OK I’ll admit it.  I have spent half a century not being all that concerned about the planet.  That changed when my granddaughter was born.

Hi, my name is Rick Murphy and I am a bowl of Jell-O® when it comes to my granddaughter.  Oh I just loved picking her up, feeding her and seeing the world through her new eyes.  And one day after a visit with her, it hit me; while I will not be here in 100 years to see what is going on with this planet, she will be and so will her kids and HER grand kids. That was the wake up call.

I am really not so sure about Global Warming, or melting ice shelves or a lot of those things.  But I am sure that the reckless lifestyle we have all enjoyed during my lifetime is jeopardizing the future.  You see, in my reading I started looking at where our power comes from.  Not just for our cars, but for electricity.  I found that we don’t just have a voracious appetite for fuel for our cars, but for our homes and businesses and just about everything else we do.  The electricity we use mostly comes from oil, and uses a lot of water, two things that seem to have supply issues… water because of its absolute limits and oil because of the nefarious characters we buy it from. 

One night while thinking about all of this, I remembered something I learned about World War II.  I remembered Victory Gardens.  The major farming operations of the Allies needed to be turning out food for the troops who were trying to insure our freedom.  Neighborhoods and communities rallied together and planted Victory Gardens to lessen the domestic demands on our farmers, keeping our troops fed and fighting.  Sections of lawn in Hyde Park, London were plowed for pots to publicize the movement. In New York City, the lawns around vacant "Riverside" were devoted to victory gardens, as were portions of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. That is where the light came on for me. Please read more about my plan on the other pages on this web site.

Every single watt of power we generate without the use of oil is that much less money we send to the people who have the oil.  Every bit of sunlight we capture and turn into electricity brings us that much closer to energy independence.  Every power plant we don’t build is that much more CO²  that we keep out of our atmosphere, and that much more water that is not wasted in the production of electricity. 

With the help from people like you who will reap immediate and long term rewards from making this project happen, we all move closer to the day when petroleum based energy will be a thing of the past.

I am not doing this for me.  I am doing this for my children’s children, and the next generations of my family.  I hope you share my passion.