If I turned you off back there

[j4]

"On televisions, for example, we would like to see labels saying 'if you watch it, it will cost x pence per hour, if you leave it on standby, it will cost y pence'. Then you can present the environmental cost in monetary terms"

But that's not actually presenting the environmental cost at all, really, is it? Unless you add "WHICH MEANS that when you sink into drooling oblivion in front of the flickering forms of minor celebrities bonking in a bath of baked beans you are not only wasting the product of several thousand years of human evolution but also SYSTEMATICALLY RAPING THE PLANET and leaving it an UNINHABITABLE WASTE LAND, you selfish cretin." Really. Is it. I mean.

That's before we get to the question of how in the name of -- well, frankly, anything you care to name -- an electric toothbrush can be regarded as "essential".

I think I'm just in a bad mood today.

Comments

no electrical power

[ewx.livejournal.com]

You don't need oil to generate electricity.

Re: no electrical power

[arron-shutt.livejournal.com]

You need it to lubricate vehicles, move coal from place to place by diesel train (given that most of the UK train network is unelectrified) as well as make the plastics that act as insulators around wires and for electronic components.

Sure you can avoid fossil oil for generation, but it's in everything else..and converting one form of oil to another is not economic, and in some cases not fit for the purpose you intend. You can make aviation fuel from biodiesel, but you can't power jet engines from it AFAIK.

Not saying it's impossible, but I guess we'll wait until it's too late before we start to deal with the problem.

not economic

[ewx.livejournal.com]

The missing word in that remark is "yet". Scarcer fossil oil makes alternatives of all kinds more economically viable and makes it more worthwhile figuring out how to substitute for oil in processes that currently cannot do without. The world is not static.