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Saving Energy Without Derision
George Maschke writes "Saving Energy Without Derision (5 mb PDF) is a new (and free) e-book by former Sandia National Laboratories senior scientist Dr. Alan P. Zelicoff. This book is intended to be a real-world, no-nonsense, thoroughly documented collection of easy-to-implement recommendations to help the average thoughtful person to pick the 'low-hanging fruit' of conservation and renewable energy. The author is after the easy 75% of actions we can all take (but almost uniformly ignore) that most certainly make a difference in energy costs (after all that's what most people care about) and adjuring a bit of unnecessary adverse impact on the environment (which a few folks actually think is important beyond the mere dollar valuation). The author welcomes comments and intends to continuously update the book (consistent with readership interest) and address many new topics. For example, next on his list is an analysis of the economics and scientific basis of fuel-cell vehicles powered by hydrogen. (Bottom line, he maintains, is that it's a cruel hoax and energy disaster, and far less useful than, for example, heavy hybrid automobiles that get about 50 - 60 miles on an electric charge alone -- which accounts for more than 85% of driving in the US and elsewhere on a daily basis -- and which are available now.)"
These are the two most thoughtful comments I've ever read on /.
But encouraging consumption is only one side of pro-consumer propaganda--those of us who resist the consumerist religion are held up for derision
Wrong... the reason "those of us who resist consumerism" are met with derision is that people who advocate "environmentalism, socialism, universal healthcare" don't realize they are advocating taking from those who actually resist consumerism.
This is why you are met with derision, because you want to take others earnings based on a cartoonish view of the world. In reality, most millionaires in America are first generation, and are that way by resisting consumerism (living below their means) source. The problem with socialism is that it punishes these people.
This is the beauty of America: everyone is allowed to do what they want. Socialists don't like that, they think those who choose wisely should be punished to help those who choose poorly.
As for the beauty of the French health care system:
1) It is (as environmentalists like to say lately*) 'unsustainable'. They are having serious trouble funding it... why? Because people will take as much as possible from it because it costs them nothing, it is the tragedy of the commons. This also has the other serious effect...
2) Just wait until a killer bacterial infection breaks out there, resistant to all antibiotics. This is a world wide problem, but it is particularly problematic in France... since they are free, worrying parents typically ask doctors for, and get, antibiotics for all kinds of ailments that they can not fix. What they do, however, is cause resistant strains to emerge. (This was a side article in the Economist earlier, can't find the link)
* Notice that the new environmental buzzword is 'sustainable'. Wonder where that came from? The reason being is that environmentalists have been talking about the end of the world for the last 20-30 years, and have most always been wrong. Therefore, sustainable is the new world because there are no firm dates. Things could easily keep getting better and better... but they can always say 'its not sustainable'... and no one can prove them wrong.
This is something a lot of movements go through, and very similar to mid-19th century America. Many many religious leaders combed the bible, and 'deciphered' the date for the judgment day. As you can imagine, this did not happen. They eventually invented the idea of 'rapture'. The idea that the end could happen at any time, but it is not predictable, so we must constantly be faithful and on guard... Similar to how the economy can keep getting better and better, standards of living can keep going up... but watch out.. it is 'unsustainable' (instead of saying.. we will run out of oil in X years like they used to)
---Lane
You conformists never can quite get clear of logical fallacies, can you.
Social indoctrination via propaganda can be used for many purposes. A society might, for some reason, indoctrinate its young to stand on their heads whenever they hear a cricket chirping. Or whatever. Or these institutions might crank out propaganda to indoctrinate its young people to give up their lives in war, thus providing great profits for munitions makers, etc. Now we cannot find any examples of THAT in world history. Can we?
Or, they might be indoctrinated to be good consumers, and to work as hard as possible and spend as much money as possible, and also to heap derision and scorn on those who would advocate anti-consumerist thinking.
No, THAT could never happen. Or could it?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
The reality is that the earth is constantly changing. The short period of time we have been here and able to remember things from the past is a blink of an eye in the time of the earth. Some of the change may be due to our influence but nothing we do is going to really change the overall environment, aside from total thermo nuclear war. In the long run the earth goes through various geologic ages. Our development happend to coincide with a realtively mild period in the earths history. Eventually this will change and if we have not created self sustaining colonies on other worlds we will pass into history. Maybe the next speciecs that develops intelligence will find some of our remains and wonder why we let the SCO lawsuit drag us to our demise since that will be the last item on the news services when it all ends.
It really amazes me that the "greenies" don't really understand that the environment is in constant change. Species rise and species die. Natural order of things. But they all seem to want to freeze everything as they happened to stumble on it as if that is the way it has been since the dawn of time. The fact that we might be going through a slight warming cycle is not cause for alarm. Yes some species will go extict but eventually others will fill the void. We are in a unique position since we can to some degree modify our own environment for our survival but we can also modify and adapt ourselves. In the long run it really depends on what we decide to do as a species. I personally would like to see us establish self sustaining colonies on the varous palnets and moons of this system. And even that eventually will not be far enough as the sun will go nova and wipe out this system. So we will need to spread to the stars to survive.
I just wonder if SCO can get a change of venu for their on going case against IBM?