I have no clue about Al Gore - haven't been paying attention - but, personally, I am sick and tired of rich and famous people lecturing the rest of us on how we can save the planet by not keeping our TVs on standby. :rolleyes: I reckon I've have to keep it on standby for several millennia before I match the waste their excesses cause.
I'm more than willing to do my bit for the environment, but I am finding that the environmental lobby is becoming increasingly hysterical and illogical at times. It seems as though something becomes a cause, the media gets all hysterical too, governments jump on the bandwagon - and no one is actually asking if it's really helping.
Case in point: plastic carrier bags from supermarkets. Cause of huge uproar in the UK right now. The government even threatened in this week's budget to impose a ban on the things. Yet we are told that the paper bags they want to replace them cause 6 times the carbon emissions to produce and transport.
Most plastic bags are degradable these days (they claim it takes a thousand years to do it, but I'm not sure I believe them). I - and many other people - after bringing them home from the supermarket use them as rubbish bags, which I then put in my wheelie bin. Surely much better than the black heavy plastic binbags we used before? Which can't be as easily degraded, AFAIK. And - following the advice to dog owners from our council - I use them to pick up after Homer when he's out in the woods and then dispose of them in the dog waste bins dotted around the area.
Seems to me, they're an environmentally useful item which are less damaging than the alternatives. But all that seems to have been lost in the rush to ban them in a hysterical atmosphere.
I have to confess here that I'm certainly not in tune with most of the opinions here on global warming as an issue per se. But I do think solutions need to be thought through and targeted. And, too often, at the moment, it seems, the government thinks any solution means a new or increased tax (tax seems to be the only way they can see to fix things :rolleyes: )and some environmentalists are leaping into the fray before engaging their brains.
LabRat
