Ian Royle

That’s right, a 15 year old Cutlass Sierra.  By putting in new plugs and filters and getting a few more years out of it my carbon print is staying much lower than if I bought a new hybrid.  You see the car is already made, no further steel, plastic or other textiles need to be mined, refined, shipped, shaped and assembled to produce my car.  It’s already here, already made and any further output it may have by moving my sorry ass from home to work and back is minimal compared to the massive amount of energy that needs to be expended to produce one hybrid.  I’m gonna say it.  The current environmental debate is the exact same debate we had years ago when AIDS popped up.  Hysterical fear made people make irrational decisions.  Everyone was afraid that AIDS would wipe the swathes of humanity off the planet…but it didn’t.  Everyone, looked to the government and politicians for salvation, celebrities lined up on stages, benefit concerts were organized and we forgot about it a few years later.  And that is what is coming for this current hysteria and the hucksters Like Dr. S and Al G. are going to fade into obscurity.  These events pop up every decade, and no one can predict what it will be.  But it’s like a haunted house, people like being scared.  They pay their money go in the door, play along, get frightened, safely and emerge out the side door into the lights of the midway and carry on living life as they always have.  But for a few moments they weren’t bored and that is what AIDS hysteria was and what environmental hysteria is now, the people clamour to hear the pundits today like they wanted to hear the shills speaking about AIDS for the same reason.  They are bored.  As it was then and now, AIDS wasn’t a threat to most people since it was confined for the most part to a specific subset of lifestyles in society, gay males and intravenous drug users.  So if a person wasn’t promiscuous and didn’t mainline hard drugs the threat to safety was negligable.  And today, most people know that the threat to our future posed by greenhouse gasses is a phantom, it isn’t real but the hysteria is, and we aren’t bored.  And the proof is in behavior and not words.  Everyone says they are concerned about the environment but very few have undertaken the sacrifices required to reduce greenhouse gases.  Even Dr. S and AL G haven’t done anything to reduce their carbon footprint.  If people were really scared they would change their behavior, but they aren’t.  They’re just going along with this newest fad and it is starting to get stale.  I can hardly wait for the next big scare.