Wired Magazine 10 myths about the environment - Page 2

TBaslim · May 22nd, 2008, 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by coyoteshockeyfan

The Used Car vs. Prius article is far too simplistic in order to come to a reasonable conclusion. First of all, if we are calculating an individual's carbon footprint (which will likely be different than the car's lifetime carbon footprint), then it is misleading to put the associated environmental costs in producing the car solely on the first owner as it is probable that the car will more often than not change hands at least once. The carbon footprint of producing the vehicle should be partitioned based on something along the lines of the expected value of how many miles the car will be driven by each owner.

The second thing that jumped out at me was "A single gallon of gas contains about 113,000 Btus, so Toyota's green wonder guzzles the equivalent of 1,000 gallons before it clocks its first mile." This is an extremely poor substitute for a legitimate sustainability analysis, as it simply takes the total energy consumed and does not discriminate in terms of the sources of that energy. One gallon of gasoline at 113,000 BTUs of energy has a significantly different carbon content and environmental impact than 113,000 BTUs of energy being consumed by the factory to make the vehicle, yet the article treats them as the same despite having different impacts.

Agreed, and again, that doesn't even bring up the missing factor of tailpipe emissions differences between the used car and the prius. Carbon footprint is a big deal, but not the single measure of environmental impacts.

Gaddabout · May 23rd, 2008, 07:53 AM

Some of these suggestions seem short-sighted. What's good for the short-term probably isn't good for the long-term. That said, I think tightly-constructed urban living maximized by public transportation and community emphasis is about as green as capitalistic America could ever be. We won't give up our cars, but we might keep them in the garage more often if it were easier to walk or get their by bus/train. New York City is a great example.

The by-product is almost always a livelier city with a higher quality of life. There's a financial incentive to create that lifestyle.

Russ Smith · May 23rd, 2008, 08:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TBaslim

I hear ya, but isn't your example a simple case of fraud and a poorly regulated/executed system, not a fundemental issue with the concept of carbon credits?

Either way, the Wired authors stretched pretty hard to make contrarian articles to draw viewer eyeballs. Kinda like cable news these days.

Yeah several of their arguments are borderline fraud themselves but I do think it's good to generate debate. If you look at the site that's exactly what it did.

And yes this was just fraud with carbon credits but the entire system of trading carbon credits etc isn't working in Europe. That was the immediate reaction from companies who ratified Kyoto they jumped into the carbon credit markets because it's the easiest way to "reduce emissions" without actually reducing them. As you've probably heard Europe's efforts to meet Kyoto have been a colossal failure and one of the stated reasons is there was so little actual reduction in emissions because people just figured hey we'll just buy credits to offset that.