Saving the Planet One Misconception At A Time
by Hal_10000
My biggest concern in the global warming debate is that our terror of warming will cause us to embrace dumb ideas. Morrissey get into the whole CFC lightbulb thing.
Even a single CFL could provide toxic levels of exposure for mercury. One contains five milligrams of mercury, which would be enough to contaminate 6,000 gallons of drinking water. Low-mercury models have about one-sixth of the amount, but that’s still enough to contaminate 1,000 gallons. It makes the CFL one of the most toxic components of a household, one that causes kidney and brain damage when people get exposed to enough of it.
it turns out plastic bags are better for the environment than paper ones:
The making of paper can waste many thousands of gallons of water, as can the recycling of paper. The human and mechanical efforts and costs are very high, not forgetting the physical cost to loggers and those who work around the numerous chemicals. Plastic is, by comparison, efficient and low energy to produce, and, easily and efficiently recycled. Plastic reduces, recycles marvelously, and in that, is reused. After contrasting the efforts behind the making of paper and plastic, it is our unbiased opinion that plastic is indeed more beneficial to the environment, in that it is less harmful. The next time you are asked the dreaded question, “Paper or plastic?”, you can answer knowing that you are making the informed choice.
Disposable diapers are no worse than cloth ones:
A new study released in England by a quasi-government environmental organization may dampen the debate even further. After a three-year, 200,000-pound (about $360,000) study, the London-based Environmental Agency concluded that disposable diapers have the same environmental impact as reusable diapers when the effect of laundering cloth diapers is taken into account.
And if you take into account exhausted parents stumbling around at 3 am, disposables are even better.
I’ve blogged previously on the BS behind food miles. But surely, surely, walking to the grocery store has got to be better than driving, right? Right? Wrong.
If you walk 1.5 miles, Mr. Goodall calculates, and replace those calories by drinking about a cup of milk, the greenhouse emissions connected with that milk (like methane from the dairy farm and carbon dioxide from the delivery truck) are just about equal to the emissions from a typical car making the same trip. And if there were two of you making the trip, then the car would definitely be the more planet-friendly way to go.
I’m a little skeptical of this. But it’s yet another demonstration that the top-down, do-what-we-say solutions to environmental problems are not what they’re cracked up to be.. As usual, the Wisdom of Crowds trumps the Wisdom of Greens.
(Hat Tip: Freakonomics Blog)
Comments
It’s the same thing with “electric cars” - all these doorknobs talking about how we have to stop burning oil. Well, you have to generate the electricity somehow, and the options (reasonable ones at this time anyway) are coal, natural gas, and nuclear.
Nobody seems to want nuclear (at least not the envirotards), there really isn’t enough natural gas readily available, and it requires pipelines, so that leaves coal. Coal pollutes more than gasoline for the amount of energy needed to run a car.
A better option would be to make engines more efficient until you have nuclear fusion ready to go....
Nobody seems to want nuclear
Well, nobody who’s been brainwashed by a lifetime of one point of view portrayed in the media, news, schools (sans those parts that actually teach the science), etc. Anyone that has actually learned any of the real facts about nuclear power, knows it’s the best option right now.
Same really goes for just radiation in general. People think radiation == teh bad. They don’t realize that we’re technically being irradiated all the time, it’s certain kinds above certain levels that’s bad.
I fear that even fusion will have to be pushed past the fear of the mere mention of the word nuclear to become a reality once the technological barriers are busted.
Oh by the way.. could probably really confuse a lot of the anti-nuclear mindset by watching something like the recent Battle of Chernobyl program I saw a couple weeks ago. Several people interviewed not only helped in the initial clean up and building of the sarcophagus, but some were on the rooftop brigade that was exposed more then anyone else. Yes, people did die from over exposure, but just being nuclear does not mean guaranteed death.
Of course that’s assuming some kind of accident in the first place. Most of the same people think that all reactors are just like Chernobyl and on the brink of a meltdown 24/7 anyway.
Of course that’s assuming some kind of accident in the first place. Most of the same people think that all reactors are just like Chernobyl and on the brink of a meltdown 24/7 anyway.
Wait a minute, are you saying they’re not???
And if the Japanese can’t run a nuclear reactor (on the available evidence, they can’t), then who can you really trust to??
The first example equates to 2 parts per billion of mercury in water. I’m pretty sure that mercury in the natural environment has the potential to go MUCH higher than this in certain areas of the earth.
And actually, when you look closely at the Paper vs Plastic article it seems that plastic is only better than paper when its recycled, but not when its used as landfill or burned. And how much plastic is actually recycled?? The effects of paper and plastic when dumped in the environment (i.e. the ocean) on flora and fauna were also completely ignored.
Here, the city government asked everyone to separate the plastics from other waste materials, and from what I can see, there is almost universal compliance. The only thing is, the city are still taking all that separated plastic up into the incinerator in the mountains to the north and burning it all anyway. Now we have double the number of pickups each week (more fossil fuels) for absolutely no conceivable benefit to all the extra effort people are making.
We’ve established that there’s no gain from walking *1.5 miles* to the grocery store and completing your trip with a tall, frosty glass of milk.
Actually, what the article is saying is that people usually replace the calories consumed in exercise by eating more. And if you eat more, than increases your carbon footprint.
You guys raise precisely my point—the issue of which choice—paper or plastic, CFC or incandescenet—is better for the environment is complicated. Top down political solutions are remarkably poor ways of resolving them. That’s why I favor a carbon tax if you want to reduce CO2 emissions. It lets the market work out the issues.
Sorry, I should be working, but these points keep bugging me…
Actually, what the article is saying is that people usually replace the calories consumed in exercise by eating more. And if you eat more, than increases your carbon footprint.
Right. But most people I know would drive to the supermarket, and still go ahead and drink the milk anyway. Those who are walking to the supermarket are more likely to be health conscious, and less likely to be mindlessly consuming endless empty calories.
You could also argue that the exercise carried out in walking to the supermarket could subsequently be subtracted from whatever other daily exercise we need to do in order to maintain our bodies, resulting in an overall net benefit to the self and the environment, as no car trip was required. Those who drove still have to make up all, ALL of that physical labor.
On the other hand, those who walked and got wet in the rain, catching pneumonia and…
It seems to me that a reasonable rule of thumb for judging if something is more energy efficient than something else is to look at the cost of each item. Money is energy. Cost partly reflects the energy required to create something (especially when the producer is trying to price the good as low as they can), also you have to work more to get more money to afford the more expensive item. So, the light bulb issue may end up being more environmentally unfriendly than regular bulbs simply because they cost more.
There’s nothing that chaps my ass more than government stepping in to push some group’s preferences over that of the market. The makers of the CFL’s were failing in the market so they went to the government to push their product - Shame on them.
If the issue really is that we use too much electricity, then demonstrate the cost of the negative externality and create a tax on all electricity to cover the externality. A tax like this could be used to pay for replacing the coal plants with nuclear for example. That way people will adjust their electricity usage in a million ways, not just one aspect like which light bulb to use. The CFL approach stinks like the corrupt act that it is.
Corruption and let’s not forget hubris. Politicians the world over still think they are smarter than the market. Unreal. It’s like the fall of the USSR never happened - no lessons learned.
While the walking 1.5 miles versus driving makes a nice talking point, I find it impossible to believe it’s a smaller footprint.
Factor in the hundreds of hours of labor, tens of thousand of amps of electricity, chemicals, drilling, welding, shipping, refining, et al that make up the production of a single car versus the hemp sewn birkenstock that aid in the movement of that 1.5 miles.
Hell, a typical luxury car uses more of a bovine footprint than milk production, as milk production is renewable daily, the leather used on the seats/dash/doors is a one time only arrangement with the cow.
you forget that walking or bicycling rather than driving, if done on a regular basis will leave you more physically fit and healthier, letting you live an extra decade on average.
During that decade you consumption of natural resources will exceed that of any vehicles you bought and operated.
The environmentally sound thing to do is kill yourself right now…
maybe jsut build this.. and kill 2 birds with one stone/
Now, that’s what you call a ‘hot rod’. Geddit?
Oh never mind…
yes i “got it”
hey they should be safe at any speed right?
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Not that I don’t love some of the stuff the Freakonomics guys come up with, but that last one is the kind of damaging thing that makes economics sound kooky to layman.
It’s as stupid as some of the nonsensical “moral choice” scenarios set up by philosophers to prove collectivism and moral relativism, where a train might hit a truck full of orphans, but you can pull a lever and have it only hit one very fat man instead.
We’ve established that there’s no gain from walking *1.5 miles* to the grocery store and completing your trip with a tall, frosty glass of milk.
Great. Was anyone doing that? On a hot day, would the milk still be any good after carrying it 1.5 miles? This would be more useful if it examined behaviors people can actually be demonstrated to be engaged in.
The paper/plastic problem, of course, is a classic. When I’m at the grocery store and they ask me which I prefer, I usually just tell them to use whichever one they think will hurt the environment the most.