Quote:
Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate
(C) I would agree that it's pretty easy not to be wasteful and to conserve energy.
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Is it?
Is the average Canadian ready to give up their detached housing and move into row houses like in Europe?
Is the average Canadian ready to ride their bike or walk rather than driving their car?
Is the average Canadian ready to pay double or more for fuel and power to pay for the changes to the infrastructure necessary to implement a truly renewable energy system?
Is the average Canadian ready to pay to remove whole sectors of the economy and pay more for goods so that the energy consumption isn't just shipped overseas where we won't see it.
More importantly, is the average Canadian ready to give up their beer fridges? :-)
Sure you can shut the lights off when you're not in the room and you can switch to CF light bulbs and turn the thermostat down and you can buy a car that gets 20% better gas mileage and you can replace your windows with triple pane glass and you can walk more but doing all of this, you might cut your personal energy consumption by 10%? 15%? We Canadians still use double the energy per capita than the average German and four times the worldwide average.
For me earth hour is just another hypocrisy where people can think that they are doing something without making any change whatsoever. Until people are willing to accept some hardship it's all window dressing.