EV Movement, Plastic Bag Bans, etc. - Is Motive Really Environment or Control? (solar, recycling)

[Revoltingest]

Here are excerpts from the ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, on April 17, 2023 holding these kind of restrictions invalid as preempted by Federal legislation:

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I'm also not favoring that particular legislation.
However, in our own house, we'll replace our
gas range with an induction range when the
time comes.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I'm also not favoring that particular legislation.
However, when our own house, we'll replace our
gas range with an induction range.

I do believe that the plan in many areas is to ban them in new buildings. They would slowly disappear from the landscape. And since the appear to be harmful to young children but not so much to adults then you probably have no reason to drop the use of your gas range, but young people are more likely to be the ones moving into new housing.

I tried to get gas quite a few years ago. I do not want it badly enough to install an exterior propane tank. And there were no gas lines in my neighborhood. My current stove is driving me a bit nuts since the burners are wired backwards from most stoves. Out of habit I have turned on a back burner when I meant to turn on the front burner. My housemate loves to leave her tea kettle on the stove behind the main burner that I use so it can take me a while to realize that I am only reheating water.

 

[We Never Know]

It's about creating legal mechanisms for the small stuff so they can use those same, now established legal mechanisms for larger and more serious stuff.

Less freedoms for the common person means more power and control for the ruling class.

That's where we are headed towards at an incredible rate and the nanny state is the means to accomplish that.

 

[Revoltingest]

I tried to get gas quite a few years ago.

Did you try eating beans?

 

[Friend of Mara]

I have my doubts about, and seriously distrust the motives of the push for conversion to electric vehicles ("EV's). The goal of the EV movement is to restrict the freedom of movement. The environmental benefits are minuscule. We will not be generating nearly all our electricity by wind and solar in 2035. Europe's approaching disastrous winter shows that you cannot simply decree away hydrocarbon use. In addition, in order to make the required batteries, other major environmental damage is required. See, e.g. Electric Cars Are Not Particularly Green - Blowing Up Mountain Not Environmental Virtue. See also the article, The Lithium Gold Rush: Inside the Race to Power Electric Vehicles in the far from "denier" New York Times (link), points out that there is much environmental damage from manufacturing electric automobiles. The people and powers that are pushing the EV movement are either incredibly dumb, which I do not believe, are childlike, i.e. implicitly saying "we have to do something", or are willfully deceptive.

Academics have long disparaged the "affluent lifestyle" and what they see as over-consumption. This is an excerpt from a summary (link) of The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith, written in 1958, which I am currently reading (the book price was $0.75, which shows how long it has been on my family bookshelf):

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This foreshadowed by other authors and thinkers, such as Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck. One of the opening paragraphs of The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford reads:

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This line of thinking from academia has seeped into the culture, is totally unmoored from reality, and pops up in policy decisions such as recycling of garbage (largely useless for a variety of reasons), suppression of "ozone emissions" by refrigerators and air conditioning, plastic bag bans, and other measures that make life more difficult without much if any offsetting gain. A side note; they even want to ban paper bags.

The September 1, 2022 New York Times says it all; Why Do Some People in New Jersey Suddenly Have Bags and Bags of Bags? (link)and Germany Announces New L.N.G. Facility, Calling It a Green Move From Russian Energy (link) are both about the futility of "feel good" environmental moves. A quote from the article about bags: "Dr. Miller said the bag situation in New Jersey was emblematic of a lot of environmental policies. “If we don’t pay attention to the unintended impacts of policies such as the plastic waste ban, we run into the potential of playing environmental Whac-a-Mole,” she said. “We solve one environmental problem only to create or exacerbate another problem.”

Add to it the sudden decision of the California legislature, which "voted to extend the life of Diablo Canyon, California’s last nuclear power plant, by five years, a step once unthinkable to many environmentalists (link). As far as the article about Germany goes, I thought the whole point was to eliminate natural gas.

What are we accomplishing by all this harem-skarem activity other than salving our consciences for being affluent?

Listen. There is only one way to have sustainable green energy. And it is nuclear. End of story. Solar and Wind just isn't there yet. Nuclear is. Its not the technology I want my great grandkids to use but its the technology we are going to have to use if we want to have great grandkids.

 

[exchemist]

Listen. There is only one way to have sustainable green energy. And it is nuclear. End of story. Solar and Wind just isn't there yet. Nuclear is. Its not the technology I want my great grandkids to use but its the technology we are going to have to use if we want to have great grandkids.

It’s not either or: it’s both. Solar and wind most certainly ARE there, in the sense of of making a large contribution to electricity generation. But there is a need for nuclear as well, for the present, I agree. Wind and solar have the limitation of being intermittent, so there is a limit on the proportion of generation they can contribute to the electricity mix, at least until methods of energy storage can be improved.

 

[Friend of Mara]

It’s not either or: it’s both. Solar and wind most certainly ARE there, in the sense of of making a large contribution to electricity generation. But there is a need for nuclear as well, for the present, I agree. Wind and solar have the limitation of being intermittent, so there is a limit on the proportion of generation they can contribute to the electricity mix, at least until methods of energy storage can be improved.

To clarify I'm not saying to not use solar/wind. Just that alone they are not enough. Nuclear is necessary to pick up the slack of coal that is all. The hope is that in some years in the future nuclear is no longer necessary. So I believe we agree.

 

[exchemist]

Here are excerpts from the ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, on April 17, 2023 holding these kind of restrictions invalid as preempted by Federal legislation:

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Even on the merits, does anyone seriously think that strangling ourselves economically is going to do anything more than make some people feel virtuous? How many heat waves, blizzards, droughts, floods, etc. are going to be prevented? Remember, use of fossil fuels has given us the highest living standards in history. We are impoverishing ourselves for a nowhere to here policy.

You are trying to fight yesterday’s battles. Today, it’s about how, not whether, we reduce our CO2 emissions.

 

[exchemist]

To clarify I'm not saying to not use solar/wind. Just that alone they are not enough. Nuclear is necessary to pick up the slack of coal that is all. The hope is that in some years in the future nuclear is no longer necessary. So I believe we agree.

Yes we will continue to need some baseload generation. I think Merkel’s decision to exit nuclear in Germany was a major mistake. France seems to be well positioned.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You are trying to fight yesterday’s battles. Today, it’s about how, not whether, we reduce our CO2 emissions.

I thought that Trump was making "Clean Coal"

 

[exchemist]

I thought that Trump was making "Clean Coal"

CCS? I don’t think that has been tried commercially anywhere, yet.

 

[exchemist]

View attachment 76015

How idiotic.

 

[Subduction Zone]

CCS? I don’t think that has been tried commercially anywhere, yet.

There is one plant in the US. that I know of. I do not know how economic it is and it seems to be an idea of very very limited use. The CO2 from combustion is pumped underground into old abandoned oil wells. I simply do not see that as a viable long term solution.

 

[exchemist]

There is one plant in the US. that I know of. I do not know how economic it is and it seems to be an idea of very very limited use. The CO2 from combustion is pumped underground into old abandoned oil wells. I simply do not see that as a viable long term solution.

There have been plans for it in the UK for a long time, using exhausted oil and gas reservoirs in the North Sea. Shell got involved in a pilot project with the government about a decade ago, but then the government pulled out after Shell had spent a couple of million on it, so they were not pleased. There are now some new plans to try again. I'm a bit sceptical.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Listen. There is only one way to have sustainable green energy. And it is nuclear. End of story. Solar and Wind just isn't there yet. Nuclear is. Its not the technology I want my great grandkids to use but its the technology we are going to have to use if we want to have great grandkids.

Spot on. The only power that can rival fossil fuels and when properly managed, the greenest on the planet.

 

[Revoltingest]

I thought that Trump was making "Clean Coal"

Those were the words heard when his mouth moved.
But you know what happens when a politician's mouth is moving, don't you?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Those were the words heard when his mouth moved.
But you know what happens when a politician's mouth is moving, don't you?

Hence the three rolleyes smilies being employed. They may not have worked.

 

[Revoltingest]

Hence the three rolleyes smilies being employed. They may not have worked.

They worked.
But I was compelled to comment.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Spot on. The only power that can rival fossil fuels and when properly managed, the greenest on the planet.

I will agree with you on that. It is a pity that the world has such an unreasonable fear of nuclear fission. I hate to admit it, but controlled nuclear fusion may not ever be a reality. The conditions at the core of the Sun may be simply too difficult to reproduce and gain energy from in an economical fashion. Nuclear fission is economical right now. It is the fear of the waste products that make it not possible to build new plants.

 

[jbg]

You are trying to fight yesterday’s battles. Today, it’s about how, not whether, we reduce our CO2 emissions.

To what end? To impoverish ourselves?