So pitch your theory!

[me&thegals]

Regarding cap and trade, I don't see how big changes will ever be made without economic disincentives. Otherwise, what's the reason to change? Yes, conscience, morals and a concern for nature would be great, but I don't see many businesses being motivated by that. The really smart ones will change ahead of time and appeal to those consumers who really care.

Regarding India and China, it's scary. Helps we Americans see how scary it must be for the rest of the world to watch us guzzle everything on earth and spew back out the pollutants. Yikes!

 

[VT-Chicklit]

me&thegals said: Regarding cap and trade, I don't see how big changes will ever be made without economic disincentives. Otherwise, what's the reason to change? Yes, conscience, morals and a concern for nature would be great, but I don't see many businesses being motivated by that. The really smart ones will change ahead of time and appeal to those consumers who really care.

I am curious how much of an increase in your electric bill would you find as an acceptable incentive? How much of an over all increase in your every day costs for food, gas, clothes, etc would you find acceptable? The costs to business will be passed on to you and me and all consumers, so the incentive is really ours. If the over all increased costs to you to maintain your lifestyle is 30% more, will you maintain your life style? Will you cut back? I will cut back as much as I can. I believe most people will do the same. This will mean the economy will suffer further because of the cuts we all will make. I cannot cut my electricity use much more, unless I cut out TV and my computer. We already use CFL's everywhere, have energy efficient appliances and home.

I feel for those who cannot cut any further. There are many who live on the edge already. Their budget is streached so tight that any adverse change will bust their budget. When you have to choose between purchaseing milk for your childs breakfast or some fresh fruit for them to snack on, your budget is stretched thin.

I do not feel guilty for useing the gifts that God has given our country and spreading our wealth around the world through commerce. It is very easy to paint Americans as greedy,poluting, energy hogs. The reality is that many countries economies depend on our buyin the products they sell, including energy. I also want to recognize the fact that we have been, for many years, consious of pollution. We have more laws regarding this than almost anywhere else in the world. That is one of the reasons why some companies have moved their manufacturing over seas, where the laws regarding polluting are more lax. Factories in Asia and China are notorious for dumping raw wastes in to the rivers and streams and spewing smoke into the air. Remember the olympics in China and the big issues there were with air quality and water quality.

It is easy for the Europeans to look down their noses at us and what they consider wasteful. The productivity of the members of the EU is much lower than here in the US. We do a lot with the energy that they say we are wasteing. We make medicines that we send at little or no cost to Africa to save people infected with AIDs. We also make and send the bed nets to prevent malaria. We use our polluting tractors to grow food that we then refine in our polluting mills and send to impoverished nations for nothing. Our factories make much of the equipment that our military uses to protect much of the rest of the world, especially Europe! So pardon me if I get on my high horse when I hear that we are greedy polluters.

Something that most people don't stop to think about is that the European transportation model would not work well here. Mass transit is not feasable for large areas of the US where the population is sparse. We have more, and larger areas of this country that are rural than they do in Europe. Additionally, the countries of Europe are smaller than some of our states. Covering such large, sparsly populated areas with mass transit would not be cost effective and would wasted energy. Ridership here would not be enough to warrent the expense for the type of rail system that they have in Europe. We do how ever have too many cars in our cities, where mass transit is feasable. That is somerthing we need to work on.

I am tired of America being a whipping post for those who wish to deny the good that she has done. There is a reason that much of the worlds population would love to emegrate here. We do not need to apologise for our use of energy. Fossile fuel is what enabled America to produce all the products that she was able to produce in her manufacturing heyday, and then get these items to the rest of the world to improve their lives. Now, that same fuel is helping other nations move into the industrialised world by producing and then transport their products here. Do I think that it is time to move on to the next phase in energy production? YES! But only if it does not hurt our economy and people.

 

[me&thegals]

My electric bill keeps going down. I could afford for it to double and would accept that glady if it meant my power company was in that awkward newly green period.

I agree America has done a lot of good. But, we're only something like 7% of the world's population using about 25% of the world's resources. How many McMansions, Starbucks, boats, yachts, changes of clothing and excess is truly necessary? I imagine a lot of SS folks are living fairly close to the bone, but there is tremendous excess in America.

I feel for those who live VERY tightly. People with more imagination and brains than I have could surely work out ways to go green without devastating the poor. How about training folks in poor neighborhoods in the trades that could help retrofit energy-hogging old buildings? Rebates for those under a certain income making improvements?

I think what is missing from this conversation is the TRUE cost of energy as we do it now. It is subsidized. That is why it is so cheap. Can we as a nation really afford to continue to subsidize energy systems that are so inefficient and dirty? At least we have to look at the true costs of doing business the way we are, including foreign policy and war costs, pollution clean-up, health, disease and injury costs, etc.

 

[Wifezilla]

How about a little check off box on your electric bill statement where people who feel they aren't paying enough or those who want to contribute to switching to a more green system can voluntarily send in extra money? That way those of us who see the global warming scare as a complete scam and cap and trade as a terrible, business-killing tax can go about our day unmolested.

 

[me&thegals]

Actually, my electric company already does this.

Whether you believe in global warming or not, coal is a dangerous, dirty way to generate electricity and nuclear has its own waste storage issues. Dependency on foreign oil creates another slew of problems.

And, whether you believe in global climate change or not, there are major pollution and natural resource issues related to the way energy is created today. What you pay on your electric bill is only a small portion of the true cost of your energy.

Seems like alternative energy has some really great economic and foreign relations pluses going for it.

 

[Big Daddy]

At least we finally have an administration that believes in science. The administration that doesn't believe in global warming because it cost too much to fix and that the world is 5000 years old is gone. We now have somebody in office that believes in things that are happening right before our eyes. Things you can see. If solar panels are produced on a large scale they will go down in cost just like anything. They will have to be subsidized for a number of years but in the long run they will pay off. Same thing goes for wind power. The investment has to be made and has to be made now while there is someone in office who understands that our health and the environment are more important than corporate profits. We can't take the chance of another Bush getting into office. The only thing he could read were numbers on the bottom line of corporate balance sheets. I for one don't believe the world is ending anytime soon. I do believe that we will destroy the air though. I'll be dead by then but I do care about future generations and weather or not they can breath. I do care about having to buy our oil from the wackos in the middle east and being held hostage by their theological short fallings. I do care about having oil wells up and down the Ca coast and oil spills ruining our oceans while a different kind of wacko runs around yelling drill baby drill. So get used to it. Alternative energy is coming. After 8 years my cares are being addressed. Hope yours are too. If not you'll learn to adapt like I did.

 

[patandchickens]

To me, the greenest "alternative" solution, and the most economically tenable in the LONG run (I don't mean 5 years, which is long-term in the business world; I mean like 50 or 150 years) is to just USE WAY LESS FREAKIN' ENERGY in the first place. Just look at the waste. I don't mean switching to CFLs and turning your thermostat down 10 degrees, I mean living *differently* than the West does today.

Nobody in the public policy sector seems to be seriously considering this, though, presumably in recognition that there's no way to persuade people to do it :/

Pat

 

[Wifezilla]

I don't WANT to live like I am in a 3rd world country. I like having lights and my computer and a refrigerator and indoor plumbing.

I don't like WASTE, but I have no intention of doing without. Creating artificially high prices or false shortages to change usage is manipulative and seldom works as planned.

 

[me&thegals]

Yeah--it's a tough sell to ask people to change the way they live. But, major energy reductions don't have to mean living without electricity. Here are a few things that could hugely affect energy usage without changing (much) the way we live:

solar and wind-powered utilities

mass transit between major American cities

retrofitting the country's dirtiest, oldest and least efficient huge buildings

seriously (not 2 mph) increasing CAFE standards for cars

economic incentives and disincentives around lighting, car efficiency, appliances, etc.

building upwards rather than urban sprawl and creating livable communities, where things could actually be within walking or biking distance

Like Pat, and as I said before, I don't see this happening on a minor, buy-more-CFL scale. Every little bit counts and I do every little bit I can, but it's going to have to be much bigger and larger scale. Like along the lines of what gov't can mandate or create rebates, incentives or discentives for.

 

[patandchickens]

I don't WANT to live like I am in a 3rd world country. I like having lights and my computer and a refrigerator and indoor plumbing.

First, I would like to comment that it really bothers me when people speak like that about Third World countries and their living conditions. In some respects, you know, many are one big heckuva lot better off than the USA... fancy consumerism is not everything.

Anyhow.

I'm not really talking about giving up your computer or fridge or, for heaven's sakes, lights. (What does indoor plumbing have to do with it? That pretty much predates the spread of the electric grid).

IMO the vastest (is that a word) forms of waste are the ones that nobody hardly even sees any more because they're taken for granted. The sheer volume of Stuff that people go thru in a lifetime. Bazillions of clothes, poorly made but seldom worn out just thrown in the bin and replaced with new shoddy clothes, made with stuff trucked halfway round the planet twice before it even gets to you). Huge quantities of knicknacks, toys, home decor, yard junk, that is designed as impulse purchase and spends very little useful time in a home before becoming basement clutter or landfill (again, after having been extracted from petrochemicals and transported all round the world, and most with *packaging* of which the same can be said). All those lights we take for granted, I don't mean the bulb you read your paper by, I mean commercial and municipal use. Travel, my goodness the travel we do, not just vacationing and business-tripping all around the continent but just the number of trips driving to the mall or down to the corner for a coffee and sandwich. Eating strawberries in winter. Prepackaged precooked food and restaurant meals. Etc etc.

People do not have to live like this. Indeed, until fifty or eighty years ago, people *didn't*. People can live PERFECTLY HAPPY LIVES without being anything like so wasteful. Believe it or not. (I am aware that for many the answer is "not" :/)

Pat