[GBlist] Better than OT politics

["Mark R. Johnson" <mrj53@mindspring.com>]

I am completely a newcomer to reading this list. I came to it because I
wanted to learn about BUILDING, using the kind of methods which are
highly economical. You can call them Green if you want, most people do.
I would be more comfortable with the term "Low-Impact", if other people
are willing to use that.

Why? Because I am a conservative person, past the approximately college
age when those "The World Will End" litanies are believable. I used to
think there was some possible truth to that, now I regard it as a
gigantic scam which some people use to base a career of fear-mongering
on. 

Do I think the world will exhaust its oil? No I don't, this lament has
been made many years running and the world has always changed to
disprove each earlier forecast of doom. Do I want to therefore drive an
8-mpg, 7000-lb vehicle myself? Hell no! 

Do I think we are morally wrong by using more energy than Europeans,
than Africans, than Chinese, than the world average? In my opinion not
as long as we pay for it using open market, consenting adult
transactions. Do I therefore want to live in a house which costs $3000
to heat and cool each year? Hell no!

But I would point out that improving the gas mileage of all Suburbans by
a couple miles per gallon, would do more good than the Toyota-hybrid
owners have done so far. Improving the energy efficiency of mainstream
homes by 10% is quite achievable, and that would do more good than the
small population of really "green" believers do with their own lives.
Those are essentially conservative actions, not revolutionary but
evolutionary. But after making those modest improvements and helping the
world, we can discuss how valuable it is to go another step -- if we
keep this up for an extended period, a lot of good can be done for the
world.

So we can conceivably agree on *actions* and *values* to a very
meaningful extent, without requiring we synchronize our ideologies. That
is what I would prefer to do. To me, all this off-topic jabbering about
what's wrong with the world (as opposed to more light-hearted or
humorous griping) is just a philosophy that I have considered and
rejected, and this forum does not seem like a very good place to talk it
all over again. Surely there is another forum somewhere about the
"Green" issues where you can discuss that more directly.

Regards -- Mark Johnson

P.S. A very influential book I read about 25 years ago was titled "THE
CHICKEN LITTLE SYNDROME". You can probably guess what it was about.
Right now I am slogging through "THE SKEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST" and
trying to decide how valid are the vehement criticisms printed in the
January Scientific American. But what I would really treasure would be a
book on how to build a super energy-efficient home in the hot and humid
South part of the country.

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