“There has to be a lot of shrillness taken out of our language. In the environmental community, we have to be more humble. We can’t take the attitude that we have all the answers.” – Fred Krupp (EDF), 2011.
Thirty something years apace, what can anti-CO2 activists claim for their efforts? Answer: not much, except for an incalculable amount of resources wasted to travel and politick around the globe.
Consider this bottom line. In 1988, the year the global warming alarm started, the global market share of carbon-based energies was 88 percent. Today, it is just a bit diminished at 85 percent. Total usage of natural gas, coal, and oil in this period increased by two-thirds, with CO2 emissions rising 61 percent. Fossil fuels–dense, mineral energies–rock!
With this in mid, consider the article below from Greenwire (E&E News), dated April 5, 2011, by Colin Sullivan.…
“Plastic is light, easy to store and transport, comes in an endless variety of textures and shapes and can hold almost anything…. Unfortunately, plastic is much more difficult to recycle than materials like glass, aluminum or paper.” – Eureka! Recycling
The eco-snoops and lifestyle police don’t like plastic, the stuff of oil and gas. But the rest of the world lives by plastic–and benefits. The boom in feedstocks has produced a boom in plastic capacity. Reported Beth Gardiner for Yale Environmental 360 (December 19, 2019):
…Companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, and Saudi Aramco are ramping up output of plastic — which is made from oil and gas, and their byproducts — to hedge against the possibility that a serious global response to climate change might reduce demand for their fuels, analysts say.
“No electric car since 1902, regardless of battery or drive train, had been able to compete effectively against its contemporary internal combustion counterpart.” (– David Kirsch, The Electric Vehicle and The Burden of History. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000, p. 203.)
“When government tries to pick losers and winners, it typically picks losers. Why? Because in a free market, consumers pick winners to leave the losers for government.” (- Robert Bradley, Jr. Electric Car Verdict: Another Government-Subsidized Bust, September 26, 2012.
How many times has it been stated that electric vehicles are ” a new technology.” Such was the thesis of a 2017 Think Progress article, “A Koch Front Group is Putting out Misleading Attack Ads on Electric Vehicles.”
If only journalists such as Samantha Page knew energy history.…