dim-witted ideas

Environmental issues, like politcal ones are rarely as straightforward as they may seem,thus we have environmental scientists, who believe it or not often take their work very seriously. An environmenta Life Cycle Analysis' can be found for any energy source and virtually any product these days as there is an entire field "Industral Ecology" devoted to such issues. The energy involved in manufacturing, transporting, reycycling/destruction of solar panels has been studied over and over again one example: http://www.nrel.gov/pv/thin_film/docs/fthenakis_bnl_lca_doe_nov_05final.pdf There have been some boneheaded things done in the name of protecting the environment, but these are often things initiated by industry or politicians (sometimes backed by misinformed but well intentioned misc. groups). In the inteim there has always been responsible env scientists and members of env. PAC's that care about the environment and promote responsible agendas.

i'm just going to check but i think the energy used to make solar panels is taken into consideration. things like making accessories out of cans are pointless, doesn't make anyone look like they care about the environment, it just makes them look like they pounce on any passing trend. and yes it's counterproductive. liked the bit about glass milk bottles. and there are lots of bad ideas of ways to reducing c02 output emerging

to reduce

Some valid points about CFL's xfahctor. The issues are not so straight forward however. The EPA and the NREL as well as numerous independent orgs have demonstrated numerous times that the mercury saved from using a CFL through burning less coal more than makes up for any direct contaminatin. Not that CFL's do not present a problem.

importing them from overseas defeats the object. i think they might save very small amounts of energy but they are hardly the thing to focus on.

which ones?

Which ones? Environmentalists complained that too many trees were being used making paper bags; that is how the plastic grocery bag was born. Now they complain about plastic bags. The environmentalists complained that the government was using pesticides in the forests to control the population of dung beetles. They got legislation passed to bad it. Now the dung beetle has killed off thousands of acres of trees. Environmentalists and corn growers here in Wisconsin pushed for laws encouraging the use of ethanol mixed with our gasoline. They said that it would reduce polution and our dependence on foreign oil. Using the mixture reduces gas mileage significantly, so we have to fill our tanks more often and use more gas from foreign oil. The water sources around ethanol plants are getting polluted and there is no significant reduction in emissions from the mix. Environmentalists in California got so many regulations passed about electricity production that almost all of their power is now purchased from other states. This has led to brown outs, so the sale of gasoline powered generators has skyrocketed. So when there are brown outs, millions of gasoline powered generators get fired up. Environmentalists push for more cities to turn to mass transit. In efforts to make mass transit more enticing, city planners have used traffic lights and city codes to make using cars less convenient in cities. The longer cars are kept in standing stops and "stop and go" traffic, the higher the rate of pollution. They actually want to increase pollution so they can justify mass transit in cities where there isn't a need for it.

the answer to both paper bags and plastic ones is to reuse them, plastic bags are a problem and not just because of the energy and materials required to make them. that ethanol one is a good one. well mass transit is in itself a good idea and if done properly preferably on the personal side to the strain of driving, but the obvious solution of creating decent public transport must have seemed much too sensible to the officials in charge of wherever you're talking about. adding to the strain of driving instead sounds like the work of those mini-tyrants you get in positions that have a little bit of power everywhere.

LOL I'm sure they didn't think of that response.

if they'd said they didn't think any animal larger than a medium sized town.. they'd have been right. good one but looks deliberate to me.

do you have any examples?