Selfish green

You are one of those doing it right. But my Xebra is not a lollipopmobile, or a rainbowmobile. It runs on water! Water from the Bonneville dam, turned into electrons by big scary machines, to be precise.

The most reducingist, reusingist, recyclingest, bicyclingist, person in America still consumes about 23* times as much energy as the average non-ruling-class person in the third world. Just by living in an industrial nation you are part of the problem as regards energy and carbon.

Disclusure: I made up the number 23. But it is HUGE!

 

Very few of us will change the world by ourselves to any significant degree. But even small actions, multiplied by billions, will have a huge effect. That's what raising awareness is all about, and why we have events like Earth Day. Being cynical by calling it ineffective is missing the whole point.

And when you come to a waterfall, you get out of the canoe and portage around it.

 

"reducingist, reusingist, recyclingest, bicyclingist" are these even words???

And by "made up" do you really mean, "pulled it out of your a**?

Have a great weekend with your water powered car!

 

Not far enough away from where I live, there is a landfill. That was to be at capacity in 2015. Due to recycling, its now 2022. Individual action times thousands of households. In the past 22 months, I've saved 1600 gallons of gas (it replaced a pickup achieving 13 mpg). Where I live my congressman and my senators are likely to vote pro-environment so lobbying them is most likely not an issue. The other members of Congress don't care what I think. And many of them wouldn't care what I thought, since the environment has become a political exercise (the Gallup Poll decides whether AGW is real or not, right?). I work with my city government to make sustainability a high priority, but it doesn't always work.

Which gets to the heart of the matter... I can only control my own actions. Even those have consequences. Buying green when you don't need the product is not necessarily green but it might be. We need more individualized education to help make those decisions.

 

Or longer. And some of us only walk to the other end of the hallway.

 

...which still has a non-trivial (albeit much better than any kind of fossil fuel source) social impact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonneville_Dam#Environmental_and_social_implications

Unfortunately, there's no winning when it comes to energy generation and use (maybe until we come up with sustainable cold fusion - ITER?).

Besides, it's great way to stay in shape.

 

That would be me. I don't drive my Prius to work. I don't drive anything to work. My office and residence are in the same mixed use commercial building. Is this because I want to look green? No, it's because I'm lazy.

Tom

 

you're giving me a headache and it hurts like heck. does that count?

 

Wrong! Since a million people bought Prius over the last 10 years,
the big auto makers realized there was a market for alternative cars
and realized they would be left behind if they did not jump on the bandwagon. Name one major auto manufacturer that does not have a
hybrid or EV in development or already on the market.

 

Look at the commercials to see what they are marketing now. Current ads focus on efficient cars, including hybrids, OR compact SUV's and crossovers. No longer are we seeing truck and land barge advertisements all day long. I think they heard and are reacting to SOMETHING. Even the few truck ads we see now (and there are FAR fewer) are focusing on efficiency now instead of pure brawnyness.

 

Hey, some pretty good discussion here.

I try to practice what I preach as much as possible. And some people take me to task for that. What does my one little contribution of riding a bike do in the grand scheme of things? Well, nothing by itself. It is the message (I hope) that does more good. They see that it is possible to ride your kid to school every morning. They see that it is possible to ride to work every day. They see that a little drizzle won't kill you, and isn't an automatic NEED for a 6,000 pound SUV to be driven.

I do take Prius drivers to task who claim that they are "cleaning the air." Even my solar-powered EV isn't "cleaning the air." The best we can hope for is to slow down our pollution of the air. It'll clean itself (we hope, and assume...) if we stop polluting it. But driving a gas car - even one as clean as the Prius, does not scrub the nasties out of the air for us. I'm sure my lungs contribute a bit of cleaning action to the air when I ride... but with my allergies lately, I don't even want to think too hard on that!

 

I AGREE WITH YOU !!! and its by desing not only did we get the problem of our hands we created a new problem in all of the countrys that had industries that are left with milions of jobles people all because of cheaper wages. the world needs to wake those people in china mexico tailand corea and what not, to rase their income this way everythig whould balance out one day! and see how fast everything gets greener on this planet ! :mod: