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Pastimes : The Boxing Ring Revived -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (5312)	3/10/2003 3:06:17 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7720

Actually, I was responding to your intimation that the goal of production is unrelated to demand...that there is no end to bringing home the meat, or indulging in sex, or drawing up the water. "If you put in a lot more time in order to still cut up the same amount of meat then you have less time left over to produce or distribute other goods or services" I never said or intimated that the goal of production is unrelated to demand. That whole idea isn't related to my point. If you take longer to produce the same amount of good or services, or if the cost is higher you can not supply as much. The higher cost means demand goes down when you charge higher prices. The total amount produced and consumed will go down if everything else is equal, and even if other factors work to increase production the total amount produced and consumed will be lower then if you did not make large cuts on CO2 emissions. "Most ways to produce items with less CO2 or with less toxins are less efficient not more" Incorrect. Fossil fuels are a wasteful and inefficient method to produce energy. Most use of fossil fuels are somewhat inefficient but not as much as many of the alternatives. They release toxic compounds into the environment and they impact on the ecology. They cause some harm true but they are efficient. Less harmful energy sources are usually less efficient as energy sources. Much of the energy is wasted and unconverted into any useful product. This is true about almost all energy use. Generally speaking, the reduction of CO2 goes hand in hand with reducing the levels of more toxic compounds such as Sulfur Dioxide and Nitrogen Oxide. You can have a greater reduction of Sulfur Dioxide and Nitrogen Oxide and other pollutants for less money and effort if you aim to reduce them, rather then aim to reduce CO2 with the hope that other forms of pollution will also go down. If you replace and old coal burning plant with a modern oil burning plant you reduce emissions of many forms of pollution but you still produce a lot of CO2. Electric power is immeasureably more efficient. 1 - Most electrical power comes from the burning of fossil fuel. Other ways of producing electricity have problems. Most of the good dam sites for hydroelectric power are all ready in use or are off limits for environmental reasons. Nuclear power has some promise but has been very expensive so far and runs in to a lot of political opposition. Solar is expensive and inefficient and has problems with night and overcast days, also if it was used on a large scale it would take up a lot of land. Wind power is good for certain places but takes up a lot more land and is less flexible then fossil fuels. 2 - It is not more efficient in all aplications. It is more difficult and expensive to use in many situations. My point is not to condemn industry, but to simply emphasize, that commonsense and rational self interest suggest that we all take seriously the environment on which our life and future depend. I agree with that idea 100%. My point was merely that protection of the environment has a price and probably will reduce gross production. In fact I would say it already has reduced production below what it would be if we were not concerned about protecting the environment. I didn't say this protection is not worth the cost, only that the cost exists. Tim