You are one of those doing it right. But my Xebra is not a lollipopmobile, or a rainbowmobile. It runs on water! Water from the Bonneville dam, turned into electrons by big scary machines, to be precise. The most reducingist, reusingist, recyclingest, bicyclingist, person in America still consumes about 23* times as much energy as the average non-ruling-class person in the third world. Just by living in an industrial nation you are part of the problem as regards energy and carbon. Disclusure: I made up the number 23. But it is HUGE!
Very few of us will change the world by ourselves to any significant degree. But even small actions, multiplied by billions, will have a huge effect. That's what raising awareness is all about, and why we have events like Earth Day. Being cynical by calling it ineffective is missing the whole point. And when you come to a waterfall, you get out of the canoe and portage around it.
"reducingist, reusingist, recyclingest, bicyclingist" are these even words??? And by "made up" do you really mean, "pulled it out of your a**? Have a great weekend with your water powered car!
Not far enough away from where I live, there is a landfill. That was to be at capacity in 2015. Due to recycling, its now 2022. Individual action times thousands of households. In the past 22 months, I've saved 1600 gallons of gas (it replaced a pickup achieving 13 mpg). Where I live my congressman and my senators are likely to vote pro-environment so lobbying them is most likely not an issue. The other members of Congress don't care what I think. And many of them wouldn't care what I thought, since the environment has become a political exercise (the Gallup Poll decides whether AGW is real or not, right?). I work with my city government to make sustainability a high priority, but it doesn't always work. Which gets to the heart of the matter... I can only control my own actions. Even those have consequences. Buying green when you don't need the product is not necessarily green but it might be. We need more individualized education to help make those decisions.
...which still has a non-trivial (albeit much better than any kind of fossil fuel source) social impact. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonneville_Dam#Environmental_and_social_implications Unfortunately, there's no winning when it comes to energy generation and use (maybe until we come up with sustainable cold fusion - ITER?). Besides, it's great way to stay in shape.
That would be me. I don't drive my Prius to work. I don't drive anything to work. My office and residence are in the same mixed use commercial building. Is this because I want to look green? No, it's because I'm lazy. Tom
Meanwhile, those automakers apparently ignored your "message" since they continued to sell hundreds of millions of gas-guzzlers... They got your message, all right - and promptly deleted it.
Don't start that now... [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_Enigma]23 Enigma - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
Wrong! Since a million people bought Prius over the last 10 years, the big auto makers realized there was a market for alternative cars and realized they would be left behind if they did not jump on the bandwagon. Name one major auto manufacturer that does not have a hybrid or EV in development or already on the market.
Look at the commercials to see what they are marketing now. Current ads focus on efficient cars, including hybrids, OR compact SUV's and crossovers. No longer are we seeing truck and land barge advertisements all day long. I think they heard and are reacting to SOMETHING. Even the few truck ads we see now (and there are FAR fewer) are focusing on efficiency now instead of pure brawnyness.
Hey, some pretty good discussion here. I try to practice what I preach as much as possible. And some people take me to task for that. What does my one little contribution of riding a bike do in the grand scheme of things? Well, nothing by itself. It is the message (I hope) that does more good. They see that it is possible to ride your kid to school every morning. They see that it is possible to ride to work every day. They see that a little drizzle won't kill you, and isn't an automatic NEED for a 6,000 pound SUV to be driven. I do take Prius drivers to task who claim that they are "cleaning the air." Even my solar-powered EV isn't "cleaning the air." The best we can hope for is to slow down our pollution of the air. It'll clean itself (we hope, and assume...) if we stop polluting it. But driving a gas car - even one as clean as the Prius, does not scrub the nasties out of the air for us. I'm sure my lungs contribute a bit of cleaning action to the air when I ride... but with my allergies lately, I don't even want to think too hard on that!
It's not that individual efforts aren't effective - it's that they're microscopic, when you step back and look at the big picture. The collective good currently done by a million Priuses is easily (and quickly) offset by an equal number of SUV's - and the Big 3 have produced more than 20 times as many SUV's in the same time period. That won't change (hasn't changed) through Prius drivers "setting an example" or "sending a message" - it will only change through legislation which makes SUV's more efficient and fewer in number. And that will have far, far more impact than the handful of Priuses on the road today. And $300 million in lobbying dollars would DEFINITELY have an impact - just ask the NRA, or the coal industry (or for that matter, the Big 3). Their money got results. But instead of putting our money toward something that would impact how much CO2 everyone produces, most of us have put our dollars toward something that reduces only our own CO2. I believe this fits the Webster's definition of self-serving, in the most naive sense of the word - it's like water-proofing your cabin on the Titanic. My argument, again restated, is as follows: 1) We think that "doing our part" is enough. It ain't, and it never will be. As long as everyone has the option of doing nothing, most people will (no matter how many "messages" you send). And no matter how large a minority lives sustainably, things won't turn around until everyone does - and that won't happen voluntarily. 2a) We think that "going green" individually is the most cost-effective. It ain't - not by a long shot. There is such a thing as "economy of scale" and it applies to being green as much as it applies to anything else. Wind turbines are a prime example - the basic physics are that they are more efficient the bigger they are, and their efficiency increases hugely with stronger winds. Neither of those conditions apply to residential micro-turbines, which are both small and poorly sited. 2b) The law of diminishing returns also applies. If your carbon is already low, cutting it further becomes exponentially more expensive. I think this is something us green zealots tend to overlook in pursuit of "reducing our carbon footprint" - we want to get our own number to zero, when the reality is that getting the entire world to a sustainable level is what is really needed. In terms of environmental impact, it often makes far more sense to use our dollars to help someone else whose CO2 is higher (and could be cut far more) than to spend it on the far smaller impact it would have in our own lives. 2c) The sum of all the little things only gives the appearance, not the substance, of something greater. All the little things added together are still fairly small in the grand scheme of things - small, localized actions have small, localized results. Reusable shopping bags are a good thing, but you only need to look at all the non-recyclable packaging in a grocery store to know how little impact they make. The bottom line is that we need to look beyond our own noses, and start thinking BIG in terms of ways we can really change things. Whether it's investing in industrial-scale wind farms instead of backyard microturbines, or lobbying for major improvements to environmental legislation, we need to stop wasting our money on things that are fun to talk about and benefit us the most directly, and use it toward far more cost-effective choices which can have a far larger impact on the world as a whole.
I AGREE WITH YOU !!! and its by desing not only did we get the problem of our hands we created a new problem in all of the countrys that had industries that are left with milions of jobles people all because of cheaper wages. the world needs to wake those people in china mexico tailand corea and what not, to rase their income this way everythig whould balance out one day! and see how fast everything gets greener on this planet ! :mod:
Yeah - it's called CAFE standards. The automakers will - by law - be required to increase fuel efficiency. So of course they're going to promote that to potential buyers - they have to spend the money on efficiency anyway, so why not leverage that for marketing purposes? And the way CAFE works is that the more high-efficiency vehicles you sell, the more gas guzzlers you're allowed to sell. So to protect their SUV production numbers, they have to find a way to sell more of the high-efficiency vehicles. Hence the marketing push. Do you honestly believe that a corporate behemoth like Toyota has been making the Prius because they "love the planet"? It's a competitive advantage, nothing more. And it is a LAW which is making other manufacturers follow suit - they aren't doing it for any other reason, although the marketing will try to make it look like they are.
