George Will decries the "media-political complex" and promotes a network TVshow to prove his "point"

[underpants]

Again Will is promoting the "if it isn't perfect already it isn't worth doing" line - he really hates the new lightbulbs April 2, 2009 article

Will doesn't seem to be aware of Americans' identity with their cars OR the use of image to market products-specifically automobiles

:eyes:

http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/1916843.html

In the history of developed democracies with literate publics served by mass media, there is no precedent for today's media enlistment in the crusade to promote global warming "awareness." Concerning this, journalism, which fancies itself skeptical and nonconforming, is neither.

The incessant hectoring by the media-political complex's "consciousness-raising" campaign has provoked a comic riposte in the form of "The Goode Family," an animated ABC entertainment program at 9 p.m. Wednesdays (on Channel 10 in Sacramento). Cartoons seem, alas, to be the most effective means of seizing a mass audience's attention. Still, the program is welcome evidence of the bursting of what has been called "the green bubble."

In "The Green Bubble: Why Environmentalism Keeps Imploding" (the New Republic, May 20), Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, authors of "Break Through: Why We Can't Leave Saving the Planet to Environmentalists," say that a few years ago, being green "moved beyond politics." Gestures – bringing reusable grocery bags to the store, purchasing a $4 heirloom tomato, inflating tires, weatherizing windows – "gained fresh urgency" and "were suddenly infused with grand significance." Green consumption became "positional consumption" that identified the consumer as a member of a moral and intellectual elite. A 2007 survey found that 57 percent of Prius purchasers said they bought their car because "it makes a statement about me." Honda, alert to the bull market in status effects, reshaped its 2009 Insight hybrid to look like a Prius.

Nordhaus and Shellenberger note the telling "insignificance," as environmental measures, of planting gardens or using fluorescent bulbs. Their significance is therapeutic, but not for the planet. They make people feel better: "After all, we can't escape the fact that we depend on an infrastructure – roads, buildings, sewage systems, power plants, electrical grids, etc. – that requires huge quantities of fossil fuels. But the ecological irrelevance of these practices was beside the point." The point of "utopian environmentalism" was to reduce guilt.

Suddenly, commonplace acts – e.g., buying light bulbs – infused pedestrian lives with cosmic importance. But: "Greens often note that the changing global climate will have the greatest impact on the world's poor; they neglect to mention that the poor also have the most to gain from development fueled by cheap fossil fuels like coal. For the poor, the climate is already dangerous."

Now, say Nordhaus and Shellenberger, "the green bubble" has burst, pricked by Americans' intensified reluctance to pursue greenness at a cost to economic growth. The dark side of utopianism is "escapism and a disengagement from reality that marks all bubbles, green or financial." Re-engagement with reality is among the recession's benefits.

[tularetom]

1. What bullshit.

I have a hybrid and every light bulb in my house is one of them curly little CFL thingies.

Is it because I feel guilty or because I am a "utopian environmentalist".

Fuck, no. It's because I live in a poorly insulated 100 year old farmhouse with a wife who doesn't know that light switches can be used to turn the lights off and I'm fed up with goddamn $400 monthly bills from the power company. It's because I hate paying $4.00 a gallon for gas so I want to buy as little as I have to. We have a garden because we are retired and have time to keep it up and because the prices for fresh veggies are ridiculous.

Earth is doomed anyway because we do not know how to keep our peckers in our pants. There are simply too frickin many of us and we don't show any signs that we have realized this.

These people are educated idiots. And George Will is an epicene hack.

[underpants]

2. Well at least I learned a new word today thanks

epicene
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epicene

great post too

[blm]

7. I concur.... ;)

.

[Speciesamused]

3. I totally agree with you here.

Over populating the planet. Big problem
that is here. Did you see where Pfizer is
giving away Viagra to people who have lost
their homes. This will be a great help. No home
No job, but lots more babies they cannot afford.
American Madness. Enjoy the show.

[underpants]

4. LOL

Viagra for the homeless??

Yeah that is EXACTLY what we need :sarcasm: humping under bridges :eyes:

[Joe Chi Minh]

9. If you're going to read by the light of the new bulbs, you'll need them to be

1200 lumen, apparently. They tend to be much lower from what we've seen so far.

If one falls and breaks, be very careful about cleaning up, because I believe they contain mercury; though you probably all know that. I could do with checking on it myself on Google, as we'll be obliged to have them sooon in the UK.

[radiclib]

5. Oh, so now the problem is too big to do anything about

Obviously these morons would oppose any meaningful government intervention to slow global climate change, but they love their little snarkfests about pathetic and ineffectual gestures like changing lightbulbs and inflating tires. I guess individuals should do nothing rather than risk the withering scorn of being branded "elitist". :banghead:

[marmar]

6. Why is this discredited liar still getting published?

:argh:

[underpants]

8. Because the evil "media-political complex" won't let him get any airtime

except the hour he gets on an "important" network Sunday talk show EVERY WEEK

:sarcasm: