I have a serious and important question. Does anyone here actually care about the environment? I have strong feelings towards the environment. My mum has done the following; 1. Put in 3 sun tubes 2. Changed all our appliances to at least a B rating 3. Only drives when it is necessary 4. Buys more fair-trade products than before 5. Only uses the washing machine at 30degrees 6. Have an eco-friendly toilet with 2 flush settings, full and half 7. Have an eco-friendly shower which uses very little power when in use 8. Use only energy saving bulbs I really really want more to care for the environment more. Why doesn't anybody seem to care? It is our planet, it is our responsibility to protect it. Rob
Protecting the environment is all very commendable but to the average person it's neither convenient or economical. People are naturally lazy by default - they aren't going to go out of their way to do something unless they see the benefit themself.
The production of these "green" products is usually more harmful than the products they are to replace. The new lightbulbs that everyone is raving about uses mercury and everyone just throws them away. Basically dumping mercury in the environment. I have purchased them myself and they barely last 6 months. The Toyota prius takes 2 times the energy to produce than does a hummer and is only expected to last 50,000 miles while the hummer is expected to last 150,000 miles. These are just a couple of examples. Do the math and let me know which is more environmentally friendly.
That's a great point too - take paper recycling as another example - how much bleach do you think it takes to clean secondhand paper pulp? A considerable amount is the answer, which is disposed of down the drain afterwards. How environmentally friendly is that? Paper and glass are probably the two least needed recyclable materials because the raw materials are plentiful and sustainable enough to make new. In this case recycling is just a waste of time and effort and an inconvenience to the householder. But the tree huggers don't like people to think like that - it's not trendy.
Do you have any evidence on the internet to back this information up? Do you have any proof? Or is this just speculation. I have never seen a car scraped at 50k before. Eco-friendly light bulbs are good for the environment, they last longer, and they consume less electricity than their previous uneconomical bulb. Convenience is something we lost for a month or two while the builders did all the work. It is more economical. Our bathroom has no window, and we cannot get planning permission for one either due to laws which date back to the fire of london. A suntube is the ONLY way you can get natural light into this area of the house. In the middle of the day we had to turn the lights on in the bathroom, because of no light at all. No offensive, but it is more economical, and we are already raking in the savings. We have saved around about £100 on the electric bill since January. The costs of the suntubes was £500.. In exactly 4 1/2 years time, we would have broken even, and in 9 years time, we would have saved £500. Seriously... the long term effects are worth while, in the short term you just have a bit less in your pocket. The environment is more important than convenience. Economy is important. Saving the planet is more important. Rob
You can do your own research on this stuff. Here is another example of the hypocrisy of these enviro-nazis. LOOK OVER THE DESCRIPTIONS OF THE FOLLOWING TWO HOUSES AND SEE IF YOU CAN TELL WHICH BELONGS TO AN ENVIRONMENTALIST. HOUSE # 1: A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas. In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not in a northern or Midwestern "snow belt," either. It's in the South. HOUSE # 2: Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, this house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can provide. The house contains only 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in winter and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape. HOUSE # 1 (20 room energy guzzling mansion) is outside of Nashville, Tennessee. It is the abode of that renowned environmentalist (and filmmaker) Al Gore. HOUSE # 2 (model eco-friendly house) is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas. Also known as "the Texas White House," it is the private residence of the President of the United States, George W. Bush. So whose house is gentler on the environment? Yet another story you WON'T hear on CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC or read about in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Indeed, for Mr. Gore, it's truly "an inconvenient truth." http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp
I do my fair share if it benifits me in some way. I won't buy things that are environmentally better if they cost much more than ones that arn't. I won't switch to an environmentally safe car as they are just non-practical to say the least. I will recycle plastic/paper/glass/anything else as long as the government provides facilities to do so (which where I am living at the moment they don't, I would have to travel at least 5miles to find somewhere to put these things). I know places that have a service like the garbage disposal service that come and take your recycled stuff away, so one week the garbage gets taken away and the next the recyclable stuff gets taken away (and in these areas it's illegal to put recycleable things in the garbage). Sorry if that made little sense, I live in the UK and I was trying to use the word garbage instead of rubbish.
I do my part in re-using plastic bags whenever I go to the grocery and make it a point to segregate my garbage at home.
You can too tell which house is owned by the ENVIRONMENTALIST. The ENVIRONMENTALIST lives in an environmentally friendly home. The FAKE ENVIRONMENTALIST does not live in an environmentally friendly home. Its really that simple. Al Gore is a fake and always will be.
This %@#@#% was dug up by people who obviously don't like Gore. This has been brought up again and again. Firstly, he purchases carbon credits and offsets his house. Stop criticizing how he lives and look at your own life > Are you doing anything better to save the world? Anyway, to Robert, yes I do care and I am doing many things (btw, my environmental blog went from PR 0 to PR 4 ) - the environmental debate has been brought up a lot here at DP and I'm tired of defending it here, seems like this isn't the place to chat about it when most webmasters just call it a big conspiracy.
Whether or not "global warming" is caused by humans or not, I'll still turn the light out when I'm not using it
But everyone pollutes... By purchasing carbon credits, you offset, so you balanced what the negative externalities are. Those who continue to pollute is the main problem. As I said, it's pointless arguing on these forums - it's good to see some people caring, regardless of how small your actions are.
Yes, I'm a supporter of the environment. I'm a hippie for the environment, I like trees like any other hippie does
I'm the biggest tree hugger I know. And BTW, Al Gore is Carbon Neutral, and George Bush is not. Also, do you have any reputable sources to back your information.