[quote]drunkpig wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
By “we” I mean investors, subsidies, whatever. Like I said earlier, I’m not a fan of subsidies in general. However, if we are going to have them, I think investing in green technologies isn’t a bad place to start. Consider it the lesser of many evils, I guess.
That being said, I don’t think govt subsidies are the best avenue, nor are they even a good avenue in and of themselves. I think private investments and research and so on is the far more preferable way to go. It’s just that there will always be a roadblock of some sort to this avenue if people are constantly out there denying climate change in the first place.
I think a really good parallel is the space program. These privately-funded trips into space and all that have done in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost what NASA took decades to do. Sure, NASA did the hard part in initially developing the technology to send manned flights into space in the first place, but the fact is that it still costs NASA probably hundreds of millions of dollars per astronaut to send someone into space, whereas this company Richard Branson or whoever the hell it is has started up is going to be sending people into space for less than a million dollars.
You know as well as anyone that monetary profits, for better or worse, are simply a better incentive to businesses than some sort of less-tangible benefit like the knowledge that you are helping the environment. Maybe if the environmentalist crowd would start pushing the potential profits to be made from green technology rather than continually hit us over the head with the doom-and-gloom, worst-case scenarios and the need to save the planet for our children bullshit, people would get more onboard with the whole thing. Right now, their message is simply preaching to the choir. Who is in the way of more green technology? In many ways, it’s big business. Well, what language do they speak? $$$$$$$$$$$
So why not speak to them in that language for a change? Google has already started this trend by producing their own low-carbon-emission energy onsite. Shit, you might have had a view of it from your motel in Mountain View. There are other companies following suit. It saves them money by taking them off the grid and they can say at the same time that they are doing their part to help the environment.
Below is a link to a company’s website called BloomEnergy. They use solid-oxide fuel cell technology to make environmentally-sound power generators that are capable of producing energy for something like 150 homes. I don’t know the details of the process, but I think they something like sand particles as an energy source, which greatly reduces the need for mining and that sort of thing. They emit very low carbon emissions, if any. There are a lot of big-time companies using them now, from Walmart to OwensCorning to BofA to Google.
http://www.bloomenergy.com/fuel-cell/energy-server/[/quote]
If green energy was as efficient and cost effective as traditional energy sources like coal, nat gas, and oil, they would have already been developed and put into use. Solar is a joke. Wind energy is a joke. The only green energy source that is viable and cost efficient would be nuclear. But it is all but illegal to produce in the US.
Green energy is a government-imposed, or at the very least subsidized, solution to a perceived problem that is going to happen if, when, and where Mother Nature decides to unleash it.
But let’s say that we do all the things you want the US to do to ‘save the planet’. What are you going to do about the billion people in India, and the 2.5 billion in Asia and China who are becoming industrialized at an ever increasing rate? You think their government is going to impose crippling enviro-whacko laws?
I’m curious to know if you think AGW only applies to the US. [/quote]
You ask if China is going to impose crippling enviro-whacko laws. Why are you asking this question? You can find out for yourself that they are and have been for a while now. They’ve been having all sorts of economic problems in various regions due to previously nonexistent legislation regarding their environment.
Is what they’re doing effective? I really don’t know. Is it enough? Probably not. But they are heading down that road. Read about it yourself.
Brazil has undergone similar legislative moves regarding the coffee industry there. Coffee is/was grown mostly in the sun there, due to the potential for MUCH larger yields than shade-grown coffee. Well, they realized that sun-grown coffee also required exponentially-increasing amounts of fertilizers and pesticides, which was seriously damaging their water tables and their irrigation sources. It also required a shitload of water in the first place, further damaging the water tables by simply dropping it a rate faster than it could replenish itself.
On top of that, the combination of huge yields and the entry of Vietnam into the global coffee market dropped prices dramatically without a corresponding surge in worldwide consumption. The demand for coffee is extremely inelastic in that sense. So what did Brazil do? They realized that they needed to take care of their environment better and enacted legislation to curb the amount of sun-grown coffee and increase shade-grown coffee production, which kept global supplies down, used less fertilizers and pesticides and water and actually produced a better coffee product as well. They’ve used this lesson to enact similar legislation regarding their carbon emissions and energy consumption.
I can’t speak for India. That place is completely backwards and may never get it. They can’t even supply potable water to most of the country yet.
