What is "Green"

Sorting out Green

What does green mean to you? To most it means saving the planet from global warming. Responsible use of the earth’s natural resources. Saving energy and perhaps money also.
Here’s what it really means. Let’s say you are the CEO of a large manufacturing company that makes plumbing fixtures. You have a pretty good market for your wares in new construction and remodeling but let’s face it. Not many people just up and decide to replace their toilet on a whim. Especially if it’s working fine. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could find some way to jack up your toilet sales? Sure it would. It would put more money in your pockets and maybe even the stock holders would get some benefit. So how about we pal around with some Washington lobbyist. Let’s buy him dinner and drinks. Get him a date. Play some golf. Stuff his pockets with the green stuff. Lets convince him to convince our legislators that we really need to change all the toilets for the sake of the planet. Never mind that these new toilets don’t flush worth a damn and you have to hit the handle four times to flush the poo. After all it’s not about convieniance, it’s about the planet.
The green movement is with out a doubt the most clever marketing scheme of all time. The entire population is aware of it and a good many of them have bought into it. In fact I’ll bet ninety nine percent bought into it without doing five minutes worth of research on the subject. Green has become a part of our vocabulary. If it’s green, it must be good. Who decides what is and is not green? The manufacturers do, that’s who. If you put the green sticker on your product, you appeal to just about everyone. Heck we all want to do our part, right? Green has been packaged and sold to an entire population of folks eager to get on the band wagon because it’s the right thing to do. P.T. Barnum said it best over a hundred years ago. There’s one born every second.

(um, actually, it is a misconception Barnum never said that)

They need to legislate some nice clean green nuke-u-lore power.

green

No, he said, "This way to see the egress." But you are being cynical. The next thing you will say is that the majority of politicians are either self-serving or corrupt, even if we don't know the name of the one who isn't, and that the financial leaders are trying to figure out how to steal 700 billion dollars.

hj said:

The next thing you will say is that the majority of politicians are either self-serving or corrupt, even if we don't know the name of the one who isn't, and that the financial leaders are trying to figure out how to steal 700 billion dollars.

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That pretty well sums up the situation. They already stole the 700 billion. Now they are just scrambling in fights over exactly how much will be diverted into whose pocket.

Funny how those that use credit wisely and pay their bills on time are the ones getting screwed here.

green is the new 'luxury'

I completely agree, but you make an even more important point that is understated in your rant, one that can be attributed to the success of every top dollar marketing campaign in the last century:

"In fact I’ll bet ninety nine percent bought into it without doing five minutes worth of research on the subject."

People don't generally care about being correct, or doing things the right way, they want to be spoonfed the quick solution...

money

No. They stole the first 700 billion, now they are trying to figure out how to get the new 700 billion. Maybe they will do like AIG and spend it on parties at a spa, or add a few million dollars to their salary, along with mega bonuses and incentives. The quicker they can make the company insolvent the higher the bonus will be.

Did you hear that world wide the bailout is over 2 trillion? There isn't that much money on the entire planet. Guess the printing presses will be doing double duty for awhile. Of course when you hit those numbers it's all theoretical money. You know, the kind the government can use but the rest of us can't.

I love these "green" living standards that some follow where they build a home that costs 4 times the normal cost because it's eco-friendly and they brag about low heating/cooling bills along with minimal water usage.


The return takes forever, the attitude is simply bogus on many levels from the cost perspective.


Remember that buying habits is the sinister talent that can show you're saving in one aspect, blowing through money on the other.


The idiots I can't stand are the ones who have these flourescent lights throughout the house to "save money" but their plumbing is in total disrepair, faucets leaking, old style toilets and just waste water completely in the big picture.

You know who you are, and your justification to save a buck is store bought like that 6 pack of bulbs that last a 1/3 of the time because for one, you was suckered into the green theory and two you're too damn cheap to buy anything with real worth to begin with. LOL!

Damn sometimes I just crack myself up writing these things because I know its true and no one else has the nads to put it out there. Oooooooh he's not green, stay away from him, he's killing us one light bulb at a time.

Comon, buy the logic

Gotta be carefull though. I've had some of my anti green rants magically dissappear. The PC police are everywhere. Gotta go, think I'm being followed.

Gotta love the push toward hybrid vehicles. Unless you do all city driving it will never pay for itself.

Southern Man said:

Gotta love the push toward hybrid vehicles. Unless you do all city driving it will never pay for itself.

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any vehicle that uses oil is still gonna cause a dependency...we need to figure out how to make 0 emission cars that can run on the most abundant element in the universe...hydrogen...

oh wait, we already did that....think they could take some of that 2 trillion to bail out GM, Ford, etc...when they start putting up hydrogen fill stations on our blocks...lobbyists would never let it happen!

What, you don't think GM, Ford and Chrysler will ask for thier piece of the pie? It's only a matter of time my friend. Soon the Government will own everthing

Southern Man said:

Gotta love the push toward hybrid vehicles. Unless you do all city driving it will never pay for itself.

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I can't wait to see how they do during snow storm sitting in traffic for hours when the temp is 15-20F spinning their wheels...or how far they will go when the temps are around 0-10F in the morning during the winter.

K2 said:

any vehicle that uses oil is still gonna cause a dependency...we need to figure out how to make 0 emission cars that can run on the most abundant element in the universe...hydrogen...

oh wait, we already did that....think they could take some of that 2 trillion to bail out GM, Ford, etc...when they start putting up hydrogen fill stations on our blocks...lobbyists would never let it happen!

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we've got more natural gas then we know what to do with, frankly. I like the idea of converting my Expedition to use CNG along with a fill up point in my garage. The only problem I see with these sytems being widely available is that is the the guv'mint can't figger out how to tax me for road fuel.

Cass said:

I can't wait to see how they do during snow storm sitting in traffic for hours when the temp is 15-20F spinning their wheels...or how far they will go when the temps are around 0-10F in the morning during the winter.

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And turn the heat on. Would that be electric heat?

I am with you on the CNG.

That is the way we should be heading for now until the technology gets to another level if it ever does.

HHO is ultimately the way to go..,.

go to youtube . com and type in HHO and you will see what is happening on that front.

It has a way to go but I think I will see it in my lifetime.

What "greenies" don't realize about natural gas is that the stuff is going to come out of the ground one way or the other. Either we run pipes to it and get it out in an organized fashion and burn it, creating CO2 or it will leak out, releasing methane directly into the atmosphere. Since methane is something like 50 times worse than CO2 as a "greenhouse gas" it makes sense to burn the stuff, don't it?.

Methane bubbles coming from the floor of the ocean are also the likely cause of many "Bermuda Triangle" events. A bubble a few feet across at the bottom will become much larger one at the surface, possible one large enough to upset the buoyancy of a passing ship. Any vehicle with a fuel burning motor passing through the rising bubble is likely to erupt in a wicked fireball.

fuel

The only problem I see with these sytems being widely available is that is the the guv'mint can't figger out how to tax me for road fuel.

the do it at the filling station because you cannot put one of those in your garage. I heard of a person who was using homemade biodiesel fuel. He went to a NASCAR event and the EPA was doing a fuel check on diesels. His truck was siezed, he got a citation, and is being charged with Federal tax evasion because he did not pay the road tax on it. Here, they are trying to figure out how to control how much biodiesel and methane a homeowner can store because of the fire hazard.