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Here is an excellent article published recently in the Minneapolis Star Tribune by member Don Ament, a photographer who was exhibiting in the Uptown Art Fair a few weeks ago.

Wasted energy at Uptown Air Fair

Electricity is like sausage -- most people like it, but no one wants to know how it is made.

Three national retail merchants in the Uptown business node of Minneapolis could certainly use some education on what it takes to produce a kilowatt hour. Maybe then they would stop wasting so many of them.

I am referring to what can only be described as apparent attempts by the Apple Store, Columbia and the North Face to air-condition about half an outdoor block of Hennepin Avenue for the duration of the Uptown Art Fair last weekend.

I was one of the exhibiting artists with a booth right in front of these stores. Along with every other artist in the area, I was simply amazed that each propped its swinging doors open for the entire, hot weekend. The Apple Store's doors, in particular, are very wide.

As a Kentuckian who came to Minneapolis to exhibit my landscape photographs, I can speak to what it takes to produce the electricity these stores were so blatantly wasting. It takes coal, and lots of it.

Kentucky is a coal-producing state, and I have witnessed firsthand the wholesale destruction of entire mountain ecosystems in the name of getting at that coal in the fastest and cheapest way possible.

Mountains are literally blown up; streams are buried; underground water supplies are poisoned, and what remains after the coal is gone is often best described as a moonscape.

We hear a lot about the air pollution caused by burning coal, but the other side of the story is that the extraction process is just as destructive to the environment.

Kentucky exports coal throughout the country, although I don't know if Xcel Energy is sourcing it to turn on the lights in Uptown. But it is buying somebody's coal, and when giant doors are wide open in the middle of summer, it has to buy even more.

The sad irony is that these three stores are supposedly all about the outdoors, or about being super-green, or both. Columbia and the North Face cater to a patron who hikes, skis, travels and plays in the great outdoors.

Apple prides itself on constantly researching and implementing ways to reduce the environmental impact of the products it creates. It even recently announced an expanded recycling program.

As a Mac guy since the days of the IIsi computer, I was particularly embarrassed by the waste I saw at Uptown.

It's easy to understand the retail explanation of keeping those doors open. Creating an open, inviting, visible entry point -- every store wants to do that.

But when your actions are counter to the very culture of your business, it is time to rethink how you create that inviting entry point. As a Kentuckian, I'm well-versed in catching the short end of the stereotyped stick about being ignorant and backward.

But, hey, even we're smart enough to know you can't air-condition the outdoors.

Don Ament, of Lexington, Ky., is an artist.

Here's the link:  http://www.startribune.com/opinion/otherviews/127616788.html (http://www.startribune.com/opinion/otherviews/127616788.html)

Not only is this an interesting idea that Don is talking about -- after you read his article you MUST click into the article to see what people are saying about it. V-e-r-y interesting.

How did you like this info? Did you "like" it. Will you click on the "like" button -- this story needs to be spread far and wide.