--- Dyna Sluyter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:A few more thoughts on this subject, from a neutral viewpoint:
Funny...
No, quite serious- I support most environmental initatives.
I didn't see many of the "Clean Energy Now" signs in the working class
neighborhoods on the Northside or elsewhere. I saw plenty of them in
the more affluent neighborhoods. Why?
Time, energy, and money to devote to making our world a better place?
The average working stiff from has little of the above left.
Here on the Northside our furnaces are going full blast tonight. The
electric heaters are running too, as we try to keep the pipes from
freezing and bursting (again). there's not much we can do about it- the
NRP grants for tighter windows and insulation are gone, and some of us
are renters anyhow. When your spending a couple hundred a month for gas
and electricity cheap energy from coal is a good thing... and we curse
the NIMBYs from the wealthier neighborhoods who are forcing their
overpriced boutique fuels on us. At least we can still shop at Cub
instead of the organic food store, for now.
It sounds like you're willing to pay any price for short term gain.
Average working folks often can't afford the price of the ultimate environmental protection. A lot of us could barely afford Toyota's cheapest conventional car, never mind it's hybrid twin that costs nearly twice as much. Neither can we afford a $5,000 battery replacement when said hybrid car is out of warranty. Nor can we afford the $200,000 minimum our city insists a new house with up to date insulation and energy efficent doors and furnace has to sell for. So we do our best with old houses and such... And any well healed environmentalist that expects us to buy into his "the environment at any cost" schemes has a reality check coming.
Cleaning up the Riverside plant is a good thing, but forcing us to largely rely on one fuel "cartel" for both electricity and heat is questionable wisdom. If this natural gas conversion causes gas and electric bills to double it will destroy the credibility of environmentalists and guarentee conversion back to coal, with cleaner technology and feedstocks of course.
If I didn't know you were a Deaniac, I'd wonder if you were a republican.
By Minneapolis standards I'm an independent, but Minneapolis is so far too the left that by U.S. standards I'm a member in good standing of the Democratic Farmer-Laborite wing of the Democratic Party. Besides, neither the Greens or Republicans will have me!
We're consuming environmental resources at
unsustainable levels. If we paid prices for goods & services that reflected the cost of their
environmental impact, the whole paradigm would change.
Agreed, but until CUB starts charging such fees I'll still be shopping there.
Give the NIMBYs and "environmentalists" another decade and they'll
force us to eat their overpriced "organic" food too. It's mandates like
the natural gas conversions that give environmentalists a bad name, and
will doom their movement if given the chance.
Damn those environmentalists for trying to keep people healthy and sustain the earth for the next
generation...
The problem is the "environmentalists" that cannot see the forest for the trees. For example, they try to push through excellent alternative energy projects that will cause union workers to lose their jobs, then wonder why organized labor isn't supporting them. To succeed as an environmentalist you need to come up with "win-win" solutions to gain the consensus you need to get legislation passed and such.
running the heat full blast in Hawthorne,
Dyna
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