More on Global Warming

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thats funny chandos, they broke their own rules & you think it's my fault for finding something wrong with this?

you just proved everything i have ever thought about liberal democrats. who, by the way, are the biggest deniers in existance. jeez you need to move to california.

 

What crawls under my skin on the global warming issue is super rich celebrities with cars that probably burn more fuel in a day than my house burns in a year telling me that I need to make changes to the way I live my life. In connection with that, you've got countries that are tremendous polluters doing nothing at all, and yet I'm supposed to radically alter my lifestyle and it's going to make a difference? I don't buy that for one second. I can wear shoes made out of tofu and eat nothing but organically grown vegetables and ride a bike twenty miles to work and buy electricity that they SAY is green and otherwise bust my butt, spend a lot more money, and totally inconvenience myself and it won't make one iota of difference if down the road some jackass is running a factory that continually increases its CO2 emissions. All the touchy-feely "one voice singing in the darkness" crap doesn't change that fact.

 

LKD,

When it comes to global warming, average people like you and me are not the prime offenders. You correctly point out that celebrities have a much larger carbon footprint than the average person. They own more than one home usually, and the homes are quite large. Heating and cooling expenses on these homes require a much larger amount of electricity than the typical home. I also love when celebrities get on a private jet to fly to a speaking engagement at a conservation event.

I also agree that what the average person can do is limited. If you drive a vehicle that gets good gas mileage, and turn off the lights when you leave a room of your house, there isn't much else you can do. One suggestion you get is to drive less, but I imagine that most people are like me, in that the main source of mileage on their cars each year is driving back and forth to work. On weekends, it's running errands, like shopping for groceries. That certainly isn't recreational driving.

Another suggestion that is impractical for most people is to use public transportation. Sure, if you live and work in a major city, it is quite possible that both your home and workplace are within a reasonable walking distance to and from public transportation. If you live in the suburbs, the best you can do is drive to a park and ride, and that only helps if your work location is fairly close to one of the stops. The public transportation system in the U.S. is quite poor compared to most industrialized nations, and is only a real option for a few of the biggest cities.

However, my biggest use of energy is heating and cooling my house, and there isn't much of anything I can do about that. The electric company does not offer solar or wind generated power - they burn fossil fuels to generate energy, and it's not like I can stop using electricity. I suppose that I could conserve energy by having solar panels installed on my house, but the problem with that is solar panels are currently prohibitively expensive.

So basically I agree with you - unless you're driving around in a hummer and keeping all the lights on in your house 24 hours per day, Joe Citizen isn't the main problem when it comes to global warming.

 

It depends on how urban you live I presume. Here in Cologne going by bike and public transport is entirely practical, and we're a one million city. Where it gets tricky is hauling kids and large stuff like furniture - and there car rentals offer a way out. Admittedly a car offers unrivalled flexibility.

IMO the biggest offenders usually come from the industry. That said, the cumulative effect of private citizens adapting is probably considerable. In Germany adoption is encouraged by, among other things, tax benefits for reduction in emissions for home owners. It pays off to isolate your house and cut emissions and energy consumption. Solar cells on the roofs have become popular, too, especially in the sunnier south of Germany.

And as for cooling the house, in Italy they do that with solid stone walls ...

What annoys the hell out of me is for instance christmas illumination, which IMO serves nothing but the house owners ego.

 

LKD has a good point, but he draws the wrong conclusions from it. Yes, the carbon footprint of celebrities is significantly greater than yours or mine. Yes, many (most?) of them are hypocrites.

So what? Ignore the celebrities, listen to the scientists.

300 million Joe Citizens have a tremendous impact, however.

 

With my admittedly limited experience in Europe, it seems like their public transportation systems are much better than the U.S. You are correct that some U.S. cities do have good public transportation - New York City is excellent. I live in the Baltimore area, and the public transportation is terrible. It's OK if you want to go sight seeing, but not so great if you're trying to get to work. I also find it incomprehensible, that the public transportation for around the Baltimore area isn't linked directly to the trains that take you to Washington DC, even though the cities are only about 50 miles apart.

 

I agree that 300 million "Joe" citizens make a difference, but how do you force them to do so? Especially when they know that in other countries other people are building new, dirty factories and plants?

While I agree that as an individual there are things I can do, I refuse to radically alter my lifestyle to make others feel smug about the "progress" they've forced on me and then subsidize the pulluting behaviours of others.

 

The reason to alter your lifestyle isn't to please the celebrities.

 

I fear that it is so very human to take action only after something's gone seriously wrong.

It might be that before a massive ecological catastrophe there will be a massive economical catastrophe. Within a global economy it should be clearer than ever that resources such as food and fresh water are limited.

Even if the current paradigm of capitalism and consumerism wouldn't be accepted as the major cause of global warming, it should be acknowledged that global warming will cause a major challenge for the current affluent and spendthrift lifestyle.

The problem isn't the developing countries catching up with our lifestyle, the problem is that why should we have this certain lifestyle in the first place. Because it makes money? Oh, I'm sorry, creates wealth...

 

And this is the reason the United States backed out of the Kyoto protocols. Kyoto exempted China and India from the regulations.

 

I disagree. The nations that signed it weren't going to be impacted the way the U.S. was and therefore it wasn't in our best interests to sign it. That is about as pure a reason to not sign a treaty as I can think of.

I agree, all the discrediting the science behind it may have been bull**** and a smokescreen, but as in everything else in life, it all came down to the money.

 

It all comes down to what you mean by "other signees". Rest assured, compliance with the standards set under Kyoto will have a much greater effect on the US than it will on, say, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Togo, or Myanmar.

 

Drew,
the US peers, the other industrial states, did sign too. And it is with them that the US competes. It isn't really so that the US needs to worry about being 'outemitted' by industrial giants like Congo, Togo and Myanmar - or those places where US internationals have outsourced their old factories to. The argument that the US by signing will put itself at a disadvantage doesn't really strike me as convincing.

One principal pro-industry argument against investing in reduced emissions, say for the largely obsolete power supply infrastructure in the US (from what I read anyway), is that this would force major re-investments and modernisations, and cut into profits. Lobbying and stalling the inevitable modernisation pays off, especially when one compares the relatively moderate price of paying lobbyists and PR firms to the price for new powerplants that easily reaches the billion dollar treshold. The assault on the science behind global warming is then the second step, the 'and it doesn't make sense anyway, as all the sience on global warming isn't yet in'. The approach mirrors other successful industry PR campaigns in the US. As the US doesn't have an independent and non-partisan scientific advisory body for congress and senate anymore it is industry science vs. their science, and becomes a pointless 'he said, she said' thing and no longer about facts but, say, about how sympathetic the messenger is.

The US is put at a disadvantage only insofar as other countries have the benefit of an already more modern and more efficient infrastructure, and thus don't need to invest nearly as much as the US would to meet emission goals. And those old factories that have been relocated to Mexico and other places emit (greenhouse gases, wages) in Mexico and other places.

And then I sense something more basic, but I might just be silly there: Just envision the ourtcry when America would be forced through legislation to modernise or build their houses in such a way that air condition isn't neccessary anymore, say by high building and insulation standards. Facism! What a blatant assault on the American way of life!

There are other, more practical flaws in Kyoto that one could discuss, but your argument isn't about one of them.

[ October 28, 2007, 08:00: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

Uh, Rags, you do realize I was being facetious, right? I used the rolleyes smilie, you know.

[ October 28, 2007, 16:59: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

air conditioning will always be necessary in parts of the us. when you have summer tempatures that average around 95-100 degrees F you need a.c.
it's not like cologne. also winter temps in the same area can hit the low teens.

[ October 28, 2007, 15:52: Message edited by: martaug ]

 

Drew,
(a) it was early and before breakfast when I wrote that and (b) you never know and (c) I am earnest in the morning. My apologies in any case

Martaug,
ever been to Greece? They have comparable temperature extremes. In southern Europe older buildings usually have thick stone walls, and there it is actually cool at the inside, even when it is searing hot on the outside. It isn't exactly as if heat was first discovered as a phenomenon when America was settled. There are alternatives to air condition that are around for a roughly two or three milennia.
Of course there always is the question of price, but I wonder about the sense of building cheaply a poorly isolated wodden house, and then cool it down with an air condition and constantly pay for electricity to power it so that you can actually live in it. How long does one live in his house in America? 10 years? Is it worth to invest more money to build it more solid then? Maybe that's America's semi-nomadic lifestyle? *shrugs*

[ October 28, 2007, 18:31: Message edited by: Ragusa ]