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Understanding What Going Green Means

February 5, 2008, 8:04 am

This photo (via Maggie's Farm) shows life in the United States during a time when the US emitted more CO2 than Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and other greens want to set as the new emissions cap.  In 1940, the US emitted about 33% of 1990 levels of CO2, vs. the green's target of 20%.
Cartandwagonga1940s

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Category: Climate
  • Bob Smith

    Don't forget the millions of extra acres of farmland under cultivation (feed for animals) that is now lovely forest, millions of extra pounds of smelly, disease-carrying feces that needed to be disposed of, and the absurdly high cost of maintaining work animals (there's a reason horse ownership is a rich man's hobby). Greens aren't simply deluded, they're actively anti-human.

    The right thing to do is to continue to develop a high-energy future. Yes, we should be developing and using more, not less, energy. Note that we now use less than 1/3 the petroleum per unit of GDP than we did in 1972. That's why the current high oil prices haven't shut down our economy like it did then. By using more energy we further increase our productivity, our wealth, and our lack of dependence on oil. More wealth means better environment. Not that I think our environment is particularly dirty, I'd say we're about 90% of the way there, unlike the greens who continually move the goalposts so no matter how good things get it isn't enough.

  • http://woodedpaths.blogspot.com/ DWPittelli

    Clinton and Obama are right that we could maintain our current lifestyles on 33% of today's carbon emissions. Of course, we'd have to scrap every fossil-fuel burning electric plant in the country, replacing almost all of them with nuclear plants (some with dams).

    Then we'd have to build a bunch more nukes to (partially) power the plug-in hybrids we'd all be switching over to. We'd also have to end taxi medallions and monopoly transport systems relying on large buses and trains, and allow free competition among intracity jitney buses and taxis; these would get more people out of their cars voluntarily. We'd also probably need to switch oil-heated houses over to electricity.

    This is all economically and technically feasible, provided we could come to a political decision, especially to standardize nuke plants and overcome environmental opposition to said plants and to Yucca Mountain or another repository.

    Of course, I don't see any political leaders even attempting any of these things.

  • SuperMike

    Let's not forget that the population was around half what it is today. Given that per-capita greenhouse gas output in this country is larger than anywhere else, and it's likely that immigrants adapt pretty quickly to our energy-intensive lifestyle, how long is it before the green movement declares mass immigration to be a greenhouse gas problem? (I'll answer that: forever; the real goal of the green elite is to destroy the Western way of life and culture, not save polar bears or whatever, so they'll avoid this conclusion)

  • linda

    hi. you are all so dumb