This does not shrug off the need to clean up Mother Earth and treat her like the precious entitiy that she is. It does put a spot light on self empowering finger-pointing politicians.

True science stays open to all of the possibilities.

Rail, of course, is much more efficient than air travel. Much of travel in the US could actually be dealt with pretty efficiently using high speed trains, especially on the coasts where there actually _is_ the density. At 200 mph, this would mean people could go from San Diego to Los Angeles in an hour, and from San Diego to San Francisco in four to five hours.

The most fantastical implementation I’ve heard talked about, though, is SWISSMETRO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissmetro).

In my heart of hearts, though, I’d prefer to see systems that are more robust and less susceptible to, oh, a bombing (or even a simple crash).

Unfortunately, it seems gov’t often succumbs to the argument/spin that this high profitability means ‘more jobs’, partly because mass lay-offs are obvious and pointed … a message which only really has heft when it’s so painful to lose a job (and health insurance …)

Nema’s link failed, Stephen. But check this one out: http://www.epa.gov/region02/mercury/mercurylamps.html

I’d be interested to your thoughts (Josh) about the trade-offs you’re willing to make during this experiment: what sort of financial trade-offs and, in particular, what sort of quality of life trade-offs you’d accept. You’ve emphasized the ways in which making environmentally sound decisions benefits you financially as well, which is really cool. I imagine, though, that during the experiment you’d do the environmentally right thing even if it costs you a few bucks. The QoL trade-offs are harder to quantify, and the issue struck me from your very first post: cold showers. . A friend told me when I was looking for my first apartment that two critical items I had to check for were a) natural light, and b) hot water pressure. About b), he said, “No matter how bad things are, if you can get a good hot shower in the morning, you have a chance for the rest of the day.” I’m not sure I should feel any more guilty about taking a hot shower than I do taking showers, period. (I mean, I could get by showering once a week. Or less…) On the other hand I think I should feel guilty if I’m unwilling to take the convenience hit of waiting a few seconds for my TV to warm up when I’ve turned off the power strip for the day. There seem to be lots of things, both little — like hot showers — and big that really make a big QoL difference. I’m be really interested to hear any thoughts you had about where your line is.

Lauren’s post made me think of it because, I speculate, one of the reasons environmentalists can come off sounding a little self-righteous is that most environmentalists’ arguments I’ve heard just don’t mention QoL…which makes people think (wrongly) that environmentalists don’t care about it (or, at least, don’t care about other people’s QoL).