Obama has done a terrible job so far.

[Jerome Scuggs]

Just because something isn't cheap doesn't mean that it's not worth doing.

true, which is why the wealthy actually are spearheading the green transition. but the question you must ask, is: is it worth forcing upon every citizen regardless of their view?

regardless of what any opinions are here, here are the facts: green technology is increasingly used and employed every day, by more people, in more places. allowing the process to keep occuring will only lead to better results environmentally over time.

doesn't that sound like a decent "long-term" energy goal? didn't even have to write a fucking law, or spend a dime.

while your quote does hold true, here's the thing: because something is cheap, more people will buy it. and when more people buy it, companies can either increase supply, refine the product, or both. cheap products tend to become widely used products. (when's the last time you actually actually bought a bic pen or lighter? they grow on trees)

the process does have to start somewhere. technology has to be purchased before it can be refined, made cheaper, etc. that's where the wealthy provide a useful function: field-testing. think about how all the rich kids were so cool with their brand new, $600 ipods - and then think about two years later when you got your 4th gen, $300, video ipod.

the natural market process will work for green technology - why would it be any different? it is a long term goal - much like obama's supposed own goal. it will take time and effort on the part of every citizen - much like obama has asked of us. and, most importantly of all: it will require the rich to spend all their money in order for us to be able to afford cheaper, better technology - something obama couldn't do better himself if he tried, and he does.

all i gotta say is: chill. wait three years (which is when obama's green plan would go into effect anyways), and by then, i will bet you money that wind and solar will be employed in a majority of new household/industrial products. the green industry is taking off now, obama had nothing to do with that. the government is responsible though, in a way. by distracting the green sector for years - in the form of the ethanol subsidies that drove everyone to chase that government money - the resulting bursting of that bubble released a flood of investment capital into real, feasible, technology. that's why we've seen so much innovation in the past two years compared to the previous years.

[Jerome Scuggs]

and for the record, the pentagon produces more pollution than the top 5 polluting businesses... combined.

(i might be underestimating it, i thought it was top 13 but i'm too lazy to google)

so why doesn't the government deal with their own shit before they begin telling us what to buy and how to live? or is all that pollution needed, in order to produce more weapons? nothing says 'save the whales' like a nuclear bomb.

[saetep]

and for the record, the pentagon produces more pollution than the top 5 polluting businesses... combined.

(i might be underestimating it, i thought it was top 13 but i'm too lazy to google)

so why doesn't the government deal with their own shit before they begin telling us what to buy and how to live? or is all that pollution needed, in order to produce more weapons? nothing says 'save the whales' like a nuclear bomb.

Not saying that's not true, but it seems hard to believe. The pentagon is just one building. How could it produce more pollution than the top 5 polluting businesses when those businesses include Exxon, Shell, manufacturing companies, etc. It just doesn't seem possible that one building can produce more pollution than an entire power plant, especially one in China or India.

[kthx]

I think he means pentagon related weapons and defense manufacturing.

And if only all you green environmentalists knew how filthy it was to make your CPU that your typing on right now. Probably killed a million whales and raised earths temperature by .001 degrees.

[Displaced]

I wasn't aware that you could type on a CPU, why do I need my motherboard, GPU, HD, PSU and RAM, oh noes! :fear:

[Epinephrine]

true, which is why the wealthy actually are spearheading the green transition. but the question you must ask, is: is it worth forcing upon every citizen regardless of their view?

regardless of what any opinions are here, here are the facts: green technology is increasingly used and employed every day, by more people, in more places. allowing the process to keep occuring will only lead to better results environmentally over time.

doesn't that sound like a decent "long-term" energy goal? didn't even have to write a fucking law, or spend a dime.

while your quote does hold true, here's the thing: because something is cheap, more people will buy it. and when more people buy it, companies can either increase supply, refine the product, or both. cheap products tend to become widely used products. (when's the last time you actually actually bought a bic pen or lighter? they grow on trees)

the process does have to start somewhere. technology has to be purchased before it can be refined, made cheaper, etc. that's where the wealthy provide a useful function: field-testing. think about how all the rich kids were so cool with their brand new, $600 ipods - and then think about two years later when you got your 4th gen, $300, video ipod.

the natural market process will work for green technology - why would it be any different? it is a long term goal - much like obama's supposed own goal. it will take time and effort on the part of every citizen - much like obama has asked of us. and, most importantly of all: it will require the rich to spend all their money in order for us to be able to afford cheaper, better technology - something obama couldn't do better himself if he tried, and he does.

all i gotta say is: chill. wait three years (which is when obama's green plan would go into effect anyways), and by then, i will bet you money that wind and solar will be employed in a majority of new household/industrial products. the green industry is taking off now, obama had nothing to do with that. the government is responsible though, in a way. by distracting the green sector for years - in the form of the ethanol subsidies that drove everyone to chase that government money - the resulting bursting of that bubble released a flood of investment capital into real, feasible, technology. that's why we've seen so much innovation in the past two years compared to the previous years.

This argument doesn't work like you think it would.

People buy better products because they can see a distinct advantage of buying that product. Whether because it works better, is cheaper, or does more things.

A product that slows down global warming doesn't necessarily fit into these categories, because global warming is a world-wide phenomenon, where each individual piece contributes very little. Therefore it is a problem which is abstracted, and the human brain is very bad at seeing abstracted problems. Consider the fact that 20-25% of the population still smokes while basically everyone knows that smoking causes emphysema or lung cancer. Consider how everyone drives faster than the speed limit even though countless studies have shown that slow driving reduces fatalities. But in fact this problem is even worse. As it stands, end products are generally so far removed from the means of production that consumers (whether people or corporations) cannot easily sort things out. Is one brand of soap more or less polluting than another? Do individual people care? And if the more polluting brand is cheaper, won't most people still go for the more polluting one as long as it's just mildly worse (but much worse if everyone in the world uses it)?

In fact I don't think anyone denies that doing something about global warming costs more upfront than doing nothing. We know it's expensive, but we rationalize it because the potential costs are vastly bigger if we do nothing. Considering people are very self-interested and basic psychology shows us to have evolved to care much more about instant gains rather than long-term gains, and the fact that individual changes do little, people will tend towards the cheaper and easier cost, which is... do nothing, rather than keep demanding expensive green technologies.


The second problem with your theory is that even if you are right, and eventually consumer concerns can translate into action, most scientific projections show that even if we kept things exactly as they are now, we're going to have massive global warming in 30 years. Considering there's a LOT of uneducated consumers and corporations in the world, that is not nearly enough time to change consumer attitudes for the better (consider that every day we don't do something, that means another day in the future has to be much less polluting to make up for it) and unless action is taken quickly, we will be faced with huge problems in the future. So to protect the future from being royally fucked, we have to act even if that means regulations.


The third problem with your theory is that you believe that there's this huge amount of rich people who are willingly spending extra money to be more 'green'. I challenge you to show some real statistics about the number of rich people who are actually going out of their way to be green by using more money. I believe a certain percentage of people will 'do the right thing' (rich or poor) under any circumstance, but this generally will not change society. For all those people who give money to the homeless, there's still a ton of homeless people. A huge number of corporations or 'rich' people who do 'green' things, are actually acting out of their self interest and are motivated by one thing... money. They know that governments are encouraging more to decrease global warming, and as such they will invest in these things, especially if there are tax benefits to doing so.

Meanwhile some people are buying 'green' because of the rising costs of energy which is making renewables actually attractive. The problem though with this is basic supply and demand. If more people used renewables, then less people are using fossil fuels. Thus the price of fossil fuels drops, and more people will use fossil fuels.

Basically people will continue to burn fossil fuels until the costs are so incredibly high that it is not practical to do so anymore. And I don't think we'll reach that point until basically fossil fuels are almost all burnt up... in which case all that carbon is going to be in the air and we'll have massive global warming.

So sure, eventually green technologies will take over, but without actual mass intervention (aka governmental level intervention), traditional technologies will not be supplemented until the costs are extremely prohibitive, and general feelings of 'good will' is definitely not enough to change this cost.

[kthx]

And some people aren't buying green because there is nothing wrong with the planet and they don't buy into the shit spewing from the mouth of environmentalists and tree huggers.

[ÆNIMA]

The same conversation still going on? Well, I'm glad that MJ's memorial isn't THAT big.

[kthx]

who cares if that child molester died, the worlds a better place without him.

[Cops]

The third problem with your theory is that you believe that there's this huge amount of rich people who are willingly spending extra money to be more 'green'. I challenge you to show some real statistics about the number of rich people who are actually going out of their way to be green by using more money. I believe a certain percentage of people will 'do the right thing' (rich or poor) under any circumstance, but this generally will not change society. For all those people who give money to the homeless, there's still a ton of homeless people. A huge number of corporations or 'rich' people who do 'green' things, are actually acting out of their self interest and are motivated by one thing... money. They know that governments are encouraging more to decrease global warming, and as such they will invest in these things, especially if there are tax benefits to doing so.

Good point about corporations acting out of self interest. If being green was lucrative ten years ago then businesses would have already implemented the changes that are being made today. It's also great for public relations by doing something all around good for the environment. The government is going to give you tax breaks and you can claim the moral high ground on other businesses. That's all it really is.

I don't really see the green movement being spearheaded by the rich, it's the young, the old, the rich, the poor, and the middle class who have made it a point to influence their politicians to care about their cause. Saying that the changes were all made by those with wealth undermines the people who have been on the front lines of this fight since the very beginning.

[kthx]

Yeah but the old, the rich, the poor, the young, and all the other groups you droned on about only care about it because the government told them that they should care about it. Not like those people are any better than companies who "go green" to look good to hippies and faggots than middle class people who have special green recycling trashcans in their front yard to make their neighbors think they are more civilized.

Speaking of which I watched almost an entire episode of Whale Wars the other day because I saw in the info that they get grenades thrown at their ship and their captain gets shot. Sadly none of those faggots died.

[Squeezer]

Yeah but the old, the rich, the poor, the young, and all the other groups you droned on about only care about it because the government told them that they should care about it. Not like those people are any better than companies who "go green" to look good to hippies and faggots than middle class people who have special green recycling trashcans in their front yard to make their neighbors think they are more civilized.

Speaking of which I watched almost an entire episode of Whale Wars the other day because I saw in the info that they get grenades thrown at their ship and their captain gets shot. Sadly none of those faggots died.

You're right. I only care about conserving the Earth and trying to make energy more efficient because Obama said so. Not thinking for myself is the best!

[disorder]

Read the conclusion of the pdf on Solid oxide fuel cells for use in automobiles to reduce the price of a barrel to $46 crude

pdf

[Epinephrine]

Good point about corporations acting out of self interest. If being green was lucrative ten years ago then businesses would have already implemented the changes that are being made today. It's also great for public relations by doing something all around good for the environment. The government is going to give you tax breaks and you can claim the moral high ground on other businesses. That's all it really is.

I don't really see the green movement being spearheaded by the rich, it's the young, the old, the rich, the poor, and the middle class who have made it a point to influence their politicians to care about their cause. Saying that the changes were all made by those with wealth undermines the people who have been on the front lines of this fight since the very beginning.

It's like how BP made a huge deal about being a 'green' energy company a few years ago. In the end, they only did it because they made themselves more efficient to save money, and the vast majority of their resources still only goes toward oil.

[raizin]

name of this thread is accurate. Not reading 3 pages of back and forth bullshit.