Sales of organic products are down. Green projects are diving. Recycling profits are declining.
With the economy in deep recession, the green movement is losing momentum. Funny how people prioritize their spending when times get tough. When it comes to a choice between organic milk for $6.50 a gallon or regular milk for $3.50, most people will chose the regular – if they can afford the milk at all.
Patterns for personal spending are changing. If going green costs money – with no guarantee that the expenses will be recouped in hard dollars – it’s tougher to justify. And let’s face it – going green often means spending green (money). If you don’t have the latter, you can’t do the former.
People often do “green” things, but they don’t do them to save the planet. They do them to save their wallets. We don’t often use our clothes dryer because it uses too much costly propane. Instead, we hang our clothes next to the woodstove. We buy many foods in bulk because it saves money, not because it saves Gaia.
It’s depressing to watch the environmentalists, distressed by the public’s decrease in low-impact choices, salivate over Obama’s proposed $50 billion budget for green projects. During a time when people are losing jobs and homes in unprecedented numbers, we can all rest easier knowing Obama will spend $2.5 billion to “demonstrate the feasibility of carbon capture and storage technologies.” Oh goodie.
Now that “change” is here, even environmental spokespeople are urging caution. Bill Chameides, dean of the Nicholas School of Environment at Duke University, admits, “Government can push new policies, but it has to prove to be economically competitive or else it will not happen.”
Economically competitive? Criminy, folks, when has ANY government-sponsored project been “economically competitive”? Do you have any idea how expensive alternative energy is compared to the grid? Do you have any idea how many square miles of bare land are needed to supply enough wind or solar power to light up even one small town?
The only time going off-grid is “economically competitive” is on an individual level when the power poles are too far away from a house to be cost-effective. We have neighbors in our rural area who are off-grid for that very reason.
Large-scale green projects have not been widely implemented by the free market because they’re not economically viable. If such projects were profitable, the private sector would have embraced them years ago (duh!). Green policies and projects can only survive by being artificially propped up by the government. Which means – drum roll, please – the green movement is officially unsustainable.
There, I’ve said it.
It’s not that I object to green technology. Far from it. What I object to is having green technology forced upon us at the point of a gun by government thugs who steal our money via taxes in order to fund it and thus gain more control over our lives. Green living should be an individual option, not a government-mandated requirement. Only by leaving people free to choose a green lifestyle will that lifestyle be embraced with enthusiasm, and tested for efficiency by the marketplace.
And really, a green lifestyle is a summation of individual choices. My husband and I choose to live green because we like being as independent as possible under our particular circumstances. Our off-grid neighbors choose to be off-grid because it’s cheaper than installing conventional power. If you choose to put CFLs in your home and wear only organic hemp clothing, great. That’s your choice. If you choose to eat only organic foods grown within a hundred miles of your home, fine.
Did you notice that variations on the word “choice” occurred six times in the previous paragraph? That’s because I deeply admire people who choose to be green. I really do.
What I don’t admire – in fact, what I loath – is the lack of choice. When the environmentalists take away our options and insist we do things their way and only their way, then the green movement stops being noble and lofty and starts becoming dangerous. When you pass legislation that dictates what kind of light bulbs I can use in my own home, you’ve lowered yourself from concerned environmentalist to government thug.
Now we have the dangerous combination of a tanking economy and a green administration. Government thugs will subsidize inefficient green projects using nonexistent money.
The result for We the Sheeple is, of course, increased costs. Obama admitted this in a January 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in which he said, “You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal … Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. … Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants … natural gas, you name it – whatever the plants were … they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.” [“Uhs” removed for clarity.]
I assume the theory behind the advocacy of skyrocketing electricity rates is to force consumers to use less. There is certainly some logic to this. Last summer when gas was over $4 a gallon, ask anyone if they purposely increased the amount they drove and you’d get a contemptuous snort of denial. So yes, if you jack electricity rates, there will be a lot less electricity used.
As well as LOTS of furious citizens.
It baffles me how, with our economy in tatters, the current administration can happily advocate practices and projects that will further bankrupt our nation and cause dire hardship to the ordinary citizen. Green projects, when mandated on the national level, are not sustainable. They require massive government subsidies for marginal returns. HellOOOO?
Being “green” is a luxury available only to wealthy countries with high levels of personal and economic freedom. Both are decreasing in America at an alarming pace. So, why do environmentalists keep bleating how they want to sustain things that are not sustainable?
Oh yeah. It’s because they want the power. Silly me.
