Quote:
Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate
I didn't realize it was an either/or option. If I buy a Prius I am banned from using Bullfrog and getting an energy star approved furnace?
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If it's about ghg efficiency, regardless of cost or lifestyle changes, what's best is to not buy a Prius, move somewhere where you don't have to heat your house, live without air conditioning and walk to your farm where you grow your own food and make your own tools and clothing. And get a vasectomy.
Are you banned from that? I didn't realize it was an either/or option.
Of course my point was that given limited resources, it's better to chose one than the other; your dollar goes a lot farther in terms of reducing ghg emissions by fixing your house than in buying a heavy vehicle where the total life-cycle energy cost is buried in the manufacture of exotic materials and duplicate power systems. It might seem like you are saving ghg emissions but you definitely are not saving as much as it seems once you account for the manufacture of a vehicle that is very much more complicated than a Corolla. That energy cost is reflected in the up-front price when you purchase the vehicle and I contend that you can put that money to better use.
Given unlimited resources, you can shoot for the moon but people rarely think about the total energy balance in the so-called green choices they make.
For instance, consider how much energy is saved by putting a CF-lightbulb in a house in Calgary. Sure they are more efficient in terms of transforming electricity into light but an incandescent bulb's "waste energy" is in the form of heat. We heat our houses for 8 months of the year so that light bulb heat has to be made up with natural gas from the furnace. Is 4 months of savings worth the extra energy cost to manufacture then safely dispose of a bulb that contains mercury? The answer is yes, but only because they last an average of 8 times longer than a standard bulb, not so much because they use less of one form of energy, requiring the consumption of another form.
There are lots of ways to actually save energy - live close to where you work, ride your bike, fix your leaky house and old furnace, go on vacations close to home, buy local produce. If you want to reduce GHG emissions, lobby your government to subsidize the construction of nuclear power plants and upgrade the power grid so that there is enough capacity so cars can be electric or regenerating fuel-cell powered. There are tons of solutions but people would rather do something that seems to be "green" than make changes in their lives to actually reduce their energy consumption.
Buying a Prius is a way to look like you are doing something when you might not be doing much at all.