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Originally Posted by Azure
Local or organic food tends to be a lot more expensive. Obviously if someone can find money in their budget they should absolutely buy locally grown food, but what about those people that can't afford it? At the end of the day, making sure the bills are paid becomes a priority over paying more for locally grown produce. And asking those people to start paying more for food, when they can get by paying less is rather ridiculous.
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It doesn't matter if they can't pay more now, physics doesn't care what people are capable of, and if the physics works out that that they either pay more now or pay a LOT more later then that's the way it is. I wasn't arguing that that specific example was true, just that that's the nature of decision that should be made.
As a species and society we aren't there though (i.e. we don't think of those terms, we think of the next few days or weeks or years if we're really lucky), and we might pay a large price as a result.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
Obviously simple things like heating/cooling with a brain, recycling, not leaving the lights on, etc, etc....these are all good choices. But at the end of the day how much difference do they make compared to the big coal plant down the road generating electricity?
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Could be hugely significant I think. If the coal plant has to produce 50% of the electricity it used to due to increased efficiency of the loads, that's the same as retrofitting it with NG to make it produce the same electricity with 50% of emissions. Both would be even better!
In 2007 in the US using CFLs instead of incandescent saved enough electricity to power Washington, DC for 30 years. Or taking 2 million cars off the road, or like planting 2.85 million trees (in terms if GHG absorption).
So I think doing things on a country wide or global scale can have a big impact. But I agree we still have to think about generation as well as consumption.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
That being said I do agree with most of the solutions you proposed and would find a way to push nuclear especially. Hell of a lot better idea than the CARBON TAX!!#@#!@#@ solution.
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I'm not convinced that a tax on something is that effective in changing behaviour anyway, but I'm not confident enough to comment one way or another.. but I'm not totally against a tax being part of the solution either in the right way.. aren't cars taxed in Europe based on displacement and/or # of cylinders? That's effectively a carbon tax, but one that would make the market place try to innovate around it (do more with less). Or even "cap and trade" I'm not against in principle (seemed to work with ozone depleting substances), there being a stock market or commodity market and they make money for investors is a virtue of a free market economy, but a GHG market is evil somehow...