Environmental Talk

Garbage police….

Is it even possible anymore for people to have some sort of choice in life without some knucklehead calling for a law to force them into compliance with an opposing view?

The editorial page of any local newspaper has become my new favorite source for comedy. It’s way funnier the Family Circle or Peanuts comic strips.

Here’s an editorial from someone who wants to make the world a nicer place … by forcing you to recycle.

(January 25, 2008) — View recycling as your civic duty

Want to make our Earth a nicer place? Eliminate the bottle law and make it illegal to not recycle. Impose a fine on those who don’t recycle. I am an avid recycler, recycling all containers, papers, cereal boxes and everything that can be recycled. Recycling through trash service is the answer, not punishing businesses by making them carry the burden of people who don’t recycle. Should we all get paid a nickel every time we recycle our newspaper? Can you imagine if every company had the burden of paying for recycling? Where does this philosophy behind the bottle law end? Additionally, advertise about how important it is to recycle. Remember all the advertising that was done in the 1970s to not litter? Are we paid not to litter? I don’t think we should be paid to recycle.
LINDA RATLIFF
PITTSFORD

I think it’s great Linda is “an avid recycler.” I’ll admit it sounds a little funny to me to be “avid” about recycling, the same way other people are avid baseball fans. Do you keep stats on your recycling? Do you collect the autographs of your favorite recyclers?

Wait, don’t tell me, you love recycling so much you’re even in a fantasy recycling league at work. Now, every Monday I’m going to have to listen to how you had Coke bottles in last week’s recycling match-up but got beat out by the dude who went with Deer Park bottled water as his first pick.

It’s hard to believe everyone isn’t as excited about recycling as Linda. I distinctly remember society promising me if I slept through four years of college and got a degree, that would guarantee I wouldn’t have to sort through garbage to make money.

But now Linda wants to call the cops on anyone who doesn’t share her passion.

What do you suppose would happen if everyone wanted to criminalize behavior that didn’t fit with their passion?

What if you were an avid masturbator? Let’s run with that idea and suggest it would be a good idea to impose a fine on everyone who doesn’t get themselves off at least twice a day.

It may not stop global warming, but I guarantee you the world will be a nicer place ….

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Dennis Miller once said, “A developer is someone who owns a house in the woods. An environmentalist is someone who already owns a house in the woods.”

To expand on that … an ex-environmentalist is a reporter who is doing a segment on a local bird infestation.

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We may want to think twice about that whole biodiversity thing ….

global warming, climate change, birds, news reporter, biodiversity

It’s a metaphor…..

Climate change crazies have long stopped being embarrassed by any inconsistencies in their positions or conflicts in their data, so it’s no surprise that a scheduled global warming protest in Maryland took place this week on a day where snow swirled around the protesters.

Judging by the picture, it was a less-than-stellar turnout and a terrible waste of an African tribal drum.

This is downright humiliating. This kind of poorly-attended, badly-timed rally makes Larry Craig’s public relations efforts look good by comparison.

To paraphrase Vince Vaughn’s character in Dodgeball, “Too bad Hallmark doesn’t make a ‘Sorry your protest got killed by two inches of irony’ card.”

I particularly enjoy the sign that says, “Help Stop Climate Change.” And what? Have it snow every day in Maryland?

You might as well have a sign that says “Help End Cats and Dogs Fighting” or “Let’s Stamp Out Gravity.”

Climate’s been changing for a couple of billion years. Do we really want to go charging off and spend trillions of dollars to keep the climate exactly as it is now?

Let’s see if we can’t handle something a little simpler first like bringing peace to the Middle East or going two weeks without seeing Britney Spears’ kitty all over the Internet.

Do we really need another quixotic quest in this country that will serve as a sinkhole of time, money and an excuse for politicians to raise taxes and retire early?

Let’s let individuals decide how much energy they want to con or whether or not to wear bamboo underwear.

But let’s not bring progress to a halt in the name of trying to regulate either citizens or nature.

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Heeeere’s the California Energy Commission…

I know it’s easy to agree when people say we need to conserve energy. Why wouldn’t you? It will save you money and it’s socially beneficial.

You could make the same argument about marriage. Why wouldn’t you get married? You’ll get a break when you file taxes and it’s generally agreed that it’s good for the social fabric.

Problems arise, however, when you couch either of these personal decisions in terms of “morality” because at that point, most politicians then feel it is their “duty” to make you do the “moral” thing.

The big problem with politicians is that you have to keep an eye on them all the time.

Unencumbered by anything other than their own certitude they know what’s better for you than you do, they generally feel entitled to use any means possible to get their way. One of the favorite ways of politicians to sneak stuff past us, is to bury it in the back of some time-sensitive bill or in some mundane legislative regulation.

So, it’s not surprising that California officials thought no one would really notice when they inserted some additional language into revisions to the Title 24 regs. Title 24 is the 236-page code that covers mandated energy efficiency rules in the state. Not guidelines or suggestions, mind you, but mandated rules.

You might think 236 pages on anything would provide enough government control to keep even the most power-hungry bureaucrat satisfied.

You would be wrong.

Revisions to the Title 24 regulations submitted to the California Energy Commission included an item that demands all newly constructed homes and buildings have Programmable Communicating Thermostats (PCTs) installed in them. PCTs permit the government and utilities to over-ride the owner’s decisions on the heating or air conditioning in their own homes or buildings.

So, if the government thinks your bedroom is too cool, they will have the ability to bump up the temperature to a level they consider more … what? Appropriate? Socially conscious? Moral?

Theoretically, the government would only be allowed to do this in the case of an “emergency event.” Of course, “emergency” isn’t defined and, perhaps of more concern, “the description does not provide any exception for health or safety concerns.”

What could possibly go wrong?

California residents have until January 30, 2008 to make their objections known to the Energy Commission or their legislators. As I understand it, the Commission makes the decision to alter the code so, ultimately, Californians may not have any real say at all in whether the change is enacted.

If you’re okay with the temperature of your house being controlled by the same folks who brought you FEMA and the war in Iraq, please don’t come crying to the rest of us when you have to drive past the well-lit houses of your elected officials and Energy Commission board members on the way to find a cousin in Nevada who still has power.

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The key was figuring out the flux capacitator….

While politicians in the U.S. continue to bloviate about energy supplies, carbon credits and ethanol, the folks at Toshiba are quietly working on a practical alternative to fossil fuels.

As you might expect from a Japanese company, the new technology is better-designed and smaller than any current options.

It turns out that “Toshiba and the Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI) are jointly developing a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that are designed to power large apartment buildings or small city sections.”

One public relations suggestion, though. If you’re involved in developing nuclear power, it’s probably not a good idea for the acronym for your government agency to sound like “creepy.”

There are a bunch of cool features about this new breed of nuclear reactor.

First, it’s only about 20 feet long by 6 feet wide which makes it larger than my first apartment in New York City. I’m guessing here … but I’ll bet it has fewer cockroaches, too.

But wait, won’t there be opposition to nuclear power from people who saw the China Syndrome and watch The Simpsons?

Probably.

But just like they did with cars, the Japanese have addressed those issues. According to early reports, the reactor “is engineered to be fail-safe [ooh, excellent] and totally automatic [Homer still has a job] and will not overheat.[suh-weet!] Unlike traditional nuclear reactors the new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction. The whole whole process is self sustaining and can last for up to 30 years without refueling, producing electricity for only 5 cents per kilowatt hour, about half the cost of grid energy.”

Game, set and match to the new iNuke.

Now if they can make it in a bunch of hot colors other than industrial gray, this thing will really take off.

Learning to love nuclear power will, no doubt, be a stretch for some people. The size of the reactor means “even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs” could chip in and install one of these things in somebody’s garage and power the whole suburb.

How cool would that be? I’d pay good money just to see the town zoning board meeting when somebody says they want to put a nuclear reactor where their above ground pool used to be.

Being a real estate agent trying to sell one of the other homes on the cul-de-sac just got a little tougher, though.

The walk-through could end up being very quick…

Prospective homeowner: That’s kind of a big tool shed in the next yard, isn’t it?

Agent: Oh, that’s not a tool shed, that’s a nuclear reactor…. Uh, wait…don’t you want to see the finished basement…?

The commercialization of micro-nuclear technology is still a few years off (Toshiba is shooting for 2010), but it looks like there’s a lot of promise.

And, you have to admit, a “Hello, Kitty” nuclear reactor would be kinda cute…..

Cute as a nuclear button…

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Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.

Every once in awhile, the naked hatred for humanity that characterizes hard-core global warming advocates pokes through all the pseudo-scientific nonsense and obfuscatory jargon to reveal itself in its unvarnished form.

Mayer Hillman is senior fellow emeritus at the Policy Studies Institute. He’s a certified town planner who hates cars. He’s written a number of books, including the ever-so-humble How We Can Save The Planet.

According to the official Amazon.com review, the book illustrates why “government must take the lead” to impose a “radical rationing scheme.”

As you might expect, Mayer Hillman knows what’s best for you. Coming from a climate change doomsayer who believes in government solutions, that’s not particularly unusual.

What is unusual is that, in addition to the usual “climate change is the biggest problem ever to face humanity … blah, blah, blah …” and “we’re at a tipping point and must act now … blah, blah, blah …” rhetoric, Hillman seems to have skipped the part of the manual which says you’re not supposed to reveal the final goal of the climate change movement: the attempt to secure carte blanche political power under the guise of protecting “nature.”

According to one London paper, “Hillman says carbon rationing is the only [?!] way to ensure that the world avoids the worst effects of climate change. And he says that the problems caused by burning fossil fuels are so serious that governments might have to implement rationing against the will of the people. [double ?!] (Exclamations of incredulity are mine.)

Lest you think what Hillman was saying was misunderstood, here is the actual quote from the Man Who Would Be Carbon King:
“When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it. This has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not.”

Just because it’s not 1984, doesn’t mean George Orwell wasn’t right.

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