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UK to "get serious" About Renewable Energy
Bob Dobbs writes "Tomorrow the UK government will
announce (observer.co.uk) it's going to "get serious" about renewable energy; in the bleakest look at global warming so far Tony Blair will warn that extreme weather will wreak £150 billion worth of damage across Europe within a decade and the current situation is "unsustainable". On the bright side, it's mentioned that sustainable energy sources are less susceptible to terrorist attack."
Nor is he an Emperor, nor a King, nor does he have any titlage of nobility at all.
I see constant ranting about how Bush wants to destroy the world and won't consider alternate energy sources as opposed to fossil fuels.
Hello? Did any of you actually watch the State of the Union Address?
Yeah, I thought not.
The sad part is, Bush'll continue to take the blame when Congress shoots down everything related to hybrid cars and such. The Democrats will blame the Republicans, and the Republicans will blame the Democrats, and when they get nowhere with that, they'll blame the man in the Oval Office.
Democrats will whine continually about how the Republicans are stalling new measures, while they'll be just as much to blame. Same with the Republicans. Perhaps the Green Party and other fringe parties will support change, but no one listens to them anyhow.
When the partisan playground finally empties, the only person who will take full blame will, of course, be Bush. Why? Because plenty of whackjobs in this country seem to think he's a dictator and can do whatever he pleases, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Economy sucks? Must be Bush! Dependance on oil? Must be Bush! Rain this weekend? Oh, damn that bastard, he cheated and won an election! We wouldn't have rain this weekend with Gore in office!
You want change, get off your asses and write your congresspeople, instead of blaming a person who's power is limited to good ideas.
It isn't that the damage being measured in monetary terms and not human terms out of a love of money. It's because money exists as an independent measure of various "goods", whatever they are.
We need some measure to distribute investments of our limited resources in environmentalism, disease control, future growth, or whatever else. That's where money comes in. It says that "OK. Now this is worth enough in quantifiable terms to warrant resource investment over other things."
If environmentalism was free or we had unlimited resources, I'm sure everybody would do it in a heartbeat. Since it isn't we all have to decide whether and how much we need to contribute to it at any time.
Your argument about it this being "about money", and therefore being wrong, is meaningless. Of course it's about money.
-Andrew
But what a total waste of energy. Apartment I recently occupied had a washer/dryer unit inside. The dryer was electric and vented into the apartment. I didn't use it except during winter. Most dryers vent to the outdoors and the heat is almost completely wasted. This is a feature of highly individualistic Western societies-- people aren't in the habit of thinking how things could work together.
Hanging the shirts up in the closet (leave the door open, of course) isn't as good as outside in the fresh air, but it works and avoids trouble with people (specifically, apt. management) who think hanging laundry up in plain sight is offensively "low-rent". Got some wire shelving for the other clothes. Those who have a "McMansion" can surely find some space for drying clothes the old fashioned way. I'd like to see a room especially designed for this. Maybe long and narrow with screen doors at both ends to let the air blow thru.
Buy a few more clothes to make up for the longer drying time. Not using the dryer saves energy, and saves wear on the clothes. Tumble dry isn't exactly gentle.
The clothes are an easy place to begin. Next, how about thinking about how to put all that energy in that hot shower to work? Currently, the water and heat go straight to the sewers. Why not run it around in some piping in the floor (when the weather is cold) before sending it to the municipal sewage treatment plant? How about using a heat exchanger on that water and the water entering the water heater?
The US states with the lowest per capita energy usage are Florida and California. It's obvious why: climate. Reducing the energy used to control indoor climate would really pay. And it is so easy to do, from a technical point of view. It's the social angle that's the problem.
This is the thinking that is needed. A little more awareness is all. People don't have to mind this stuff all the time, that's very tedious. Get the environment set up right by yelling at homebuilders to include these kinds of features and then let the home and carefully practiced good habits take care of these matters. Lose that stupid home builder special fireplace that sends 90% of the heat up the chimney and put in a real fireplace-- if there must be a fireplace at all. I think most people have no idea how bad most of those fireplaces are. And if they do know, they don't care that much.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
So maybe they could raise diesel too by $10/gallon. That way, shipping trucks would have to charge a lot more and everything we buy would get more expensive. That way, we could slow down the U.S. economy by a huge factor and give other countries a chance.
Or we could just make SUV's illegal because certain political parties think they are bad and evil.
Why hasn't this been modded down?