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"Bill Wright" wrote in message
...
Everything has a cost, and if a measure has a large cost in terms of the
quality of life and a very small benefit in terms of CO2 reduction, it
might not be worthwhile. We might be able to achieve the same degree of
CO2 reduction by a less painful method.

I agree completely, and it opens up a whole new aspect to the debate. Take,
for instance, the Christmas illuminations in your local town. Or the
Christmas lights they put round the tree in the village green.

Most people would agree that they are beautiful and joyful, and a pleasure
to behold. But they generate CO2, and don't actually do anything very
useful, so from an environmental point of view they should be amongst the
first things to go.

Here in Nottingham, where I live, there is a large water feature in the
central square. It has a number of small fountains, plus other features to
do with the movement of water. I love it and it attracts lots of people who
stand and admire it, or sit nearby eating their lunchtime sandwiches.

But again, it isn't actually useful for anything, and no doubt uses quite a
bit of energy. So, again, from an environmental point of view it ought to
be switched off and paved over.

Museums and art galleries are pretty useless too. Maybe we should shut all
of those. Oh, and cinemas, mustn't forget them. And really, we don't
actually need tellies at all. We could stand around a piano and sing.

My point is that, by following the "don't produce CO2 wastefully or
unnecessarily" agenda single-mindedly, we may well end up with an
appallingly drab and joyless lifestyle. Do we really want to make those
sacrifices?

I'll lay my cards on the table, he I love what my car will do for me.
On-demand, anywhere-to-anywhere, any-time personal mobility is a truly
fabulous benefit of modern living, as far as I'm concerned. The lifestyle
cost to me of doing without it would be enormous.

I would like to see far more consideration being given to the very issue
Bill raises: the "benefits" of energy saving devices such as CFLs also have
associated lifestyle costs (inconveniently slow warm up, much dimmer than it
implies on the box). I wish the debate were more nuanced, such that these
lifestyle costs were properly acknowledged and factored in to the decision
making processes.

If we end up with low carbon but miserable lives, what was the point?

SteveT

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"Man at B&Q" wrote in message
...

snip trolling

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On 16/09/09 18:07, Zero Tolerance wrote:

"Steve Thackery" wrote:

you find out what the big contributors are, and tackle them first,
thus making a big difference early on.

60 million people doing anything would easily have a big effect.

If we assume 2/3 of the UK population have a mobile, and leave the
charger plugged in 24x7, when it only takes an hour to actually charge
the phone and wastes 500mW for the other 23 hours a day, the nation
could save about 170GWh over the course of a year, that sounds quite a
lot doesn't it? At least £21m worth of wasted electricity.

But given that the total UK electricity consumption in 2006 was
398,327GWh it would only represent a saving of 0.04% of the nation's
electricity consumption, does it still sound like a lot? For the sake of
50p a year I'll leave mine plugged in I think.

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"Steve Thackery" wrote in message
...

snip
:
: If we end up with low carbon but miserable lives, what was the
point?
:

If the climate activists are to believed, a planet to live on,
being the devils advocate for a moment, do we prefer /death/
(probably slow, possibly painful as the planet fails) or a drab
'miserable' *life*...
--
Regards, Jerry.

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"Steve Thackery" wrote in message
...

snip
:
: If we end up with low carbon but miserable lives, what was the
point?
:

If the climate activists are to believed, a planet to live on,
being the devils advocate for a moment, do we prefer /death/
(probably slow, possibly painful as the planet fails) or a drab
'miserable' *life*...
--
Regards, Jerry.

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"Java Jive" wrote in message
...

8

Yes, the car scrappage scheme was crazy. Apropos of which, I recently
sent the following question to the scientific discussion programme
'Home Planet', but unfortunately they ducked it:

Where does it say they are saving CO2?
I don't remember anyone claiming it would.
It does reduce other pollution by significant amounts.

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On 2009-09-16, Jerry wrote:

"Steve Thackery" wrote in message
...

snip
:
: If we end up with low carbon but miserable lives, what was the
point?
:

If the climate activists are to believed, a planet to live on,
being the devils advocate for a moment, do we prefer /death/
(probably slow, possibly painful as the planet fails) or a drab
'miserable' *life*...

But the population is rising at an unsustainable rate anyway.

Whatever we do is unable to reduce the CO2 emissions produced
by trying to keep up with an ever growing demand for energy
caused by an ever growing population.

If we just hypothetically killed 9/10ths of the population
(entirely at random, to avoid arguments about racism etc),
we'd be doing far more to ensure our children had a planet
to live on AND the ability to enjoy that life.

But slowly removing every "non-essential" CO2 producing
activity from our lifes, but still producing too much
CO2 and running out of resources and food... what
is the point?

The only "essential" part of life, pretty much by definition,
is reproduction. But that could well be what ends it...

--
David Taylor

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"Dave Liquorice" wrote in
message
ll.co.uk...

snip
: The planet will look after
: itself in the long term, but that may well mean that we won't
have
: suitable conditions for survival, with or without technology.
:

Well that's a mute point, if man can survive in outer space, the
actual question will be how many could survive using the same
sort of technology here on earth, as long as the building blocks
of life survive then so could man...
--
Regards, Jerry.

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"Owain" wrote in message
...
: On 16 Sep, 21:01, "Jerry" wrote:
: If the climate activists are to believed, a planet to live
on,
: being the devils advocate for a moment, do we prefer /death/
: (probably slow, possibly painful as the planet fails) or a
drab
: 'miserable' *life*...
:
: I don't think many people are actually going to die slow
painful
: deaths. Well, not in Britain. Life might be rather miserable in
low
: lying places in the developing countries or the USA, but in
Britain
: we'd just create a few New Towns in Glencoe or the Brecon
Beacons.
:

That would depend on how the climate changes, *for us* (as you
say) the problem will not be rising sea water levels per se, it
will be if we can carry on feeding the population, people could
well die of starvation in the UK if there are crop failures and
famine.
--
Regards, Jerry.

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In uk.d-i-y David Taylor wrote:
On 2009-09-16, Jerry wrote:
: If we end up with low carbon but miserable lives, what was the
point?
:

If the climate activists are to believed, a planet to live on,
being the devils advocate for a moment, do we prefer /death/
(probably slow, possibly painful as the planet fails) or a drab
'miserable' *life*...

But the population is rising at an unsustainable rate anyway.

That's the really fundamental problem we have and very few people seem
to be addressing it.

--
Chris Green