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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Guardian 2000: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by OnToMars: [qb] I fail to see how making the transition to a clean economy - one that is inevitably necessary - could be a waste if undertaken now as opposed to later. In fact, when you consider these moves as investments in future profitability, the earlier they're done the better, since - as with any good investment - the earlier you invest, the greater your eventual return will be. In short, I don't see how reducing waste can be seen as wasteful. [/qb][/QUOTE]By that logic, government should mandate the teardown all of our coal power plants right now and rebuild them as nuclear fission reactors, right? And immediately replace all incandescent, flourescent, and CFL bulbs with LED? And perhaps all automobiles and lawnmowers running off of internal combustion should be banned by, say, June 2011. No, sir. Moving too fast in such directions can itself be wasteful, as countless examples throughout history make plain. Economics has inertia as much as physics does. This is why new technology is generally more expensive. It is not the role of government to force it or centrally plan the fight against it. (For instance, there was the story recently of cities in the Northern US that converted their red lights to LED technology. But since LED doesn't put out heat, they're now having to have a truck drive around so they can remove the snow from the lights manually, and at least one car accident was noted in the story (centered in some town I forget the name of) as being blamed on that. So whatever the city invested hoping to save, they're now eating in manpower and other costs. Or, imagine if we'd all been mandated to drive the General Motors EV1 from the 1990's. Then we'd have expended all that time and energy moving to nickel metal hydride batteries, when it seems now that far superior lithium ion batteries are going to be the rule of the day. That would've wasted an extraordinary amount of resources.) So it's not always best to be the earliest-adopter and economic sense be damned. And sometimes waiting is the best policy. China, for instance, is in a nice spot since whereas the US telecomm market started out with copper and over the past century has brought copper wire to every home, the Chinese and other nations that didn't trouble themselves as much (if at all) with copper have gone straight to cell towers. This saves tremendously with that "last mile" problem that eats up so much of our time and copper and effort. The market will take people to LED and such eventually as the price comes down and quality goes up and it becomes cost-effective to get them. I have two cheap LED bulbs from Wal-Mart right now. They are weak and bluish and not what most people would want, but I use them for specific spots where they accent nicely. There are better ones made, but even at Wal-Mart they are $40 a bulb. Over time and as the technology and manufacturing cost develops, though, they might come down and be bright and white. But not today. And what of tomorrow? Organic LED screens for battery life, high-efficiency bulbs for lower power bills, fusion energy production not only becoming cost effective but eventually cheaper as fossil fuel plants and fission cleanup costs are too high . . . We'll get to where we need to be eventually. But the market will get us there at about the right pace, provided the government stays the hell out of it. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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