PatsWSB47

We're all trying to figure out which goverment approach is best for creating energy alternatives but I started thingking about what we as individuals would be willing to do to in our homes and lives to help.

Do you go to any legnths at all or is this a goverment fix?

PatsWSB47

Sorry for the double posts. Someone please delete one of these Going green threads.

Harry Boy

I'd like to know what other country's are doing, there is talk of Windmills then when it comes time to build them nobody wants them in their back yard (Kennedy/Kerry) what do we do about the scumbag phony's that want me to live in a "Green Shell" when they themselves use more energy in one day than I do all year (Gore/Joe Kennedy) what do we do about the phony's like Striesand who told the people in California during a Hot Spell to use fans and turn their Air Conditioners off to conserve energy then it is learned that this ugly skank had a whole warehouse full of fur coats being cooled 375 days a year around the clock by Air Conditioners, is So America, Cuba, Canada going along with all this Green Stuff, doesn't the fumes from Cuba & South America's Crap drift up here, I wonder if Africa is going green.

GOD DAMN AMERICA
GOD DAMN BUSH

__________________
Harry Boy (Genius)

In The Absence Of Law And Order Society Will Surely Destroy Itself

BelichickFan

This is what I have said over and over. More than 50%, according to polls, think MMCC is a problem. If they would all take one less car trip per year and replace their most driven car with a hybrid that would have more effect than the stuff that cap & tax (which won't pass the Senate) would have. As usual, people say there's a problem but it's "big business" not them that is the cause.

PatsFanInVa

I'll respond here, but with a caveat:

It's interesting what each of us personally do, but public policy has to treat society wide, or more correctly, worldwide problems, from a statistical perspective.

Okay, now to the anecdotal:

I take big fat polluting buses (many of which pollute with natural gas rather than gasoline, so there's that,) to big long trains requiring enormous amounts of electricity. That's the majority of my travel, i.e., to work and back.

As you might imagine, these gigantic power-consuming conveyances simultaneously take dozens/hundreds of other commuters, respectively, to and from work.

I am also (almost by necessity) an urban animal. That gives me some luxury of smugness. I live in a condo, in a much smaller space than many of my income group in America would accept. It's cheap to heat and cool.

Here's something interesting, I suppose: my electricity is included in my monthly condo fee. So I guess I could leave the heat or AC on 24/7, but I usually don't. I guess in that way I actually go out of my way to be green. We've also put in a couple of those corkscrew shaped bulbs which are supposed to be so good for the planet. Big whoop.

We drive 1 car. My wife goes a mile back and forth each day to work. It's her PT Cruiser, which is okay on gas but not outstanding.

In my heart of hearts I want a GTO from 67 or so, the kind that sort of makes a deisel marine engine noise at stoplights... "Bluddabluddabludda..." And aesthetically speaking, I know that particular nostalgia is doomed, and I find it sort of sad. Same way as I want a cigarette after sex or with a cup of coffee, but I don't want the next generation to want one. It feels horrible to say, but I want red-blooded American males to one day brag about fuel economy rather than horsepower. Simultaneously because I am human, I want a ZR-1 corvette, cuz it ain't nothin but a race car.

Of course, all the handwringing and fingerpointing becomes moot, once we enact society-wide controls. The current proposals have that advantage: if you are willing and able to pay for a greater share of the climate change, and you buy that ability from someone else, okie-dokie. It's an extension of our current national ethos: we like everything to be fair, but we are okay with the rich being able to buy extra fairness, particularly if we have some fairness to sell them, and they've got the money to buy it. We just don't want our fairness stolen from us, because well, that wouldn't be fair.

PFnV

PatsWSB47

But how far do you go?

Do you buy green products over traditional ones?

Do you frequently check the air pressure in your tires?

Do you bring along those canvas shopping bags to the grocery store?

Would you retrofit your home to make it greener?

I'm asking everyone to respond here

Patters

I do use energy saving lightbulbs, am pretty strict about not wasting electricity, and very good about recycling. In addition, when I have the option, I try to use paper bags when buying groceries. Besides that, there are other behaviors I have that are environmentally friendly, such as preferring to walk or use mass transit than my car, largely avoiding the use of any lemon or other flavored sprays, and I tend to keep the heat in my condo quite low, and use air conditioning only in the rooms that I am actually using.

PatsFanInVa

I don't go far at all, SB42... I recycle, and my building makes it easy for me to do so, and so does my work. I take the bus, which stops outside my building, straight to the metro. My commutes an hour each way, which is what it would be by car. I actually also get a public transit subsidy, to encourage me not to contribute to congestion (in its origin.) It also makes stuff not melt in the arctic. So maybe one ice-cube worth is still frozen because of that, or one cooler full of ice, or whatever.

Flip side - when I go shopping I still get plastic bags, and just hope and pray they use some kind of biodegradeable plastic. Way way more convenient, and all that stuff has to go up to the 14th floor.

That's how humans are, and that's my point. I wouldn't do the public transit if it weren't convenient. I'm not especially virtuous. Most people aren't.

So what I would like to see, is to make it attractive to individuals to do the things that result in a better future.

It's either incentives, or coercion, that gets large-scale change done (not altruism.) I prefer incentives.

I'll add that altruism is a good thing. It just isn't reliable as a means of addressing large-scale problems that do not exhibit visible local effects until it is too late.

PFnV

Harry Boy

I do whatever feels good, I do whatever i want to do, thats what the politicians do.

Shouldn't the President, the Senate, Congress and all the Green Activists set an example for a$s holes like me, they don't you know.

Green Green It's Green they say
On the far side of the hill
Green Green I'm going away
To where the grass is greener still

I love camp fires, wood stoves, pickup trucks and women with one tit.

I think I'll get circumcised before labor day.

__________________
Harry Boy (Genius)

In The Absence Of Law And Order Society Will Surely Destroy Itself

State

Nuclear power with solar as a supplemental.

You can read about it: Amazon.com: Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy: Gwyneth Cravens, Richard Rhodes: Books

I heard a government scientist admit the same thing, but there's too much prejudice against nuclear power. Something about a movie with Jane Fonda called China Syndrome.

I'm glad people are so informed.