[N_Fiddledog]

Lemmy Lemmy:

Better to be ignorant than wrong.

And some seem determined to be both.

It illustrates why it is necessary to point out when one is claiming those who populate political message boards are better informed, that is only true in most cases. It is not universal. Some seem to feel required to represent the exception.

[fifeboy]

Lemmy Lemmy:

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

People on political chat boards are, at least in most cases, at least a bit better informed

Being "better" informed isn't a good thing when also misinformed. Better to be ignorant than wrong.

Good

[bootlegga]

jj2424 jj2424:

bootlegga bootlegga:

At least he can claim to have taken some steps towards lightening his footprint - can you say the same? I know I have.

Suzuki may have a bigger house than most of us, but I'll also wager he's got solar panels or some alternative fuel source, uses CFC lightbulbs, Energy Star appliances, etc. If he drives, he's probably got something fuel efficient, not a Hummer or gas guzzling SUV.

This isn't an attack on you or anyone else, but if everyone does a little here and there, it can add up to a whole lot...I'd say that Suzuki has done whatever he can, whenever he could, while I'd wager many of his critics haven't.

Big frikkin deal. The guy has three fricken mansions in BC alone and he has the gall to complain about others. His house in Vancouver takes up two lots. Does he really need three mansions and a private island home? Does he use a row boat to get there?


I have solar panels on my house. I use CFC bulbs, my appliances are all brand new. Outside of work trucks my own use vehicles are all cars with a small V6 and the others are all 4 bangers. Does that make me a "hero" of the enthronement?

A hero - no. But someone clearly trying to do his best, who knows, you might have a redeeming quality or two yet.

Seriously though, that's about all us little guys can do. Most of the big energy/resource consumers aren't people - they are industry (oil/gas/electricity), agriculture (water) and other large sectors of the economy.

[bootlegga]

andyt andyt:

bootlegga bootlegga:

but if everyone does a little here and there, it can add up to a whole lot...I'd say that Suzuki has done whatever he can, whenever he could, while I'd wager many of his critics haven't.

Everyone doing a little adds up to a whole lot of very little, since there's 7 billion of us and counting. Most of those 7 billion and counting are working feverishly to attain our levels of consumption, ie resource use. Changing your light bulbs or using ceramic cups instead of styrofoam ones doesn't add up to much. A while back you were talking about buying a Q7. You'd have to way cut back in other places to make up for driving that thing around, especially to work by yourself, but even with your whole brood in it.

I think we're fucked, doubt if everybody doing a little will make any difference in when we run out of resources or choke ourselves to death, or starve to death or what have you. Not breeding would be the biggest thing we could do, and even then it's probably too late.

You don't know what the hell you're talking about.

Granted, industry, agriculture and other big sectors of the economy use far more resources than the average person does, but the little people can make an impact.

Blanket generalizations like yours just let everyone keep doing what they're doing with no guilt.

If a billion people (the developed world) reduced their emissions each by a ton or two each year, then you're talking about billion or two tons of emissions gone. That's hardly nothing.

As for the Q7, it was an option I looked into as my family grew. I originally wanted it for its third row seating and Clean TDI engine, which is far greener than similar SUV engines (emissions-wise) and gets far greater MPG than regular internal combustion engines do. But the small size of the third row seating/cargo space and the cost of the Q7 ($60-80k) made me change my mind. As such, my next vehicle will probably be a minivan - the most fuel efficient of the lot too. And I NEVER drive to work alone - both my wife and I work in fairly close proximity to each other and the kids daycare is only a few blocks from her work. If someone sees me driving alone, it's because I've already dropped three other people off. In an ideal world, my wife would drive the kids to daycare and herself to work and I'd bike, but we're not there yet.

[Jonny_C]

Lemmy Lemmy:

But if we're measuring Suzuki's total impact on the environment, we need to include the impact his message has had on others. How many of our nation-wide strategies (recycling, for example) owe their introduction to the work of people like Suzuki? Suzuki could act, personally, as the least green person on the planet and his NET contribution to conservation and environmentalism would still be HUGELY positive.

I'll give Suzuki credit for raising awareness, but he's by no means singular in that regard. Having observed the man for a number of years I don't like him. Personal opinion, sure, but it means I'm not ready to give him carte blanche, neither on his opinions nor on his integrity.

He's not the first or the last to turn celebrity into a money-making machine, and I'm quite certain in my own mind that making money will often come before principle and integrity. It's just the "Nature of Things".

[Lemmy]

I'm no fan of Suzuki either. I don't watch his program. I don't much care what he has to say. I just don't get why he draws so much anger (same with Al Gore). He's a friggin' TV host, for Christ's sake. Gore and Suzuki both seem like honest, decent guys with a valid message. But people react to them like they ate someone's baby or shat on their newly-mown lawn. Lots of unwarranted anger over nothing. And it's never been okay to shoot the messenger.

[jj2424]

Lemmy Lemmy:

I'm no fan of Suzuki either. I don't watch his program. I don't much care what he has to say. I just don't get why he draws so much anger (same with Al Gore). He's a friggin' TV host, for Christ's sake. Gore and Suzuki both seem like honest, decent guys with a valid message. But people react to them like they ate someone's baby or shat on their newly-mown lawn. Lots of unwarranted anger over nothing. And it's never been okay to shoot the messenger.

Any jackass who says you should be jailed for disagreeing with him deserves zero admiration.

[N_Fiddledog]

Jonny_C Jonny_C:

I'll give Suzuki credit for raising awareness,

Awareness of what though? Awareness of stuff he's clueless about, so now the equally clueless can give each other back pats for their shared ignorance?

What good comes of that? True we have twisty toxic light bulbs mandated on us now. We force crappy, inferior, supposedly energy efficient furnaces on the Canadian populace. We subsidize inefficient, wildlife slice n dice wind turbos in Ontario, and carbon tax for the sum good of nil in BC.

And we're supposed to what? Thank Suzuki for making us aware that we needed all that worthless garbage?

[DrCaleb]

jj2424 jj2424:

Lemmy Lemmy:

I'm no fan of Suzuki either. I don't watch his program. I don't much care what he has to say. I just don't get why he draws so much anger (same with Al Gore). He's a friggin' TV host, for Christ's sake. Gore and Suzuki both seem like honest, decent guys with a valid message. But people react to them like they ate someone's baby or shat on their newly-mown lawn. Lots of unwarranted anger over nothing. And it's never been okay to shoot the messenger.

Any jackass who says you should be jailed for disagreeing with him deserves zero admiration.

^^ Prime example right there. He said politicians should be jailed for ignoring warnings about climate change, and ignoring our obligations under Kyoto.

$1:

“What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there’s a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they’re doing is a criminal act,” said Dr. Suzuki, a former board member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

“It’s an intergenerational crime in the face of all the knowledge and science from over 20 years.”

[Lemmy]

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

Awareness of what though? Awareness of stuff he's clueless about, so now the equally clueless can give each other back pats for their shared ignorance?

What good comes of that? True we have twisty toxic light bulbs mandated on us now. We force crappy, inferior, supposedly energy efficient furnaces on the Canadian populace. We subsidize inefficient, wildlife slice n dice wind turbos in Ontario, and carbon tax for the sum good of nil in BC.

And we're supposed to what? Thank Suzuki for making us aware that we needed all that worthless garbage?

Better to be clueless (Suzuki) than wrong (you).

[Zipperfish]

$1:

Not hardly.

What it means is more people who do surveys are low-information people, and there's tons of video proof of that, like for example the episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit where they got similar Nimrodic Maroons ( ) to sign a petition saying we needed to ban H2O.

People on political chat boards are, at least in most cases, at least a bit better informed - although yeah, some of them would do well on Penn and Teller.

Yeah, I don't know if it's a matter of people on political chat boards being better informed. I also way more climate change deniers on these sites than would be representative of the general population, acoording to polls, and I doubt more than a few percent of them are more knowledgeable about the subject than I am.

Incidentally the impact of wind farms on birds is miniscule compared to buildings and cats. And high-efficiency furnaces are used by just about every industrial facility for economic, not environmental reasons.

[Thanos]

It took an industrial/technical civilization to create these problems but the only thing that can fix them is also an industrial/technical civilization. There is NO going back to the agrarian/holistic/hunter-gatherer paradise that the enviros believe existed before, at least not unless the human population is reduced by about 95% in the next hundred years and the need for resources drops to practically zero. There is no easy fix here if a pristine "frollicking in meadows" environment is the supposed end goal. This is where puritans like Suzuki fall flat because they push an "easy" fix (i.e. the end of all fossil fuel use, a world stricken with a permanent unemployment rate of at least 70%, and the deliberate ending of the economy as we know it) when they know that it is not easy and will never, in all likelihood, will never happen in anyone's lifetime.

BTW, who wants to volunteer to be the last generation of their family line so ecological perfection can be achieved? Do guys like Suzuki have some kind of master list that dictates who gets chopped and who gets to survive to "frollick in the meadows"?

[Jonny_C]

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

Jonny_C Jonny_C:

I'll give Suzuki credit for raising awareness,

Awareness of what though? Awareness of stuff he's clueless about, so now the equally clueless can give each other back pats for their shared ignorance?

Awareness of our impact on the environment in general.

But Suzuki gets caught up in the "money making machine" (MMM) I suggested before. He's not objective any more, because that would be too much akin to sending a mixed message. The MMM depends upon a firm stance that doesn't deviate from a faintly to considerably alarmist message to which believers and contributors will commit their money. There's no room for objectivity and the message may stray further and further from the truth in order to remain consistent and LOUD.

[CDN_PATRIOT]

The fact that Elizabeth May and Tom Mulcair are even on that list just underscores how mediocre the whole thing is.

-J.

[andyt]

bootlegga bootlegga:

the little people can make an impact.

Blanket generalizations like yours just let everyone keep doing what they're doing with no guilt.

If a billion people (the developed world) reduced their emissions each by a ton or two each year, then you're talking about billion or two tons of emissions gone. That's hardly nothing.

So those billion people are going to make one whit of difference as to whether we reach the critical point of global warming or not? So far they haven't, so you're going to have to step up and do a lot more than using CFC bulbs and driving a minivan instead of a Q7. A ton more, no pun intended.

I'm pretty green, have been long before the greenhouse effect was talked about. Mostly just by inclination, not because I'm dogmatic about it. For instance, people are happiest doing activities that use the least amount of energy. Ie human power vs carbon fuel power. So I'm green in that way because I enjoy it, not because I'm so much trying to save the world.

CFC's are also bullshit. Burn out much quicker than advertised and pollute when discarded. And as has been shown, in a cold country like Canada, incandescent bulbs are energy neutral for a large part of the year (the part where you're more likely to use them) at least compared to electric home heating. Not much saving there.

But we can do what we want - so many people coming onstream every day, wanting their little slice of consumer heaven, we're fucked. But if your guilt is assuaged by your little gestures you make, good for you.