As far as you know, as a consumer, you're buying a boxed game which you expect to own, to do whatever you want with it. Sell it, play it, sit on it, burn it with gasoline.
C'mon. Most consumers know better than this. But in this particular case, I don't see where the person isn't buying a boxed game which they own and can do anything they want with it (providing it's legal). By that rationale, you have no right to a user account in the first place, and should be pleasantly surprised when you get one.
Unless those trails are voter verified, nobody has any way to determine if the trail matches the actual votes cast by the voters.
I suspect when beeplet said "you verify it and then put it in a regular ballot box" he meant that the voter verifies it and puts it in a regular ballot box.
We either need to put the actual vote on paper, or make sure the machine printed votes match voter intent, or the election cannot be trusted.
That's exactly what Rob MacKenna, a "computer systems expert", and the guy I voted for for supervisor of elections, wanted to do. But MacKenna lost, against Buddy Johnson, who was the supervisor of the very election he was running in.
Or maybe it's just that the Republicans don't control the Senate, which is why the Senate was forced to make a compromise. Sure, they have a majority, but they don't have a filibuster-proof majority.
Wow. This is quite misinformed. First of all, States don't have rights. Only people do. Amendment 10 talks about powers (which States can have). Amendment 9 talks about rights (which according to our founders are God-given, and God didn't give them to States but to people).
Further, protection of people's rights to engage in interstate commerce free from taxation by the states is precisely what the founders had in mind when they put in the Interstate Commerce Clause. It wasn't until much later that Congress figured out that it could use the clause to hinder commerce, rather than to promote it. Frankly, with the dormant commerce clause it'd be questionable whether or not the states could tax the internet in the first place. With Congress speaking directly to the point they certainly can't.
Finally it should probably be noted that the 9th and 10th Amendments are redundant. They are basic truisms upon which the entire Constitution is built. I agree that much of what the Feds do goes beyond the way the Constitution was originally intended, especially with regard to interstate commerce, but this just isn't an example of it.
Most states are required by their constitutions to have balanced budgets, though. If you cut taxes, you have to cut spending. You really can starve the beast, unlike when Reagan gave us those ever-increasing deficits during his Presidency.
If you cut consumption, and maintain the production level, then you've decreased efficiency.
If you *DECREASE* the amount of stuff you use to make something, but still produce the same amount, then you have, by definition, *increased* efficiency.
Consumption isn't the amount of stuff you use to make something. Consumption is the amount of stuff you use. If you produce the same amount of stuff, but use less, then you've decreased efficiency.
It's *MORE EFFICIENT* because you are making more product, but consuming less to make it.
Consumption isn't just limited to raw materials, though.
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Yeah, but do you get a gig of space from Yahoo?
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Having a hotmail account has no real benefits
Until a few days ago, I would have pointed to the ability to use hotmail through an API (letting me use hotmail in Outlook Express and through hotmail popper). But gmail has added now added POP support (although it's not yet enabled on my account), so I suppose the only advantage of hotmail is now obsolete.
It's a good thing, too, I was getting quite sick of using copy/paste to reply to an email that was forwarded to gmail while changing my from address to match the address that the mail was addressed to.
After the "human verification" agent checks out a few hundred false alarms, the system fails.
That or the MPAA gets congress to pass a law banning camera lenses in movie theatres. If they haven't already (and if they have already, then they'll just raise it to a felony, call it terrorism, institute the death penalty, etc).
detection of a recording device is impossible as long as the recorder does not send anything
Anything with a temperature above absolute zero sends something. It's obviously not impossible to detect a recording device. I have two such detectors that I bring along with me everywhere I go. I like to call them my eyes.
,i>I do not care what you believe, until there is a law that states otherwise, everyone owns your image when you are in public.
Hmm, maybe a law like the right of publicity or right of privacy? As a documentary filmmaker, you might be exempt from some of these laws under fair use and the first amendment, but saying that "everyone owns your image when you are in public" is just plain wrong.
I mean that the purpose of the government is to protect its people, not to hurt them for the sake of some other people.
The US government has every right to sign international treaties, there is no constitutional right that is being violated, there is no human right being violated.
The government has every right to sign and ratify interenational treaties (and in fact we've already signed Kyoto). And yes, there is no constitutional ban on signing any treaty not in conflict with the Constiution. But that doesn't mean the citizens don't have a basic human right not to have the government working to harm it. In fact, signing and ratifying Kyoto likely would violate the basic principles on which the United States was founded, as put into place by the Constitution, but such an issue wouldn't be justiciable.
Does the state have the right to regulate smoking in public places?
To some extent, sure, but this is done to benefit the public, not to benefit other states/countries.
No, the investments will spur development of new businesses.
What investments? Kyoto would suck investment out of the United States, not put investment into it.
It will move spending from oil to sustainable technology.
And "sustainable technology" is less economically beneficial. That's why we still use oil. It's cheaper and easier to use. It makes our life easier and gives us more time to spend on leisure activities rather than on building nuclear power plants or hauling radioactive waste or creating goods and services to export to other countries so we can buy up pollution vouchers.
It may ofcourse lead to stagnation in the oil industry.
It would certainly lead to that, and it would cause oil prices to skyrocket (we agree on that, right). Thus the price of just about everything would skyrocket, because oil is used in just about every part of the process. Home energy prices would soar, even for those homes which didn't use oil or coal (indirectly or directly), because the demand for substitute goods would rise. 95% of the country would be forced to buy a brand new car. Sure, you might be able to get a second job working at a power plant or an electric car factory to pay for all this, but who wants to do that?
You are arguing against taking preemptive steps and securing american lifestyle on a longer perspective because it will hurt you right here and now.
Preemptive steps about what? I'm arguing against destroying American lifestyle now and getting just about no benefit whatsoever.
Apparently you have a short memory, the whole thread has been focused on increasing efficiency, this means NOT replacing one energy source by another, but reducing the need for energy.
Perhaps you didn't read the article. It's about US opposition to Kyoto.
By reducing energy consumption you will not have to by CO2 quotas from other countries either.
Sure, we can stop driving cars and stop using air conditioners. But unless the government bans cars, that's not going to happen. What's going to happen is that people are going to continue to drive cars and cool their homes, they're just going to pay much more for it, and that extra money is going to go to foreign countries.
Secondly, Kyoto was never meant to be the final solution to world environmental problems.
But the problem is that it solves nothing.
You have been accusing me for presenting flawed reasoning, bad data, rough calculations and crude assumptions etc. Yet you do not hessitate to present completely undocumented claims with no backing reasoning what so ever.
I've tried to explain this above. One problem is that I don't know how much you know about basic economics, so I don't know what parts of the explanation I can safely skip. You do agree that ratifying Kyoto would cause US gas prices to go up though, right? Or do I need to expla
Yes, I thought that 60% better effeciency in EU would leave enough room to errors that these should not alter my overall conclusion.
I think you're grossly mistaken in this assumption. And I wouldn't call it an error, I'd call it a fundamental flaw in your reasoning.
You mentioned the SUV as a quality of life which is highly subjective.
The fact that whether or not you have an SUV affects your quality of life is not subjective. What is subjective is how that SUV affects your quality of life.
I argue that there are likely huge benefits to be gained by investing in more efficient technology.
We're constantly investing in more efficient technology.
Refusing to upgrade to more efficient technology when such alternatives exists does however indicate deliberate wastefull behaviour.
Depends on your reasoning, of course. But if you refuse for no reason, then yes, I agree, it's wasteful.
I am suggesting that US could follow a more proactive policy for the benefit of all instead of just rejecting any international agreement that will influence US domestic politics.
I'm not sure what we could do in this regard. Ratifying Kyoto certainly wouldn't benefit all. It would benefit some, and hurt others. As the benefit to US citizens would far outweigh the detriments, the US government has no right to ratify the treaty.
US economy will become stronger, more competitive and less dependent on oil imports.
Overall the economy would become weaker, since we would have to spend resources reducing our emissions of CO2 or pay money to other nations. The immediate impact would likely be skyrocketing energy prices leading to stagflation that hasn't been seen since the 1970s. We would likely become less dependent on oil, but this is a relatively minor issue which will resolve itself over time. The idea that we should cut ourself off of oil now so that we're not dependent on it in the future is preposterous. And realistically, we're not that dependent on oil, at least not foreign oil (which is the only kind of dependence that really matters). If all the foreign oil suppliers cut us off today, we have enough in reserves to last for years while we switch to alternate energy sources. That's enough time that we could do it, in the event of the minicule chance that it actually happened (after all, this would hurt our oil suppliers almost as much as it hurt us). It'd hurt making the switch, but again, saying that we should switch now because there's a miniscule chance we might be forced to switch in the future is (still) preposterous. We're no more dependent on foreign oil than we are on foreign cars or foreign cement.
World environment will benefit - even if the impact at first is neglicible.
Not necessarily. Kyoto is overly focussed on CO2. If we lower our CO2 emissions at the expense of other environmental pollution (like radioactive contamination), which will almost surely be required in order to come into compliance, then the world environment is hurt, not improved. Overall, the environment in terms of pollution would likely improve, though. The problem is that it would cost too much to solve this.
US will gain credibility as world leader and be able to rebuild aliances - currently this credibility is close to non-existent.
This is by far the greatest benefit we'd derive from ratifying Kyoto. I don't think it's worth it.
I assume you made a typo somewhere there, because that sentence doesn't make logical sense. If you cut consumption, and maintain the production level, then you've decreased efficiency.
OK, there you lost me. Improved efficiency means that you increase the output for the same input. Equivalently, you can decrease input and maintain same output. I argue that this is in fact posible.
Wouldn't consumption be a measure of the output, and production be a measure of the input?
There are real differences, I don't deny that, in particular when it comes to the need for transport and infrastructure. However, I do not believe that these differences are so big that they disqualify my conclusion
Based on what? Just raw speculation?
Getting from point A to point B is a necesity, getting there in a SUV is not.
Of course not. But "quality of life" isn't just about necessities. No one would claim television is a necessity, but having a television certainly improves one's quality of life.
SUV's and 4x4's have their place in special conditions, but are not the inteligent choice for normal transportation. I do not consider lack of SUV's to be a significant decrease of quality of life. In fact, roads become safer without SUV's and I consider lack of road kills an increase in life quality (I can agree to call it a tie if you insist:-)
I think you're trying to enforce your own particular view of quality of life, and I don't think that is appropriate, at least not in this particular situation. In any case, I don't deny that the US can decrease its use of energy by cutting out certain luxuries. I just haven't been convinced that this is necessary.
Improving efficiency should not be restricted to industries. Each consumer has a responsibility before the world when making a choice and considering the environmental impact of the choice should not be neglected from that responsibility.
I agree with this, I think we just differ on where we should draw the line. I'm not convinced that we can do very much about global warming in the first place, and the evidence seems to show that the costs outweigh the benefits.
Government can aid the consumer making good choices by informing the consumer and by favoring the better product or penalizing the bad through taxes. This is often the only way that consumption can move towards more sustainable products since poluting usually pais on short term. In Europe gas price is 3-4 times times that in US, which explains why SUV's are not so popular.
We tax gas here in the US too. Maybe not enough. Maybe too much. I'm willing to consider an argument that we need to give up our SUVs because the environmental costs outweigh the benefits. My issue was with your framing of the situation as one where we were wasting energy for no reason. The owners of SUVs pay a lot of money to run those SUVs, so obviously they find them significantly better than other means of transportation.
Well, even if CO2 is not a problem, if you did base such a transition on fosil fuel, gas prices would sky-rocket as demand would 4-5 double, hence bringing your lifestyle (and SUV) under significant pressure.
Raising the price of gasoline so that demand decreases so that the price of gasoline doesn't go up makes no sense to me, though.
For this reason US has a huge interest in keeping the poor countries poor
Not sure how this comment relates, but some in the US might think they have a huge interest in keeping the poor countries poor. Personally I think even besides the moral issues of such a position that a poor person is much less likely to contribute to the world to the point where efficiency will be increased to outweigh the increase in consumption. The world, and indeed the universe, is an economy of scale.
- in fact, an american (republican) I met claimed that the whole point of the Iraq war was to keep China from getting access to oil to fuel the industrial development.
Seems to me to be no more than a potshot at W. It certainly wasn't "the whole point". Maybe it had something to do with his reasoning. I don't know, and never will, I'm not a mind reader.
They load up on "loss leaders," severely discounted merchandise designed to boost store traffic, then flip the goods at a profit on eBay.
That's not robbery. It's called commerce. Buy low, sell high. Nothing illegal or shady about it at all. Is Best Buy saying they don't want any of their customers to be able to sell any of the things they purchase?
They certainly are, in fact I think they even claim it goes against their service agreement (which would be completely unenforcible).
I used to do it. Plus the Best Buy and Circuit City I lived near both had price match plus agreements (they'd match the price and lower it by 5% of the difference or something). So when it went on sale at Best Buy, I'd buy it at Circuit City. When it went on sale at Circuit City, I'd buy it at Best Buy.
Just reselling on ebay I'd usually make a decent profit. Plus when I bought at Best Buy I put it on my Best Buy card and didn't have to pay interest for 90 days or whatever, so I got a free loan to boot. Ultimately I stopped in part because I moved but it was a pain dealing with some of the sales reps who treated me like I was a criminal for taking them up on their deals.
They slap down rock-bottom price quotes from Web sites and demand that Best Buy make good on its lowest-price pledge.
Why even have a lowest price pledge if you aren't going to honor it?
I'm pretty sure they don't allow you to price match against online stores. I mean, anyone could set up an online store and offer ridiculous prices just so they could rip off Best Buy. And yeah, that'd be ripping them off. But as long as you're going by the rules of the deal, then it's their problem for offering the deal. And I'm not talking about forcing a store to honor an obvious misprint. Best Buy knows full well what they're offering here.
It's like the casinos that try to make you feel guilty for counting cards. Sorry, if you don't like it, add more decks, or shuffle more often, institute a rule that you can't change your bet in the middle of a shoe, and don't allow people to join the game in the middle of a shoe. It's quite amazing what you can get away with just by calling yourself a business. "I'm sorry sir, you didn't allow us to rip you off, we're going to have to ask you to leave."
The Kyoto treaty is a way to BOTH help developing countries to start their enviromental duties and to help industrialised nations to optimise pollution output to a standard, which by the way, we can measure.
Just wanted to clarify that by "pollution" you're talking about "carbon dioxide".
The whole point of my post is that US can cut energy consumption AND maintain current production level by investing in efficient production methods.
I assume you made a typo somewhere there, because that sentence doesn't make logical sense. If you cut consumption, and maintain the production level, then you've decreased efficiency.
I have assumed that US and EU are comparable in economic and industrial development, quality of life etc.
So we're just dumber? Why do you surmise that we consume more energy per capita? My assumptions would be that A) there are real differences between Europe and the United States such as population density and B) Americans don't value energy conservation as highly as Europeans which in its essense is a quality of life issue. We like SUVs.
How much is A and how much is B is really impossible to guess at without more data.
The Bush administration has actively supported ineffective production in US by adding special taxes on steel imports to protect ineffective american industry.
I don't see how that means we are going to consume more energy as a nation.
This was a popular move because it saved jobs in the steel industry, what is less known is that it cost more jobs in the car manufacturing industry due to higher prices and hence reduced sale.
In fact, you seem to suggest that it's going to cause a reduction in energy consumption (fewer jobs, fewer cars).
Many ask, why do US have to reduce emissions and China or India not? Well, there you have it, if the whole world consumed the amount same of energy per person as US, the consumption would 5-double.
There would probably be economies of scale involved, but moreover the production and efficiency would likely increase as well. We may wind up with more CO2 (or may not, due to alternative energy sources). But now we're back to the question of how big of a deal CO2 is in the first place.
Moving the rest of the world into the 21st century at the expense of increased CO2 production? I'm not convinced this would be a bad thing.
So what's the problem? Who has the interest of keeping US production inefficient?
I'm not sure why you got modded insightful for making rhetorical questions. But assuming you really do want to know the answer, maybe you could look at where this energy is being used. Europe is almost twice as densely populated as the United States, so that could certainly have something to do with Europe's energy efficiency.
I've looked at the two links you've provided and there just isn't enough information to make even a guess. If you're one of the America-haters, perhaps a self-hating American, you're going to rhetorically assume that the US is just lazy and that's why we're inefficient with regard to energy. But if you want a real answer, you're going to have to do a lot more research.
Most areas of the United States let you choose where to get your energy. Pick nuclear instead of coal. Stop driving your car. Turn off your computer overnight. Put solar panels on your roof.
If millions of people really cared about global warming, we wouldn't even need to sign Kyoto.
There will be more hurricanes next year; each will be stronger. There will be more of an 'El Nino' effect. The great farm areas of the American interior will suffer the consequences of this misguided 'screw-tomorrow' policy, and starving US children will curse their grandfathers stupidity and arrogance.
I'm sorry, but it's going to take an awful lot of hurricanes to equal the cost of losing 5 million jobs. There is a third assumption. Yes, Global Warming must indeed be a problem. To some extent, it is. It must be a problem which we can resolve. Really, the jury's out on this one. I have read, however, that the total output of CO2 by the entire world is less than the uncertainty in the measurement of the amount of CO2 produced by nature each year. But finally, the cost of solving the problem (economic and human cost) must outweigh the cost of ignoring it. And I just haven't been convinced that this is true.
Global Warming does not require everywhere to heat up, it simply states that the average temperature will increase, thereby releasing more phase-space for the atmosphere to explore, and exposes us all to more-extreme weather - weather that was unavailable before the average temperature rose. Those extremes will kill people.
And having more nuclear power plants will kill people. And reducing the quality of the nations' transportation systems will kill people. And cutting 5 million jobs will kill people. And diverting resources from creating new medicines to producing a more energy efficient car will kill people.
People tend to look at things as though the environment always has to win over jobs. But in reality it has to be a balancing act. I don't think Kyoto takes this reality into consideration.
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As far as you know, as a consumer, you're buying a boxed game which you expect to own, to do whatever you want with it. Sell it, play it, sit on it, burn it with gasoline.
C'mon. Most consumers know better than this. But in this particular case, I don't see where the person isn't buying a boxed game which they own and can do anything they want with it (providing it's legal). By that rationale, you have no right to a user account in the first place, and should be pleasantly surprised when you get one.
I like to run Sim-City in Libertarian mode, where you just turn it on and watch the city thrive all by itself.
Unless those trails are voter verified, nobody has any way to determine if the trail matches the actual votes cast by the voters.
I suspect when beeplet said "you verify it and then put it in a regular ballot box" he meant that the voter verifies it and puts it in a regular ballot box.
We either need to put the actual vote on paper, or make sure the machine printed votes match voter intent, or the election cannot be trusted.
That's exactly what Rob MacKenna, a "computer systems expert", and the guy I voted for for supervisor of elections, wanted to do. But MacKenna lost, against Buddy Johnson, who was the supervisor of the very election he was running in.
Or maybe it's just that the Republicans don't control the Senate, which is why the Senate was forced to make a compromise. Sure, they have a majority, but they don't have a filibuster-proof majority.
Wow. This is quite misinformed. First of all, States don't have rights. Only people do. Amendment 10 talks about powers (which States can have). Amendment 9 talks about rights (which according to our founders are God-given, and God didn't give them to States but to people).
Further, protection of people's rights to engage in interstate commerce free from taxation by the states is precisely what the founders had in mind when they put in the Interstate Commerce Clause. It wasn't until much later that Congress figured out that it could use the clause to hinder commerce, rather than to promote it. Frankly, with the dormant commerce clause it'd be questionable whether or not the states could tax the internet in the first place. With Congress speaking directly to the point they certainly can't.
Finally it should probably be noted that the 9th and 10th Amendments are redundant. They are basic truisms upon which the entire Constitution is built. I agree that much of what the Feds do goes beyond the way the Constitution was originally intended, especially with regard to interstate commerce, but this just isn't an example of it.
I don't disagree with your sentiment, but your argument for untaxing communications could be extended to just about anything.
And this is a bad thing because...?
Most states are required by their constitutions to have balanced budgets, though. If you cut taxes, you have to cut spending. You really can starve the beast, unlike when Reagan gave us those ever-increasing deficits during his Presidency.
If you cut consumption, and maintain the production level, then you've decreased efficiency.
If you *DECREASE* the amount of stuff you use to make something, but still produce the same amount, then you have, by definition, *increased* efficiency.
Consumption isn't the amount of stuff you use to make something. Consumption is the amount of stuff you use. If you produce the same amount of stuff, but use less, then you've decreased efficiency.
It's *MORE EFFICIENT* because you are making more product, but consuming less to make it.
Consumption isn't just limited to raw materials, though.
Yeah, but do you get a gig of space from Yahoo?
Having a hotmail account has no real benefits
Until a few days ago, I would have pointed to the ability to use hotmail through an API (letting me use hotmail in Outlook Express and through hotmail popper). But gmail has added now added POP support (although it's not yet enabled on my account), so I suppose the only advantage of hotmail is now obsolete.
It's a good thing, too, I was getting quite sick of using copy/paste to reply to an email that was forwarded to gmail while changing my from address to match the address that the mail was addressed to.
www.mydomain.com. $8.50 a year to forward whatever@yourdomain to gmail. And that includes the cost of the domain name itself.
After the "human verification" agent checks out a few hundred false alarms, the system fails.
That or the MPAA gets congress to pass a law banning camera lenses in movie theatres. If they haven't already (and if they have already, then they'll just raise it to a felony, call it terrorism, institute the death penalty, etc).
Things that have focusing optics followed by a flat reflective surface (which includes most cameras) will blink.
Wouldn't that include everyone's eyes? Or is the eyeball not flat enough or something?
detection of a recording device is impossible as long as the recorder does not send anything
Anything with a temperature above absolute zero sends something. It's obviously not impossible to detect a recording device. I have two such detectors that I bring along with me everywhere I go. I like to call them my eyes.
,i>I do not care what you believe, until there is a law that states otherwise, everyone owns your image when you are in public.
Hmm, maybe a law like the right of publicity or right of privacy? As a documentary filmmaker, you might be exempt from some of these laws under fair use and the first amendment, but saying that "everyone owns your image when you are in public" is just plain wrong.
What do you mean no right.
I mean that the purpose of the government is to protect its people, not to hurt them for the sake of some other people.
The US government has every right to sign international treaties, there is no constitutional right that is being violated, there is no human right being violated.
The government has every right to sign and ratify interenational treaties (and in fact we've already signed Kyoto). And yes, there is no constitutional ban on signing any treaty not in conflict with the Constiution. But that doesn't mean the citizens don't have a basic human right not to have the government working to harm it. In fact, signing and ratifying Kyoto likely would violate the basic principles on which the United States was founded, as put into place by the Constitution, but such an issue wouldn't be justiciable.
Does the state have the right to regulate smoking in public places?
To some extent, sure, but this is done to benefit the public, not to benefit other states/countries.
No, the investments will spur development of new businesses.
What investments? Kyoto would suck investment out of the United States, not put investment into it.
It will move spending from oil to sustainable technology.
And "sustainable technology" is less economically beneficial. That's why we still use oil. It's cheaper and easier to use. It makes our life easier and gives us more time to spend on leisure activities rather than on building nuclear power plants or hauling radioactive waste or creating goods and services to export to other countries so we can buy up pollution vouchers.
It may ofcourse lead to stagnation in the oil industry.
It would certainly lead to that, and it would cause oil prices to skyrocket (we agree on that, right). Thus the price of just about everything would skyrocket, because oil is used in just about every part of the process. Home energy prices would soar, even for those homes which didn't use oil or coal (indirectly or directly), because the demand for substitute goods would rise. 95% of the country would be forced to buy a brand new car. Sure, you might be able to get a second job working at a power plant or an electric car factory to pay for all this, but who wants to do that?
You are arguing against taking preemptive steps and securing american lifestyle on a longer perspective because it will hurt you right here and now.
Preemptive steps about what? I'm arguing against destroying American lifestyle now and getting just about no benefit whatsoever.
Apparently you have a short memory, the whole thread has been focused on increasing efficiency, this means NOT replacing one energy source by another, but reducing the need for energy.
Perhaps you didn't read the article. It's about US opposition to Kyoto.
By reducing energy consumption you will not have to by CO2 quotas from other countries either.
Sure, we can stop driving cars and stop using air conditioners. But unless the government bans cars, that's not going to happen. What's going to happen is that people are going to continue to drive cars and cool their homes, they're just going to pay much more for it, and that extra money is going to go to foreign countries.
Secondly, Kyoto was never meant to be the final solution to world environmental problems.
But the problem is that it solves nothing.
You have been accusing me for presenting flawed reasoning, bad data, rough calculations and crude assumptions etc. Yet you do not hessitate to present completely undocumented claims with no backing reasoning what so ever.
I've tried to explain this above. One problem is that I don't know how much you know about basic economics, so I don't know what parts of the explanation I can safely skip. You do agree that ratifying Kyoto would cause US gas prices to go up though, right? Or do I need to expla
Yes, I thought that 60% better effeciency in EU would leave enough room to errors that these should not alter my overall conclusion.
I think you're grossly mistaken in this assumption. And I wouldn't call it an error, I'd call it a fundamental flaw in your reasoning.
You mentioned the SUV as a quality of life which is highly subjective.
The fact that whether or not you have an SUV affects your quality of life is not subjective. What is subjective is how that SUV affects your quality of life.
I argue that there are likely huge benefits to be gained by investing in more efficient technology.
We're constantly investing in more efficient technology.
Refusing to upgrade to more efficient technology when such alternatives exists does however indicate deliberate wastefull behaviour.
Depends on your reasoning, of course. But if you refuse for no reason, then yes, I agree, it's wasteful.
I am suggesting that US could follow a more proactive policy for the benefit of all instead of just rejecting any international agreement that will influence US domestic politics.
I'm not sure what we could do in this regard. Ratifying Kyoto certainly wouldn't benefit all. It would benefit some, and hurt others. As the benefit to US citizens would far outweigh the detriments, the US government has no right to ratify the treaty.
US economy will become stronger, more competitive and less dependent on oil imports.
Overall the economy would become weaker, since we would have to spend resources reducing our emissions of CO2 or pay money to other nations. The immediate impact would likely be skyrocketing energy prices leading to stagflation that hasn't been seen since the 1970s. We would likely become less dependent on oil, but this is a relatively minor issue which will resolve itself over time. The idea that we should cut ourself off of oil now so that we're not dependent on it in the future is preposterous. And realistically, we're not that dependent on oil, at least not foreign oil (which is the only kind of dependence that really matters). If all the foreign oil suppliers cut us off today, we have enough in reserves to last for years while we switch to alternate energy sources. That's enough time that we could do it, in the event of the minicule chance that it actually happened (after all, this would hurt our oil suppliers almost as much as it hurt us). It'd hurt making the switch, but again, saying that we should switch now because there's a miniscule chance we might be forced to switch in the future is (still) preposterous. We're no more dependent on foreign oil than we are on foreign cars or foreign cement.
World environment will benefit - even if the impact at first is neglicible.
Not necessarily. Kyoto is overly focussed on CO2. If we lower our CO2 emissions at the expense of other environmental pollution (like radioactive contamination), which will almost surely be required in order to come into compliance, then the world environment is hurt, not improved. Overall, the environment in terms of pollution would likely improve, though. The problem is that it would cost too much to solve this.
US will gain credibility as world leader and be able to rebuild aliances - currently this credibility is close to non-existent.
This is by far the greatest benefit we'd derive from ratifying Kyoto. I don't think it's worth it.
I assume you made a typo somewhere there, because that sentence doesn't make logical sense. If you cut consumption, and maintain the production level, then you've decreased efficiency.
OK, there you lost me. Improved efficiency means that you increase the output for the same input. Equivalently, you can decrease input and maintain same output. I argue that this is in fact posible.
Wouldn't consumption be a measure of the output, and production be a measure of the input?
There are real differences, I don't deny that, in particular when it comes to the need for transport and infrastructure. However, I do not believe that these differences are so big that they disqualify my conclusion
Based on what? Just raw speculation?
Getting from point A to point B is a necesity, getting there in a SUV is not.
Of course not. But "quality of life" isn't just about necessities. No one would claim television is a necessity, but having a television certainly improves one's quality of life.
SUV's and 4x4's have their place in special conditions, but are not the inteligent choice for normal transportation. I do not consider lack of SUV's to be a significant decrease of quality of life. In fact, roads become safer without SUV's and I consider lack of road kills an increase in life quality (I can agree to call it a tie if you insist :-)
I think you're trying to enforce your own particular view of quality of life, and I don't think that is appropriate, at least not in this particular situation. In any case, I don't deny that the US can decrease its use of energy by cutting out certain luxuries. I just haven't been convinced that this is necessary.
Improving efficiency should not be restricted to industries. Each consumer has a responsibility before the world when making a choice and considering the environmental impact of the choice should not be neglected from that responsibility.
I agree with this, I think we just differ on where we should draw the line. I'm not convinced that we can do very much about global warming in the first place, and the evidence seems to show that the costs outweigh the benefits.
Government can aid the consumer making good choices by informing the consumer and by favoring the better product or penalizing the bad through taxes. This is often the only way that consumption can move towards more sustainable products since poluting usually pais on short term. In Europe gas price is 3-4 times times that in US, which explains why SUV's are not so popular.
We tax gas here in the US too. Maybe not enough. Maybe too much. I'm willing to consider an argument that we need to give up our SUVs because the environmental costs outweigh the benefits. My issue was with your framing of the situation as one where we were wasting energy for no reason. The owners of SUVs pay a lot of money to run those SUVs, so obviously they find them significantly better than other means of transportation.
Well, even if CO2 is not a problem, if you did base such a transition on fosil fuel, gas prices would sky-rocket as demand would 4-5 double, hence bringing your lifestyle (and SUV) under significant pressure.
Raising the price of gasoline so that demand decreases so that the price of gasoline doesn't go up makes no sense to me, though.
For this reason US has a huge interest in keeping the poor countries poor
Not sure how this comment relates, but some in the US might think they have a huge interest in keeping the poor countries poor. Personally I think even besides the moral issues of such a position that a poor person is much less likely to contribute to the world to the point where efficiency will be increased to outweigh the increase in consumption. The world, and indeed the universe, is an economy of scale.
- in fact, an american (republican) I met claimed that the whole point of the Iraq war was to keep China from getting access to oil to fuel the industrial development.
Seems to me to be no more than a potshot at W. It certainly wasn't "the whole point". Maybe it had something to do with his reasoning. I don't know, and never will, I'm not a mind reader.
They load up on "loss leaders," severely discounted merchandise designed to boost store traffic, then flip the goods at a profit on eBay.
That's not robbery. It's called commerce. Buy low, sell high. Nothing illegal or shady about it at all. Is Best Buy saying they don't want any of their customers to be able to sell any of the things they purchase?
They certainly are, in fact I think they even claim it goes against their service agreement (which would be completely unenforcible).
I used to do it. Plus the Best Buy and Circuit City I lived near both had price match plus agreements (they'd match the price and lower it by 5% of the difference or something). So when it went on sale at Best Buy, I'd buy it at Circuit City. When it went on sale at Circuit City, I'd buy it at Best Buy.
Just reselling on ebay I'd usually make a decent profit. Plus when I bought at Best Buy I put it on my Best Buy card and didn't have to pay interest for 90 days or whatever, so I got a free loan to boot. Ultimately I stopped in part because I moved but it was a pain dealing with some of the sales reps who treated me like I was a criminal for taking them up on their deals.
They slap down rock-bottom price quotes from Web sites and demand that Best Buy make good on its lowest-price pledge.
Why even have a lowest price pledge if you aren't going to honor it?
I'm pretty sure they don't allow you to price match against online stores. I mean, anyone could set up an online store and offer ridiculous prices just so they could rip off Best Buy. And yeah, that'd be ripping them off. But as long as you're going by the rules of the deal, then it's their problem for offering the deal. And I'm not talking about forcing a store to honor an obvious misprint. Best Buy knows full well what they're offering here.
It's like the casinos that try to make you feel guilty for counting cards. Sorry, if you don't like it, add more decks, or shuffle more often, institute a rule that you can't change your bet in the middle of a shoe, and don't allow people to join the game in the middle of a shoe. It's quite amazing what you can get away with just by calling yourself a business. "I'm sorry sir, you didn't allow us to rip you off, we're going to have to ask you to leave."
Make sure it was someone who paid cash, though.
The Kyoto treaty is a way to BOTH help developing countries to start their enviromental duties and to help industrialised nations to optimise pollution output to a standard, which by the way, we can measure.
Just wanted to clarify that by "pollution" you're talking about "carbon dioxide".
The whole point of my post is that US can cut energy consumption AND maintain current production level by investing in efficient production methods.
I assume you made a typo somewhere there, because that sentence doesn't make logical sense. If you cut consumption, and maintain the production level, then you've decreased efficiency.
I have assumed that US and EU are comparable in economic and industrial development, quality of life etc.
So we're just dumber? Why do you surmise that we consume more energy per capita? My assumptions would be that A) there are real differences between Europe and the United States such as population density and B) Americans don't value energy conservation as highly as Europeans which in its essense is a quality of life issue. We like SUVs.
How much is A and how much is B is really impossible to guess at without more data.
The Bush administration has actively supported ineffective production in US by adding special taxes on steel imports to protect ineffective american industry.
I don't see how that means we are going to consume more energy as a nation.
This was a popular move because it saved jobs in the steel industry, what is less known is that it cost more jobs in the car manufacturing industry due to higher prices and hence reduced sale.
In fact, you seem to suggest that it's going to cause a reduction in energy consumption (fewer jobs, fewer cars).
Many ask, why do US have to reduce emissions and China or India not? Well, there you have it, if the whole world consumed the amount same of energy per person as US, the consumption would 5-double.
There would probably be economies of scale involved, but moreover the production and efficiency would likely increase as well. We may wind up with more CO2 (or may not, due to alternative energy sources). But now we're back to the question of how big of a deal CO2 is in the first place.
Moving the rest of the world into the 21st century at the expense of increased CO2 production? I'm not convinced this would be a bad thing.
So what's the problem? Who has the interest of keeping US production inefficient?
I'm not sure why you got modded insightful for making rhetorical questions. But assuming you really do want to know the answer, maybe you could look at where this energy is being used. Europe is almost twice as densely populated as the United States, so that could certainly have something to do with Europe's energy efficiency.
I've looked at the two links you've provided and there just isn't enough information to make even a guess. If you're one of the America-haters, perhaps a self-hating American, you're going to rhetorically assume that the US is just lazy and that's why we're inefficient with regard to energy. But if you want a real answer, you're going to have to do a lot more research.
Most areas of the United States let you choose where to get your energy. Pick nuclear instead of coal. Stop driving your car. Turn off your computer overnight. Put solar panels on your roof.
If millions of people really cared about global warming, we wouldn't even need to sign Kyoto.
There will be more hurricanes next year; each will be stronger. There will be more of an 'El Nino' effect. The great farm areas of the American interior will suffer the consequences of this misguided 'screw-tomorrow' policy, and starving US children will curse their grandfathers stupidity and arrogance.
I'm sorry, but it's going to take an awful lot of hurricanes to equal the cost of losing 5 million jobs. There is a third assumption. Yes, Global Warming must indeed be a problem. To some extent, it is. It must be a problem which we can resolve. Really, the jury's out on this one. I have read, however, that the total output of CO2 by the entire world is less than the uncertainty in the measurement of the amount of CO2 produced by nature each year. But finally, the cost of solving the problem (economic and human cost) must outweigh the cost of ignoring it. And I just haven't been convinced that this is true.
Global Warming does not require everywhere to heat up, it simply states that the average temperature will increase, thereby releasing more phase-space for the atmosphere to explore, and exposes us all to more-extreme weather - weather that was unavailable before the average temperature rose. Those extremes will kill people.
And having more nuclear power plants will kill people. And reducing the quality of the nations' transportation systems will kill people. And cutting 5 million jobs will kill people. And diverting resources from creating new medicines to producing a more energy efficient car will kill people.
People tend to look at things as though the environment always has to win over jobs. But in reality it has to be a balancing act. I don't think Kyoto takes this reality into consideration.