I'm not saying it is a bad idea, but a "ooh electric, I'm automatically helping the environment" outlook is a bit nearsighted.
It automatically helps the enviroment if one has the option to purchase emissions-free electricity http://www.energymaine.com/mresources/. If I could afford an electric car that gets its power from my already green home electricity supply, the environmental impact of my family's energy use would drop dramatically.
Even without completely green energy production, though, shifting the energy source from gasoline to power plant can help to make the problem more manageable, even though it certainly does not make it disappear. Point-source pollution is a lot easier (relatively-speaking) to clean up and control than a distributed source like a gigantic fleet of cars.
Upgrade one power plant to a cleaner fuel, install new scrubbers, etc, and you have automatically updated all of the cars that get their power from that plant.
life could not have existed in any form at any time nor place in the universe
Actually, let's clarify that. "life as we currently recognize it could not have existed". While it's likely true that the life that we see today would not have been possible if any of the alluded to parameters had been different, you know what? We'd be talking about a completely different universe, so our current understanding of life would have no bearing on anything.
So really all we're looking at is that if things had been different, then the universe would have been really, um, different. And that's not even interesting, let alone proof of anything.
My time is worth enough to me that I don't want to spend it pricing every component of my computer. Am I paying more than some other comparable machine? Probably. Do I regret not saving a few bucks in exchange for having the opportunty to discover that an Abit KV8-MAX3 motherboard works fine with a Antec TruePower 480W power supply UNLESS one uses Corsair's XMS PC4200 RAM? Yeah, not so much.
Also, and I realize that there is a large crowd for which this is laughable, but I use a Mac for the same reason I drive an automatic. I've got better things to do than telling the computers in my life how to do their job.
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I'm not saying it is a bad idea, but a "ooh electric, I'm automatically helping the environment" outlook is a bit nearsighted.
It automatically helps the enviroment if one has the option to purchase emissions-free electricity http://www.energymaine.com/mresources/. If I could afford an electric car that gets its power from my already green home electricity supply, the environmental impact of my family's energy use would drop dramatically.
Even without completely green energy production, though, shifting the energy source from gasoline to power plant can help to make the problem more manageable, even though it certainly does not make it disappear. Point-source pollution is a lot easier (relatively-speaking) to clean up and control than a distributed source like a gigantic fleet of cars.
Upgrade one power plant to a cleaner fuel, install new scrubbers, etc, and you have automatically updated all of the cars that get their power from that plant.
So really all we're looking at is that if things had been different, then the universe would have been really, um, different. And that's not even interesting, let alone proof of anything.
My time is worth enough to me that I don't want to spend it pricing every component of my computer. Am I paying more than some other comparable machine? Probably. Do I regret not saving a few bucks in exchange for having the opportunty to discover that an Abit KV8-MAX3 motherboard works fine with a Antec TruePower 480W power supply UNLESS one uses Corsair's XMS PC4200 RAM? Yeah, not so much.
Also, and I realize that there is a large crowd for which this is laughable, but I use a Mac for the same reason I drive an automatic. I've got better things to do than telling the computers in my life how to do their job.