Earlier today I blogged about how a Baltimore Sun environment blog is urging readers to confess their most mortal "eco sin."
Not to be outdone in the pious-sounding eco-rhetoric, the San Francisco Chronicle's Thin Green Line blog today warns tech geeks and video game aficionados against the original sin of technological advance:
Technology, at times, offers a magic key into the environmental garden of Eden, where humans can use energy and feel good about it. But, at times, it can be the serpent tempting us to eat the apple that will mean our eviction.
Blogger Cameron Scott goes on to explain that the wages of tech are carbon, tons and tons of carbon:
Although technological advances promise reliable renewable energy in the future, right now, consumer use of electronics accounts for 15 percent of residential power use worldwide, a figure that will most likely triple by the time your tot, who's now playing with a fake cell phone, heads off to college, laptop in hand.
If indeed the numbers grow as expected, it would take 560 new coal-fired power plants to power the army of iPods, TVs, cell phones, and computers. (Don't miss the helpful graphic in the Times' article.)
What then shall we do to be saved? Scott concluded by preaching salvation in government regulation:
Of course, the problem isn't just your (and my) guilty fascination with the contraptions, however. It's that manufacturers have thus far successfully avoided the kind of energy-efficiency requirements that the government imposes on appliances (California is attempting to impose them on 2nd gen TVs). Spur the companies along by supporting the California Energy Commission's proposed rules for TVs and by buying Energy Star models whenever available.
—Ken Shepherd is Managing Editor of NewsBusters
Editor at Large
Comments Policy
short-sighted Leftist idiocy
September 21, 2009 - 14:58 ET by konoCameron Scott needs to do his homework. The 'developed world' is far more carbon-efficient than the 'developing world'. And of the first group there, those countries who made the Kyoto Accord their priority in recent years wound up hurting their economies and reducing their carbon-use efficiency, while those 'developed' countries who eschewed Kyoto (and made tech advancement their priority, instead) actually increased their carbon-use efficiency over the same period.
Liberal Madness: Letting feelings supersede reason, transforming noble intentions into policies that are irrational, ineffective, and ultimately harmful or self-defeating.
calling a spade a spade
September 22, 2009 - 05:20 ET by WanderlustI'd like to suggest that we stop trying to engage the Left on the topic of so-called anthropomorphic global warming (or the more recent catch-all moniker, "climate change").
Stop trying to refute the "science" they claim to wield in their favor.
We will always be playing catch up that way. Imagine being a politician, trying to rationally answer the question, "so when did you stop beating your wife?" without saying something that even remotely incriminates you, by implication.
Instead, we should be calling them to the carpet for what they are: elitist snobs who would hurt everyone else because they are jealous that the common man (or woman) can have the same things as do they. Snobs who enslave the poor under the guise of "helping" them, while acting like they are so much smarter and more enlightened than anyone else.
Snobs. Plain and simple.
As the Chief Snob says, "call them out".
Madness does not always howl. Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at theend of the day saying, "Hey, is there room in your head for one more?"
G K Chesterton
September 21, 2009 - 15:03 ET by nolotrippen“It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense.”
G K Chesterton, The Oracle of the Dog, 1923
Romans 1:21-25
21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Such scientific insight.
September 21, 2009 - 15:05 ET by samhermanmdI am sure that his three credits of "Rocks for Jocks" taught him more about planetary science and meteorology than all of those poor fools who wasted years in laboratories and lectures trying to make new discoveries.
I don't understand...
September 21, 2009 - 15:15 ET by jdlybrandWhy do people who call themselves 'progressives' want us to return to the dark ages? Kinda' like 'jumbo shrimp' or 'freezer burn'.
"What a revoltin' development this is!"
Chester Riley
Also
September 21, 2009 - 15:18 ET by jdlybrandWould this clown have not better served the environment by writing his drivel on a scroll instead of a computer.
"What a revoltin' development this is!"
Chester Riley
THE GREEN MOVEMENT...
September 21, 2009 - 20:42 ET by danybhoyIf the "evironmental movement" was really about the environment & not about comand-control economics, their biggest enemy would be China, not the USA. Besides, the Chi-Coms would tell the "greens" where to shove their ideas. We should start telling the "greens" where to shove it.
"...How blind can you be, don't you see...
...that the gambler lost all he does not have..."
Nightwish
Here's an eco sin which
September 21, 2009 - 15:39 ET by celatorHere's an eco sin which could be easily corrected: think of the thousands of perfectly good trees which are cut down (killed, as the marxist environmental groups would say) to produce newsprint paper for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Mother Earth demands that the Chronicle stop this attack on our precious environment! Oh, the humanity!
No citizen's right to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, or property is safe as long as Obama is President of the United States.
My worst eco sin.
September 21, 2009 - 15:42 ET by CobraManMy worst eco sin, other than breathing out CO2, is that I occasional toss plastics bottles and aluminum cans in the trash.
Oh, I also mow my lawn with a gas powered mower and kill weeds with chemicals.
OMG! I'm shameless! Should I seek eco-redemption?
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus.
The US Supreme Court
funny how they revere it as a religion
September 22, 2009 - 05:48 ET by WanderlustThey need a religion for snobs, where the price of admission is superiority but with them remaining firmly in control.
Snobs.
Madness does not always howl. Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at theend of the day saying, "Hey, is there room in your head for one more?"
Humm...
September 21, 2009 - 16:02 ET by CobraManSo, we use too many "contraptions"? And it's our obsession with electronic "contraptions" that is causing so many problems?
I guess we should leave the "contraptions' to serious people, like newspaper bloggers, and just go back to living in a pre-electronic society. I know my wife and I are eager to return to the good-old-days of washing clothing and dishes by hand in the local stream or river, and cooking organic food (grown from our own waste products) in an earthen pot over a cow dung fire pit, while scribing on tree bark or clay tablets so our children have something to read before we extinguish the honey bee wax candles and head to bed just after sundown.
The world would be a much better place if we all did this , unless you actually live like this, then you're considered as destitute, all thanks to the Evil World Corporations who expend billions of dollars making sure you and your brethren will never rise above poverty.
Oh, and forget the cell phone. Who cares if your wife can't call 911after she's attacked while jogging in the local park? Look at all the energy she's saving by forgoing her personal safety for the public good!
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus.
The US Supreme Court
What was once known as
September 21, 2009 - 16:02 ET by mattmWhat was once known as conservation has long since been taken over by zealots of the anti-God, humanistic religion that has plagued Mankind since the Garden of Eden. Environmentalism is a tenet of that religion.
"Environmentalism" has nothing to do with the environment...
September 21, 2009 - 19:27 ET by R D Helm...and everything to do with power, control, and the spreading of misery, just as ObamaCare is intended to do.
The sooner the American sheeple realize this, the sooner we can send these Marxist commies packing, and get back to being a free country.
-Dave
I agree with Rush. It's time for Obama to resign.
Dave... Yeah...plus in
September 21, 2009 - 19:30 ET by bigtimerDave...
Yeah...plus in the past and meantime they destroy the economy/businesses, hand in hand with other congress-critters/groups/rules/regulations all over this country...that's their power-grabbing agenda...worked for twenty some years, still working now, don't know how you can undo it and the damage they have done anytime soon.
Oh well, tired today...but you get my drift, plus you've seen me post about this as well for years now.
'Go Green...Recycle Congress'