Good for you, Debbie. I’m tired of busybodies telling other people what to do. The sad part is that anybody who doesn’t hop on-board the green hysteria is immediately, snubbed, shunned, ostracized.
It’s even worse than refusing to worship Obama.
I have long-time friends who won’t even speak to me because I’ve rejected the green lifestyle.
I just hope there’s a backlash, and soon.

Maxine on May 5, 2009 at 2:28 pm

Green living sounds cool but can be expensive. And the environmental benefits are negligible. Every one wants to protect the environment but the trade-offs make some Green initiatives economically unfeasible as the City Of Durango, CO discovered. The real world has a way of intruding on the fantasy of being able to live without cheap and abundant fossil fuels.

NormanF on May 5, 2009 at 3:02 pm

I remember reading sometime last year about a Senator from a Southern State (I forgot the name of the Senator and the state) who sponsored legislation in Congress requiring a certain percentage of gasoline to be derived from corn. This caused an increase in the demand for corn.
It turns out that this state also has at least one major meat producer whose feed costs went up because they had to pay more for corn due to the increased demand for corn. They were not pleased.
That same Senator then tried to reverse his earlier legislation. This would be funny were it not so sad.
The above having been said, going green might be worth it even if the science is bad and the costs go up. I state this because if going green allows us to import less oil then we deny the Islamofacist terrorists major sources of funding. However, I cannot see any other benefit.

i_am_me on May 5, 2009 at 4:12 pm

Regarding my last comment. I am not claiming that going green will allow us to import less oil, only that if it does then we should do it even if there are no other benefits and costs do go up.

i_am_me on May 5, 2009 at 4:15 pm

Debbie:
This is one of the very best columns I’ve ever seen you write. I couldn’t agree with you more.
But Deb, I have some really bad news for you. If you don’t warn people of the O’Bama administration’s plans to institute a “cap-and-trade” tax, our country is in for economic ruin the likes of which we’ve never seen. A cap-and-trade tax will have a direct cost (per the O’Bama 2008 campaign’s proposal) of $650 Billion on the American public. That’s just the direct cost because electricity is used in everything we buy.
You see! The “big talk” these days are the weenie sized INCOME tax cuts for the middle class. In the mean time, as President O’Bama basks in his glory, they’re planning to wallop us with a gargantuan tax on EVERYTHING WE BUY through a cap-and-trade system on conventional electricity generation.
The goal is to make conventional electricity generation SO expensive (due to a massive government “carbon tax”) that those green energy producers look economically viable. But the net effect will be a massive reduction in our country’s GDP and everything that goes along with it.
The economic devastation of cap-and-trade will eclipse that of the collectivization of farming in the USSR. That’s how bad it will be. If you think the American economy is in bad shape now, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!
Please do EVERYTHING you can to discourage a cap-and-trade system on electricity generation.

There is NO Santa Claus on May 5, 2009 at 4:31 pm

love the cartoon-it’s so true

mindy1 on May 5, 2009 at 4:37 pm

I_am_me:
Let me assure you that the “green energy” fad has absolutely NOTHING to do with breaking Saudi Arabia’s stranglehold on the world economy. In fact, it enhances that stranglehold.
Reducing petroleum imports doesn’t help break the OPEC stranglehold. If we use less, they merely produce less.
Ethanol provides a fine domestically produced alternative to petroleum. The oil lobby is the entity telling us that it’s causing grain prices to go up when it is actually the price of oil that sent the price of ALL commodities up in previous years.
But here’s the real tragedy. We are at the dawn of commercially viable electricity-powered vehicles. Just as our technology brings us to this point, our Democratic-Party dominated government is falling all over themselves to KILL IT with a cap-and-trade system that will make electric-powered vehicles too expensive to operate and uncompetitive with petroleum based fuels.
Debbie said it best! “Green love equals death for the American economy.”
If you don’t remember anything else from Debbie’s column, remember THAT!

There is NO Santa Claus on May 5, 2009 at 5:43 pm

These anal retentive enviros have no idea about engineering. They know that solar and wind can produce energy. They have no concept how much it costs or how inefficient it is. They dont care about the details they just want to feel they didnt create pollution so they can feel noble. Remember it is about how they feel. So they money wasted on being “green” is money wasted on “social justice issues”. So being “green” is being greedy. Greedy for their own self indulgence of ego. They don’t care that money could have gone to children getting educated or health care for the poor. These anal retentive enviros are posers who can lambaste the rest of society while all the while being inefficient. Most rational people will go with conventional wisdom until they weigh the pros and cons of the change they seek. This change to non-polluting forms of energy may be noble but at what cost? For the enviros it doesn’t matter, they want people to suffer if they don’t subscribe to their lifestyle.

californiascreaming on May 6, 2009 at 12:52 am