I think that's a good attitude, Thucy.

I'm coming from a Canadian who is dedicating his career to an alternative energy source to fossil fuels so it's not like I'm in bed with the tar sands. If I thought it were possible that this would lead to an early demise of the tar sands then, yeah, I'd certainly rejoice at the pipeline being canned.

However, it seems to be far too much of a juggernaut - both politically and economically. Is it possible to support anti-tar sand bills and pro-alternative energy bills but still support he pipeline?
I ask it somewhat rhetorically because I'm yet undecided but I have to think that we're at the harm-management stage for the tar sands.

Not that that is much consolation to starving people, homeless people, sick people, poor people, refugees, or people with a 50 year life expectancy. Alas and alack, it must have been worth our forefathers' 2 cents/kilowatt-hour power and plastic bottles. Am I right?

Geofram, nobody is suggesting that. But if you plug your car...

^word up.

this is why electric cars are good. not because the ones today don't end up running on fossil fuel too, but because once you have electric cars you remove the need for gasoline for cars. thus 80% of electric cars in france would run without any contact with fossil fuels.

those batteries are a bit ugly but.. hey. you've got to do something.

Electric cars are just coal cars. And the pollution involved in making those batteries is crazy. We need to learn how to make more efficient fuel vehicles. So much of the energy in gasoline goes unused.

Well, I would say that it's not really a juggernaut, because it has caught the attention of activists. Projects are easier derailed than accomplished, and that is the one strength of the environmental activists in this case. The one weakness of course is China's whore-ishness with energy, stopping that would take pressure on Canada from the US as I mentioned, which is less likely. But we're sealing our fate if we do it ourselves.

It's a bit like this. Crazed man runs up to you and says to you and your friend: "I will give you $20 if you shoot this baby with this handgun." Your friend says "yeah.. I'd do that. But hey, Yonni, if you want to, go for it."

Do you do it and get the $20 profit just because you "knew your friend would have done it anyway?" If so... you may be right from an economic perspective but morally it's quite weak. Better to try to convince your friend not to do it, because, you know, not worth it. The value of the baby's life would be economic externality in this case.

Idk. I'm sort of cynical and exhausted with this shit though, which is why I tend to support environmentalists in most of what they do, even if almost all of it misses the mark. Because the more they succeed the more legit the environmentalist movement will become, and it is that, not their specific actions of today, that have the potential to save our sorry asses.

What if you make the batteries with nuclear power.

Also there is a lot of promising research for other kinds of car fuels.

We should probably be pouring a shit-ton of money into that. As well as, as I said, getting off this rock.

Talk about capital goods, amirite.

My biggest issue with all these crazy environmentalists is they have no education in the sciences and engineering they suggest.

I agree with you most of them are either naive stupid ineffective lazy insane or misguided. But as I said the core thing they are doing - insisting that the environment is actually something we need to think about - is a good thing. So on principle I wish them success whatever their current silly project may be, hence support for something like electric cars, hybrids, anti-Keystone actions.. etc.

The wiser environmentalists are of a similar mind. For instance they understand that cute mammals are what people get excited about, so they play up their extinction threats with the true goal of saving their much more valuable, but far more boring, vast habitats.

See: pandas, majestic birds of prey, rain forests, etc.

You get the idea.

Thucy, I was talking about you.

Geofram, check out the share of energy production in Ontario. Fossil fuels are quite a small percentage. Yes, building the batteries is energy and resource intensive but that's only getting better and is still far outweighed by consequences of burning gas in your car.

Thucy, I think where that analogy breaks down is that piping it to the US is better environmentally than sending it China, no?
It's closer to choosing between shooting one baby or shooting two.

50% of America's electricity is coal. Coal is so much worse than oil in regards to the environment. Add the pollution from batteries, and you'll begin to see why any electric car today is even worse than a petrol one.

Right, Coal is awful. That's why you have to move back to where there is a more progressive energy policy.

Indeed, having now been through quite a few courses in "environmental sciences" I can testify that a large number of people at the core of this movement, totally legit environmentalists, are a bit... uninformed, barring that, hugely idealistic. It is supremely frustrating to watch them talk to each other and get all indignant about... unimportant shit. And then they sing the praises of... harmful things.

These type of people tend to have a lot of disdain for more Julian Simon-esque cornucopia-ists that are mostly concerned with doing things like developing technologies that allow our habits to be less destructive. They would rather change the habits. But that is, to be perfectly frank, fucking idiocy.

These poor fools don't understand it would take nothing less than the apocalypse to change the fact that the globalized world is a world of consumers. The West has found the meaning of life - consumption. No band of hippies, even armed to the teeth, will ever change such a thing.

What they do instead, without realizing it, is get people to wonder why people might care so damn much about the environment, hopefully inspiring smart science-y people to do some real shit about it (on this count things are going okay as it stands, as I said there is a lot of encouraging research, and the existence of fields like "environmental engineering" are is cause for hope).

So there you go. Thus my opposition to Keystone XL may be seem a bit abstract but, to the contrary, I think it involves some very real things.

This in fact alludes to what has always been environmentalism's chief weakness - when it's a battle between environmental desolation tomorrow and yummy food or a nice car or a cruise today, everyone knows what human beings invariably choose.

You're opposed to the oil, not the pipeline. The environmental risks to the pipeline are minimal.

Yes, you're correct.

As you will see from my posts the pipeline itself is not a huge deal. It is the battle over the pipeline which is more important. My point is that the more victories environmentalists rack up, the better the prospects are for environmental policy being taken seriously. This actual pipeline is not a hugely important battle. But if fossil fuels are ever going to become a thing of the past before market forces phase them out (read: before it's too late), the environmental movement of this world is going to need to be a lot more muscular. You get more muscular by lifting weights, no?

Also, Yonni, the emissions created by simply sending the oil to China would not be very significant in the big scheme, I don't think. Indeed as I said the pipeline itself is not very significant as an environmental issue. Politically however, it is very important *to* the environmental movement.. if you see what I mean.

"You're opposed to the oil, not the pipeline"

You can be opposed to the pipeline because you're opposed to oil.

Not really. Because the oil is going to get used whether it's sent to Texas or not.

Re this ^:

See earlier reasoning - this "race to the bottom" stuff is what is going to kill us. You get off drugs, then you tell your addict friends they should stop. You don't just all sit around saying "no YOU hang up first."

Uh oh... Thucy's on a rampage again...

By the way, the polution from the batteries in electric cars has to take into account byproducts form the manufacturing process as well as the disposal of spent batteries. They don't have an indefinite battery life after all.

Batteries are such shit. They're good for the short term, but a terrible idea for long term car production.

True but instinct tells me that the lifetime environmental hazard of the batteries is less than that of the gas it replaces. It'd need a pretty decent study to convince me otherwise.

They may be more environmentally sound, I'm not sure about that and I'd agree with you, Yonni. For cars, though, they're a terrible idea. Think of all the gadgets you have that use batteries and think about how terrible the battery is. Eight hour charging is not a good solution and is impractical for the future of automobiles.

I'm not car aficionado but I thought performance was something that was already coming around and was only going to get better.

And, no, I'm not going to be convinced by you comparing car technology to the battery in my phone.

Nissan is currently working on quick charge posts for the Leaf that will provide 80% charge in 30 minutes, which isn't half bad. The bigger problem is providing the infrastructure necessary to accommodate large scale deployment of electric cars. Don't get me wrong, Yonni, I love the electric car and think it's a major leap forward in progress, but it's not sustainable, particularly if it's still getting power from the grid and from non-renewable sources. By the time battery technology and charging infrastructure is in place, hydrogen will be a more viable power source for automobiles is my guess

I remember reading that today's electric cars have to travel 80,000 miles before the carbon footprint from a petrol vehicle catches up. And this only included the byproducts from manufacturing the batteries, not the coal used to charge it or disposal of spent cells.

Geo, I'm going to have to say proof or GTFO. ; P

A quick google suggests that you are correct for high-efficiency gas (or diesel) cars compared to electric cars in regions with a percentage of coal plants. However, compared to the average vehicle in Ontario and with the province's high percentage of Hydro/Nuclear, I strongly suspect that isn't the case here.