Energy efficiency or Governmental intellect deficiency

Why such a focus on the reduction of Carbon Dioxide and CO² as the main environmental agenda. Measurable targets are not the way the environmental agenda should be going because it results in only a small number of areas being focussed upon at the expense of others.

Such is the case in the reduction of carbon dioxide or CO², which will only be replaced by other problematic emissions perhaps worse than CO² for the environment. This is already happening through the strivings to reduce CO², as energy efficiency has become the main buzz word. However its intentions are not as transparent, clean and pure as they may first appear.

Perfectly good usable products are being scrapped because they are supposedly high energy consuming, for example CRT TV’s. Which are being rapidly replaced by LCD screens, which are being driven ahead of their technological improvements by the exaggerated claims that they are energy efficient. However one of the by products in the production of LCD modules is nitrogen trifluoride, an agent that is a formidable greenhouse gas. It’s been calculated that it is 17,000 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide and is increasing at an alarming rate in the atmosphere. See the following on this finding in the guardian and new scientist.

How then can their claims be justified, this premise of energy efficiency is not green technology it is far from it. By buying a LCD TV or monitor you are making a substantial contribution to greenhouse gas far greater than a lifetime of CO² from an inefficient traditional CRT TV set.

The automotive industry has also gone silly over reducing CO² because the government are now taxing it. But they are ignoring and actually contributing to the problems that have been associated with Diesel cars for years (of which sales are now rapidly increasing because of low CO² emissions). Such as the link to the causes of asthma and severe respiratory conditions as well as smog in many cities. See the following for details: America Lung Association

Energy efficiency as a green agenda is no more than a misleading headline, a buzz word that may have well been invented by a tabloid newspaper for all the paradox’s, lies and misleading truths behind it. Energy efficiency was the reason that CFC’s were put into refrigerators’ all those years ago, which significantly contributed to the hole in the ozone layer.

I’d rather efforts were focussed on producing energy from sources that don’t produce CO², then it wouldn’t matter really how much energy you used. The problem with this solution is that it requires industry and the government to do something themselves, other than finding more ways to extort money out of their citizens through ridiculous claims and guilt trips about the environment.

The reason energy efficiency is chosen as a focus is because it pays. People go and buy new products they don’t need in order to do their bit, replacing perfectly good products that are then sent to landfill. This attitude only helps the greedy industrialists become richer and the treasury coffers swell due too CO² taxes. Of course government could argue that it is also creating jobs when really it only employs a few shop assistants and a couple of overworked civil servants. As these new energy efficient products are most probably manufactured in China, in an extremely energy inefficient factory, with serious working practise violations and suspect waste disposal into the local environment. But let’s just keep those wheels of industry turning and not ask those difficult questions hey.