View Single Post
Old 05-09-2008, 02:27 PM   #35 (permalink)
hvatum
EcoFodder
 
hvatum's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Minnesota
Posts: 74

Jetta TDI - '00 VW Jetta
Thanks: 0
Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts
Quote:
Originally Posted by ebacherville View Post
Totally agreed on both points, the rolling living rooms will become obsolete, excempt for when there needed, and most large vehicals for many passangers will probably go the route of those dodge mercedias sprinter vans, those things get 30 mpg with there diesel engines.. and can haul 12 people.. I rode in one and was verr very impressed with them..
I totally agree about that. I do think that it makes sense to encourage people to use more efficient vehicles. That can happen for both cultural and economic reasons, by making high impact vehicles both un-cool and expensive.

Telling people to "conserve" in all areas of their life though is I think the wrong thing to do. Like Greenpeace Australia telling people they will all need to start riding bikes, not own cars, and live in much smaller homes. No one is going to do all that crap, and it will just cause them to ignore you (rightfully).

The "conservation" argument also annoys me, because it's used far too often to justify inaction. When the people planning our infrastructure point out that we will need a stable base load of energy, like nuclear power, then the Greenpeace people say "NO! We don't need that nuclear power plant, because we could just conserve that amount of electricity instead." That statement is true by itself, but it's a lie by omission, since it fails to consider that the base load source we will be using instead is coal.

http://www.stopthecoalplant.org/down...sions_data.pdf.

That's just in Texas. And that's just the plants waiting for approval.
Not the ones already being built.
Or the ones for which an application has been drawn up but a plant not yet deployed.

We're currently building more coal power plants right now in the US than any time in our history. (~120 coal fired plants are currently under construction in the US)

Too bad the numb skulls at Greenpeace don't really protest against those, because they're not scary like nuclear plants
__________________
I put the animated icon together in Photoshop, feel free to use it if you like!

Last edited by hvatum; 05-09-2008 at 02:34 PM..
  Reply With Quote