair weather awning that goes over this deck. That means that in the wintertime, like right now with this full sun coming in, this room can be like 55 degrees at night. If I shut it off, it’ll go up to 75 just from passive solar. .
Amy Yeah, I mean we’re standing here like looking into what to me looks like a sun room. Maybe it wasn’t always that way when the tree was there, but a lot of windows and natural light, just sunshine streaming in. And this is January, but this room looks pretty cozy.
Susan This room is really cozy, but in the summertime when that sun comes streaming in, of course the sun is a little higher in the summer, but still it’s a problem, I roll out that awning. And so I get full shade even though I don’t have a tree on this area. So that’s another really cool thing to do is to think about how can we use whatever sun, passive sunlight, we can use and how can we prevent it when we don’t want it with respect to trying to keep the house cool. So that was kind of going along. So let’s see, here’s the story. So got the EV, get the solar, get this lovely awning that I can roll in or out depending on whether I want more sun or don’t want it. And then I was like, okay, I’m still not happy. So I decided to go all electric. And that’s when I began looking and it was not easy to find a contractor who would install a cold weather heat pump.
Amy Now let’s talk a little bit about the reason why you wanted to go all electric because I think a lot of people think they’ve got an efficient gas furnace in the basement and that is a good thing when it comes to climate. But why the thought about going all electric?
Susan Well, as I said before, hearing that furnace go on and burning fossil fuel just drove me nuts. It was a way of making sense of my world and I didn’t want to do that. I said if I have any control over this, I don’t want a hybrid system with an air source heat pump that works until the house is like at 35 or the temperature outside is like at 35 and then the gas kicks back in, blah, blah. So I’m going all electric. So I probably interviewed four or five HVAC people in the Madison area. Every single one of them said to me, oh lady, you’re going to get cold. You can’t have an all, you know, a cold weather heat pump. And I was like, bye.
Amy I just want to note right now I’m standing in your house and it is January and I’m feeling fine.
Susan Oh yeah. Well, so I finally with help from Kathy Kuntz and others found an HVAC contractor in the Milwaukee area, Mukwonago, Midwest Heating and Cooling and contacted them. They came and they said, no problem. Your house is insulated. We can figure this out. And that season, I think it was 21, they installed it. You want to see it?
Amy Yeah. Okay. So we’re going down to look at a heat pump and I think that many people probably don’t know what we’re talking about here. So we’re heading into your basement to see what it means. So a heat pump is essentially like what your refrigerator and freezer and air conditioner already do.
Susan What it does is it transfers heat from one space to another. So your refrigerator, it transfers heat from the refrigerator into your kitchen. So it’s, it’s really kind of, in some sense, it’s been around a long time. What the air source heat pump does for a house is it takes the temperature outside. If it’s like, what is it today? 30 degrees. It’s taking heat from that air and bringing it into this house. This particular air source heat pump is guaranteed down to minus 13. This is it.
Amy This is it. It looks a little bit like a, I don’t know, air conditioner, furnace, something.
Susan But it’s not. This is where, so this tube here is what connects to the fan systems outside. And I can show you those in a bit. And so the heat is moving back and forth in this tube. And right now, heat is coming from outside. It’s going into this area here, which hooks into the fan system that manages, that, you know, takes air, warm air, or in the summertime, cooled air throughout the rest of the house. So this is a vent system. And right here you see the electric resistance coil backup, which they sold me. They said, you know, if it goes down to minus 20 for a week and we really can’t keep up, the air source heat pump really can’t in enough heat from outside, then this will kick in. This has never kicked in ever. On really cold mornings, I’ll come down and put my hand here to see if this is warm. It’s not. So this system is really, I mean, they say minus 13 or 15 or whatever. That’s the guarantee, but that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily going to kick in. That means that’s their guarantee. So it’s really cool. They have them now down to minus 20.
Amy So, you know, we live in the Midwest and you hear, well, yeah, you can go with a heat pump, but you’re going to be cold in the winter with a heat pump.
Susan I’ve never been cold.
Amy And this also replaces your air conditioner. Is that right?
Susan Yes. Yes. In the summertime, if it’s too hot, it just reverses. So the heat starts coming, leaving the house and goes to the outside.
Which is kind of the way a regular air conditioner might work.
Susan Except that this one does both.So you get one unit. And when I did this, the people I worked with, I mean, I had a really high quality gas furnace and it wasn’t old. I just wasn’t going to keep using it. So they agreed to take my air conditioner, which was in very good shape, quite new, and the furnace and install it in the home of a person who had really horrible old equipment that was super inefficient. So those things didn’t go to the trash.
Amy That’s good to point out because, you know, there’s a lot that goes into producing these newer pieces of equipment. And if they can find another home where they’re doing good, that’s great. Yep. Yep. It’s all carbon. What did you feel like when you met with contractor after contractor and were told that’s not a good idea?
Susan Well, Amy, I felt a little bit angry. And partly it’s because I was a single older woman in an older house and they were telling me that poor, poor old lady, you’re going to get cold. And I was like, no, I’m not. You don’t know. You’re afraid to move to the new technology. I know these technologies work because I’d read up about it. And it was being, I mean, it’s being installed in upper Minnesota and so on and so forth. So I was just like, these guys just don’t want to change. So I was just, I was pretty grumpy.
Amy And determined, it sounds like.
Susan I was very determined, which is why I was so happy to finally meet the people at Midwest. And there are two or three other HVAC folks in the Madison area now who are starting to do cold weather heat pumps, but they’re not easy to find.
Amy Say the name of the company one more time?
Susan Midwest Heating and Cooling in McGuanago, east of us, toward Milwaukee.
Amy Great. Well, is there anything else you want to show me down? And I’m going to say this basement is not particularly cold. Like I know my basement you get a chill when you walk down there, but this doesn’t, it doesn’t feel like we’re sacrificing a whole lot to be down here.
Susan Over here is the hybrid air source water heater, which I also had to put in. It’s a 50 gallon tank. Most of the time I keep it on vacation mode because I really don’t need 50 gallons of hot water 24 seven. And this operates exactly the opposite direction. In other words, if I need more hot water, I bring that heat out of the downstairs, out of the basement air and it goes into this water. Now the fun thing, and I can also run this on pure electricity, but I don’t. The other thing that’s really cool about this, you see this little chest freezer. Well, this guy wants to get rid of heat and this guy, this water heater wants that heat. So they’re kind of collaborating, which is kind of cool. Somebody should put a freezer and a hot water heater together.
Amy And market it.
Susan Yeah, right. So that’s, I think that’s it on the basement.
Amy Okay. And I think what we won’t see here in the basement is any kind of hookup to natural gas.
Susan Nothing. Actually, I had somebody come in and remove all the pipes. So there’s no hole in the house where a pipe used to be. There’s just nothing. And I happen to have an electric washer and dryer. I don’t actually use the dryer, but because I like to hang clothes outside and I like to humidify the house in the winter time by using racks. So it works good. And you save electricity. I sure do. And it also is less hard on the clothes if you don’t use the dryer.
Amy That’s definitely true. All right. We’re heading upstairs now. And by upstairs, I just mean back to the first floor from the basement.
Susan So those are, oh, right. Okay. The last thing I did, my husband had this fabulous gas stove that he loved. Well, I didn’t love it. It was really difficult to clean and so forth. So at first, when I couldn’t afford it, I bought a a two burner induction unit and I plugged it in to the 120 outlets. And I cooked with that for about a year and a half. And then when I could afford it, I went and bought a full induction range. And I love it because it’s so easy to clean. It’s so fast. And it’s when you want it to be fast. And it’s so easy to control. And it just has all these wonderful things. So that was the last piece.
Amy And so to explain what induction is, because it’s pretty new technology, it basically uses magnets and your metal pot. So it heats the pot directly rather than the stove top heating up and then the pot getting that heat.
Susan So here’s one of my favorite things I like to do. I’m going to put this on high. And if you put your finger right here, you can put your hand right there. This can be boiling. It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing going into the air. It’s all going into the food and the pan.
Amy I think, you know, I actually have an induction stove as well. And I had before I got it, we had an electric stove because we didn’t have gas in the kitchen. I kept lighting things on fire accidentally. So I mean an oven mitt or a cutting board. I kept accidentally burning things. And now I’m so much safer in the kitchen.
Susan Yeah. Plus I actually did notice the loss of fumes.
Amy Really?
Susan Yes.
Amy From the gas?
Susan From the gas, right. I mean, methane escapes into the air and we’re breathing it. And there’s a whole bunch of research now that indicates that methane burning in your kitchen is bad, especially bad for children. So it’s unsafe from that standpoint as well as from the standpoint of likely the possibility of getting on fire.
Amy And I just want to say, so induction is more expensive than a regular electric stove and a regular gas stove, but there are some federal incentives out there now, tax credits and other kinds of incentives to make this affordable so that people can use this technology, which is actually really great.
Susan It is great. I did all this before the IRA was established and so forth, but I don’t regret one minute. And I was lucky that I had the financial capacity to do it. So I think that’s all the pieces that took care of everything that was gas. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of the insulation first because when you have an air source heat pump, it has to be sized to the amount of air in your home that needs to be maintained at a certain temperature. And if that air is getting replaced all the time with cold air or in the summertime with hot air, then the air source heat pump would have to work even harder. And so there’s a sizing issue there.
Amy Were you surprised? You had done some insulation obviously earlier just to make this home livable and that you needed even more insulation, that the home was still not kind of tight and weatherproof as it could be?
Susan Actually, I wasn’t surprised because first of all, I’d read about all this stuff and I could tell that there were some, it wasn’t tight. I just knew that it wasn’t as efficient as it needed to be. And I have to say that I got the insulation, the new insulation in I think like April of 20, I think it was, or was it 21, I’d have to go check. And that summer, I noticed it immediately. I almost never used the air conditioning that summer because the air, the house was just holding its cool in the summer and then it holds its heat in the winter, which is, I mean, it’s just, it’s huge. I mean, I know a lot of people, if you talk to Kathy Kuntz or other people who are really focusing on energy efficiency and shifting to electricity, energy efficiency comes in for one. That’s the first thing. Because if you’ve got a breezy house, your air source heat pump isn’t going to be able to keep up very well. So it’s all good.
Amy So if you can’t, if you live in an apartment, for example, and you don’t have control over the way your living space is heated and cooled, I guess maybe there are other things, right? That you can kind of take a look at and feel like you’re moving your personal sphere in the right direction.
Susan Absolutely. No, it, well, a really obvious place is food. Becoming aware of food miles is not only good for reducing CO2 emissions. It generally means that you’re going to be eating more locally. And locally is better for our local farmers. Probably it’s better nutrition. It probably means you’re eating less highly processed foods and da da da. So that’s definitely within the control of people who live in apartments. You can start paying attention to how much stuff you buy. A long time ago, probably 20 years ago, I watched the Story of Stuff. It’s that 20 minute thing about, you know, how every item that gets produced, you have to think about how it got produced, what energy was used to produce it, and then what happens going into the landfill or whatever. I mean, usually it’s the landfill and then the landfills produce emissions and we lose all sorts of resources. So the minute you begin thinking about, well, gee, do I really need to consume all this stuff? So reducing your consumption pattern and using your money for things like concerts and supporting causes that you believe in instead of more stuff. So you can manage stuff. You can start to take the bus. You can ride your bike. There’s a lot of different things you can do. Possibly not if you live in the country, but if you live in the city, there’s a lot of ways to do that. You can start paying attention to the importance of dense housing and what the city is doing to improve our energy efficiency and so on and so forth.
Amy So there’s a lot of things you can do. You say you don’t like to proselytize and I think you mean kind of like imposing your perspective on other people, but have you talked to anybody who kind of finds comfort in hearing that there are ways to personally change the way you live to make this planet a better place?
Susan That is a difficult question. I think it’s very difficult to sort of talk to folks about it. It’s more like modeling, I think, but I’m more comfortable with. I don’t really want to tell people the way they should live, but I want to model it. For example, in the front yard, which is all local perennials and a rain garden, there’s a sign that says this is an ark, by which we mean this is a place where small mammals, birds, insects and so forth have at home, which is what an ark is. Now, people walking by might notice that sign or not. It’s something that they can take in if they choose. I have a huge, very, very productive aronia berry bush that’s right out by the sidewalk. When that’s loaded with aronia berries, people notice. If they ask, I say, yeah, turns out erronea berries have more antioxidant capacity than pretty much two or three times more than blueberries and blah, blah. They’re free and they’re local. They don’t have any pesticides on them. What’s not to like? People are like, huh, interesting. They taste a little funny, but you can say those things I’m very comfortable with.
Amy I know that you’re also involved in a kind of a new organization called Third Act, which is a bit more, how do we get this message out more broadly and get some change happening right now? Tell me about Third Act and why you decided to become a part of it.
Susan Okay. Well, I am 76. Third Act starts technically when you’re 60. You are in your second act. I guess until you’re about 21 or 22, you’re still in your first act. I’m not quite sure where I suppose it would depend on the person. I’ve been involved for many, many years with 350 Wisconsin and I still am, but I’ve shifted my energy and focus to Third Act, partly because I really enjoy interacting with other Third Acters. The other thing I like about Third Act in particular is the leadership from Bill McKibben at the is much more statewide or will be as we’re getting going. I like that because I’m really concerned about the rural -urban divide. We can’t keep having that. I mean, it’s a huge problem, but it’s really important for us to find ways to begin to talk across the rural -urban divide. So I like those things. And I like working with other people who are in their Third Act. Many of us, most of us have grandchildren. Most of us are concerned about the next generation. That’s a focus for us. And I like the fact that the campaigns that we engage in are national in scope, but statewide in operation so that we can focus on things that matter to our particular state. The three campaigns are one, we’re focusing on democracy and voting. A second is advanced fossil -free finance. And that’s the one that’s going after the big banks that are financing the fossil fuel industry and other big industries that are financing or enabling fossil fuels. So, you know, you can get into Enbridge, for example, there. And then the third one, which is the one I’m leading within the 350. Sorry. The third one, which is within Third Act Wisconsin, is called democratized energy. And democratized energy means, it’s kind of an odd name, but what we do in the democratized energy campaign is focus on what’s going on with the investor -owned utilities, which are paying a lot of attention to their investors and not just to their customers and not necessarily to their climate goals and the way they interact with the public service commission, which doesn’t get enough attention from the general public. And it’s very powerful, but it’s not very visible. So we’re trying to make what goes on between the investor -owned utilities and the public service commission much more visible. And we are very active in pushing against, for example, right now, We Energies is trying to get the public service commission to enable them to produce two more huge gas plants in southeastern Wisconsin. So we’re part of a big statewide effort to resist them and go to all the public service commission hearings, submit comments and so on and so forth. And then a third piece of that, which overlaps with some of the other campaigns, is looking at energy policy that’s going on in the legislature, which is very challenging these days to get anything through this particular legislature, but we’re starting to pay attention. So that’s looking at how do we stop emissions as fast as possible and promote renewable energy and its use as fast as possible. So we learn a lot. I mean, the thing I love about this is that my learning curve is and exciting. I keep learning more stuff and to keep interacting with other third actors who are so smart and so committed. And it’s like living in a collaborative space, which is energizing. And it’s just very meaningful. So yeah, it keeps me going all the time.
Amy It’s so interesting because when you watch TV commercials or whatever, there’s this picture of life after 60 as playing tennis and golf and relaxation. And here you are plugging into a group of people who in life after 60 are finding a life of activism and education.
Susan It’s much more fun. I mean, I’m not that good at relaxing. I’m so energized by these working with these wonderful people and I see the issues and I have five grandchildren.
Amy And you don’t feel overwhelmed and think what can I possibly do to change this?
Susan Oh, yeah, I feel overwhelmed all the time, all the time. I mean, one of my mottoes is, you know, manage how much you take on because otherwise you will burn out. I mean, so there’s this constant, you know, balancing act between seeing all the things that need to be done that you could do, you know, because, you know, we had professional lives. I’m a senior scientist and a cultural anthropologist at UW Madison and I could do all kinds of things, but I can’t do it all. And so it’s very frustrating. It’s a constant battle to make, you know, to choose what you can do and what you can’t and let the rest go.
Amy So what advice would you give to somebody who’s beginning to realize that they want to make a change? They want to be a part of the solution, the climate solution, the clean energy solution, the pollution solution. What would you say they should start with?
Susan Well, I think it’s important to connect with groups that are already underway. And that’s an interesting challenge. It’s not obvious how to find a 350 or Third Act. There is actually a brand new resource that’s just going up. It’s called the Climate Action Mapping Project for Wisconsin. It’s going to be launched actually in the next couple of months, which would, which provides information for everybody across the state about climate and environmentally focused organizations in all the different geographic locations in the state. So that would be one way. You know, the people who’ve found Third Act did it by searching on the web and then stepping up saying, you know, I’ll try, start going to a couple meetings. Usually, almost all these organizations have people who are doing volunteer engagement and you can begin to talk to them and they’ll tell you, you know, what this organization does, ask you what you like to do, and then you can begin to find a place. And so there’s ways you can just kind of, you know, get your feet wet a little bit. And next thing you know, you might just jump in.
Amy And what about, you know, the kinds of things, the sort of everyday things, the small things. Does it start with just my education, looking in, trying to figure out, it’s kind of like a puzzle that you figure out what the pieces are to solve?
Susan Yeah, I guess a lot of it depends on what you read. All right. And I have to say I limit what I’m reading with respect to the political situation because I can’t handle it. So I focus a lot on reading what’s going on. For example, I read what’s going on at Clean Wisconsin. I read what’s going on in 350. I pay attention to, let’s see, I’m trying to remember some of all the different groups that I read. There’s just so much. So once you begin to read that stuff, it links you into all the others. I’ve listened to David Roberts’ Volts podcast constantly. I don’t even want to miss them because he’s so smart and he’s so good at finding all these cutting edge people, young people who are making a huge difference in the way they’re innovating with respect to renewable energy and other things, some things having to do with policies and so forth. So you just start getting educated. And that’s what I’m talking about with respect to the learning curve. You have to just get going and then you stop doing other things. I actually don’t have a television. I can’t deal with it. And there’s not that much that I listen to on the radio. I’m pretty selective about what I take in because I don’t have the energy to take in other stuff. It starts to feel like, I hate to say this, but a lot of the stuff that comes over the television and even the radio just feels like, it just feels kind of superficial and I just don’t like it. So then I have more energy for other stuff. And I have to say I get outside and I garden and I’m pretty engaged with music. So you can’t always be on.
Amy It’s not always about climate all the time.
Susan It’s not always about climate and then there’s the grandchildren and the occasional good movie and so forth.
Amy Well, Susan Millar, thank you so much for showing me your lovely and warm in the wintertime home. I really appreciate it.
Susan It’s been my pleasure, Amy. Thanks.
Amy For more information on how buildings impact greenhouse gas emissions on Third Act or again how to access some of those federal inflation reduction act incentives that are still available to help you reduce your energy use and even electrify your home, visit CleanWisconsin .org and head to the podcast page. And if you have something you want to ask or talk about or an episode idea, go ahead and email me, Podcast@CleanWisconsin .org. Thank you so much for listening. I’m Amy Barrilleaux and this has been the Defender Podcast powered by Clean Wisconsin.
