Happy Earth Day 2008

[BaldBen]

Happy Earth Day, Sly bruthas.

Are there any Sly Environmentalists here?

Global warming is our most urgent environmental problem: it's now or never to take action. Politicians are not doing enough to curb climate change and we the moment has come to say “enough”.

For Earth Day 2008, Earth Day Network is spearheading one of the largest Earth Day campaigns in US history: Call for Climate.
These are their demands:
A moratorium on new coal-burning plants,
Renewable energy,
Carbon-neutral buildings,
Protection for the poor and middle class in the new green economy.

www.earthday.net

[ice4life]

how can we help?

[Tyro]

Have you pulled your car up to the gas pump lately and been shocked by the high price of gasoline? 

As the pump clicked past $20, $30, $40 or even $50, I've been seriously thinking about replacing my car for one of those "hybrids". 
 
http://consumerguideauto.howstuffworks.com/the-consumer-guide-to-hybrid-vehicles-cga.htm

I've been looking at the Mercury Mariner

[herronm]

I’m all for doing the right thing, in fact, I’ve replaced about 80% of my light bulbs with the new mini florescents.   But, this ethanol decision is the stupidest thing ever.  How do we save anything that takes a gallon of gas to manufacture to replace the gallon of gas???  The cost of gas is not the driving factor for the high cost of groceries.  It is the fact that corn is a scarce commodity (for ethanol).  Milk, beef, corn flakes, corn sweetener, bread….. are all driven by the price of corn.

Sorry for my rant.

Max

[Razor X]

 it's now or never to take action.

Says who?  I have a lot of CDs that I bought back in 1989 and 1990 that had inserts saying that we only had 10 years left to save the planet, yet nearly 20 years later Armegeddon hasn't happened yet.   They were wrong then, so why we should we believe them today when they say "it's now or never"? 

[BaldRob]

As with everything, there are two sides to every coin (just some you'll never hear about):

http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm

http://www.heartland.org/NewYork08/newyork08.cfm

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=164002
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=164004

http://johnrlott.tripod.com/ImpactSunonEarthsTemp.pdf

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

[BALDANDRE]

Here's the deal....

there are two sides for sure, but there is also apathy...if you put a little effort to try to not hurt the environment whenever possible...you've done good...period.

Remember the "Crying Indian" and the trash commercial...I think that was a great campaign and did good..back then I'm sure there were nay-sayers to the litter problem....

Here's one to do a big part....

 just don't throw trash on the ground...use a trash can...YOU'VE def. helped your environment..and you don't need years or evidence to see it!

[BaldRob]

there are two sides for sure, but there is also apathy...if you put a little effort to try to not hurt the environment whenever possible...you've done good...period.

Agreed!

Personally, I use CF bulbs in 90% of my house (the other 10% are normal bulbs that can't be replaced by CF bulbs), turn off lights and other electronics when I'm not using them, use AC/Heat as little as I need (67 in the winter and 74ish in the summer), and recycle...

[schro]

Since it sounds as if we're actually having a civil conversation about this, I'm going to post was I initially wrote but didn't post on the general board for fear of starting a political fight:

I'm not a gung-ho environmentalist, but I make decisions with the environment (and my bank account) in mind. I recycle all paper (goes to my kids' school) glass & aluminum, maximize car trips, turn off lights & appliances that are not in use, looked into solar (but the payback time is around 17 years, which greater than I plan to be in the house...plus, PG&E won't pay you back for electricity you generate that's greater than you consume....total bullsh*t), water at times that are most efficient to avoid evaporation. Easy stuff. I mention all this not for the purpose of making myself out to be holier than thou, just want to demonstrate that it's really pretty easy to do the right thing.

It sounds as if BaldAndre & BaldRob are on the same page as I am.

[Marz]

I too do what i can within reason to take the environment into consideration and minimize my impact on the earth and make it nicer than when I got here.

As my old science teacher used to say - Inherit the Earth.

But...

This global warming thing is getting WAY WAY out of hand. I can dig the urgency to stop greenhouse gasses but when GE is making money more off the "Green" lifestyle than most any other company and the ships keep coming in from china blowing more polution than I have made in my lifetime on one trip, just to bring us goods made out of lead paint and plastic.. something stinks.

This isnt the first time a real controllable problem got blown into a worldwide panic / marketing tactic....

Remember Y2K?

Remember how people had to upgrade their computers, blenders, toasters, TV's, phones, shoes, clothes, etc. to make sure they would work after the dreaded Y2K?

yeah...

Me too.

[PigPen]

Have you pulled your car up to the gas pump lately and been shocked by the high price of gasoline? 

As the pump clicked past $20, $30, $40 or even $50, I've been seriously thinking about replacing my car for one of those "hybrids". 
 
http://consumerguideauto.howstuffworks.com/the-consumer-guide-to-hybrid-vehicles-cga.htm

I've been looking at the Mercury Mariner

Remember when you read this that I'm in the car business. When someone comes in looking for a car and asks for a hybrid, our first question is "Why?" When you figure the cost difference, it will take a few years for that hybrid to earn back the extra money you paid for it. You'd be better off making a donation to the Arbor Day foundation. Here is my philosophy, I'll hold out for a high-efficiency turbo diesel. Honda has a hybrid, yes. Acura as far as I know, has no plans to make a hybrid. We should have our first turbo diesel out the end of this year. You can 30-40% farther on diesel than you can with gasoline. A diesel makes a hell of a lot more torque too.

[SLYinKC]

It sounds as if BaldAndre & BaldRob are on the same page as I am.

Sounds like good, common sense, Schro!!!

[JDog]

While I do whatever I personally can to do best for our enviornment, I do share RazorX's cynicism about this collective new found enviornmentalist green thought.

We have been told for years that our planet is dying slowly and soon the holes in the ozone layer will cause the ice caps to melt and the tides will swallow whole cities. That hasn't happened yet. How much money are the big companies and organizations raking in on capitalising on this "Save the Enviornment"?Billions of dollars. Al Gore and his fear mongering hypocricsy has also added fuel to my fire.

I will not be rushing out to buy Green Sensitive products to "reduce my carbon footprint"anytime soon

[jusbnme]

I do what little I can to help out when I can.  I recycle as much as possible and definitely do not litter.  I have replaced a few of my house lights with the new lower watt burning bulbs.  But something I wasn't aware of until about a week ago...Did you realize that these "better" light bulbs are made with mercury.  It's stated that "One of these bulbs, if not disposed of properly and broken, can contaminate 6,000 gallons of water.  I think I'm being generous here too because I can almost swear it said, "60,000."  But I can't be 100% unless I find the paper I read it in again or look it up on line.  Good gosh, 6,000 to 60,000 gallons of water if one of these bulbs is not disposed of properly and gets in to the water.  I guess there is a fine line when it comes to "helping" the environment.  I'm kinda on both sides anyway.  I like to keep our earth clean as far as trash and not littering.  Like I said, I recycle.  But I don't go all the way as far as changing my entire life to fit the, more recent, cry of saving our planet. 

[Razor X]

Remember the "Crying Indian" and the trash commercial...I think that was a great campaign and did good..back then I'm sure there were nay-sayers to the litter problem....

You must be very old to remember such a thing.