I am not a big believer in the government directing social policy…but one thing bugs the hell out ofme! I don’t waste energy…knowing that oil is a finite resource (and minful of pollution) I try to conserve energy as much as possible. But why does the governemnt allow businesses to do idiotic things, which waste HUGE amounts of energy?
-take bottled water. Why ship those heavy glass bottles of water. ALL THE WAY FROM FRANCE? Water id H2O, dammit! The energy waste in shipping that cargo of (mostley glass) is unbelievable!
-lights left onin office buildings. In Boston,you can see office buildings lit up as late as 12 PM! NOBODY works that late-why don’t they shut the lights off?
-retunable cans. In the state I live in, you return your aluminum cans for a 5 cent rebate. Well enough-it makes sense to recycle aluminum. However, the return centers don’t crush the cans-they bag the cans and ship them back-so you have a mostly-air cargo being shipped-what a stupid waste!
Shopping malls-every one I’ve been in is too damn hot! Why heat the atrium areas?:smack:
Oil may be a finite resource, but energy is not.
Take your argument back 150 years. Why does the gov’t allow companies to waste coal produced energy? Surely we’ll run out of coal some day, and then we’ll be doomed.
The free market is the only way to determine what is wasteful or not. If consumers want water from France, it’s not a waste.
Perhaps the gov’t should require that we all drive Geo Metros. After all, anything that uses more gas is “wasteful”.
Well the government doesn’t allow companies to waste energy; the cost of energy allows companies to waste energy. As energy prices raise so will the cost of doing business. Business will attempt to maintain their profit levels and will either raise prices or drop production costs. Mind you, business isn’t the only one that would be buying the expensive energy, so will you.
You could argue “Why does the government allow for pollution costs to not be taken into account when energy is produced?”.