Vincent Vega
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
INDY500 said:
I don't think it's wasting, it's using resources to the best of our technology. That we now use energy consuming machines to do what 100 years ago required the physical labor of a man or animal...is a good thing. An advancement.
But technological advancements come with a trade-off don't they?
Fossil fuels pollute and may cause global climate changes. Ok, let's switch to nuclear power. No, that's too icky we're told.
So, do we listen to the alarmists that warn us to cut back on our energy use and therefore slow our progress and lessen our prosperity. Or do we go forward, trusting in the same technology and ingenuity that transformed the world of poverty, filth and sickness that existed prior to the Industrial Revolution, to today's standard of living---to find solutions.
Using it to the best of our technology would mean to use more hybrid cars such as Toyota or Lexus, and from the car builder to really invest in consumtion saving cars. So many cars still use 10+ liters on 100km when they also could use engines that are smaller, but consume less.
But people want these three tons, 150PS cars because they don't see that these leads to a greater discharge of CO2.
How many people that are driving a SUV really need it? How often do you drive when you don't need to. Many American citizen goes by car for distances as short as three hundred metres, or even less. And, sadly, this already spread to Europe.
People are going by car in the cities, even though they are faster with public transportation or even by bike.
If we used state-of-the-art technology every time we would save much money. But the ar manufacturers, oil companies, and all the other manufacturers would have to invest more money into D&R and the profits would decrease.
Also it's still great advertising with such data as 150PS and so on.
People don't see the correlation between their fuel consumption and the damage to the earth.
A very interesting column on this is written by Bill Bryson, and called "The Waste Generation".