Re: Fluorescent Bulbs Are Known to Zap Domestic Tranquillity; Energy-Savers a Turnoff for Wives

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Dave Houston" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

<stuff snipped>

> more massive changes in lifestyle are necessary if it's to be avoided all
> together and that's where the focus needs to be, not on marginal "feel
good"
> empty gestures. Given that the polar ice is melting much faster than the
> models predicted we may have already reached or passed the tipping point
so
> a 1-2% reduction in electricity use is inconsequential.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/business/worldbusiness/05emissions.html

The above article talks about how large companies are already gaming the
"carbon credit" system in Europe.

<<The two-year-old system involves complicated quotas that cap carbon
dioxide emissions from thousands of factories across the trade bloc . . .
Lawrence Summers, the former president of Harvard, argue that Europe has
embarked on a project that needs a major overhaul. So far, progress in
Europe has been modest when compared with international commitments . . .the
overall decline in emissions was about 2 percent by 2005 compared with 1990
levels . . . The Kyoto goal is 8 percent.  Last year, Europe was forced to
cut the number of credits it hands out after companies successfully lobbied
governments, flooding the market. . . . ?The first phase definitely did not
deliver reductions in emissions,? said Mahi Sideridou, the European Union
climate policy director for Greenpeace in Brussels.>>

It's pretty clear why big business favors complicated solutions:  they are
easy to game if you have a large enough legal staff.   Same as the tax laws.
Huge companies pay next to nothing trading credits and running other scams
that would get ordinary citizens thrown in jail.  They demand allotments for
*not* polluting in previous years that they sell for hard cash in the
"poison" market.

You're right about the tipping point, and it works in more than just
scientific terms.  People don't act until there's a crisis, and reducing
demand postpones that crisis while power plants still belch mercury.  One of
the major reasons that car exhausts got cleaned up so dramatically was the
never before seen "killer smogs" that caused such a grave health crisis, and
therefore great public awareness.

If people want to really clean up the air, they need to spend money not on
CFL stop-gap measures that add back a noxious poison, but on lobbying
organizations that have demonstrated their committment to clean air by
filing lawsuits against BIG polluters.  They need to write their
representatives and demand that all states compute the true cost of coal
power, including the projected cleanup costs, across the country so that
states that DO scrub their stacks or that mandate alternative clean energy
sources don't bear the costs of states that emit pollutants.

--
Bobby G.