Please don’t bring up entropy again… The Earth is an open thermodynamic system, and the laws about entropy always increasing apply only to closed systems. Leave the misapplication of thermodynamics to the fundies who can’t stomach the notion of evolution.

Now to the main point, as petroleum reserves do start running out (and given the fact that proven petroleum reserves have been increasing this could be a century away), the rise in prices will make other forms of energy economical and provide a great deal of incentive to identify alternate sources of energy. And yes, as prices go up, people will start to conserve energy in earnest. That’s what prices do, they signal the relative scarcity of something.

Thus, these demands that people be forced to restrict consumption are not effective. They do not encourage innovation. They merely make the energy industry more rigid and less innovative while time-shifting problems slightly into the future.

All the government subsidies encouraging uneconomical energy production and consumption, such as ethanol or the construction of hybrid vehicles etc, are counterproductive. We who oppose them are not luddites. rather, we understand economics. We recognize that these publicity stunts, especially ones that seem to equate energy consumption with sinfulness, are the modern equivalent of Pat Robertson blaming Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans’ debauchery – the superstitious bleatings of yet another doomsday cult.

The governemtn’s plans to encourage alternate energy development will turn out to be like the U.S. ogvernemnt’s efforts to encourage wider interstate commerce in the early 19th century. Back then, the federal govt invested heavily in a network of canals that took decades to build and siphones massive quantitites of tax-dollars out of the treasury. In the end the canal network was never really used. Why? Because by the time they were finished, railroads had been invented, and the canal had been made obsolete. just think how much better off we all would hav ebeen had that money not been thrown away on such a futile venture, if the workers had actually worked on projects that were useful instead of wasting their labour on producing something that is so useless that people barely know they exist?

Much of the tax money that will be spent on these efforts will go to waste. You may think that is progress. I don’t.

Luddites are you!

I’m actually quite proud of myself.

It was quite an enjoyable Saturday evening, with a nice bottle of wine and family.

And, since all the lights were on, I could actually see what the crap I was doing.

But hey, at least they’re turning off light bulbs. If nothing else, I’m sure the roaches in their lower-middle class apartments nearby the liberal arts theater appreciate it though. We should, after all, think of the insects, and not just the children, earth, etc.

The reason why the price of energy keeps climbing is due to a combination of
a) increased demand due to growing population/increased wealth creation throughout the world
b) increased political instability due mainly to the U.S. government’s war/interventions in energy markets
c) the plummeting value of world currencies due to inflationary central bank policies, especially on the part of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Most energy consumption is non-discretionary. Organizations such as steel-mills, refineries, hospitals cannot moderate how much power they consume. In the end discretionary energy consumption, such as turning off a few lights in houses as part of this publicity stunt will probably not even make a noticeable reduction at power generation facilities.

with that being said, I doubt google really turned off the lights like they claimed on their web-page. Furthermore this idea that energy consumption is ruining the earth that the proponents of this publicity stunt are pushing reminds me more and more of some millenial cult predicting the end of the world unless people return to some older, purer way. That of course, pisses me off. It’s been several generations since a woman died in childbirth in my family, and I would like to keep it that way.

I won’t say what Google does for our environment, because I don’t need to…

Actually, this was the whole point of the post and the ensuing comments, so it would be helpful. Would you care to elaborate on what an eco-friendly company Google is?

If there is one thing that religious fundamentalists can’t stand is having their balloons popped.

Seriously though, you fans of energy conservation are great. Thanks for making the power I consume cheaper by reducing your demand. ;)