Not me! I want the cheaper prices and the convenience. I warmed my truck up this morning using my remote start. Works great!

There is NO "real" connection between our desire to have environmental protection and having to pay higher prices to get it. That's as phoney a proposition as the reasons given why we're supposed to need a HST and Carbon Tax.

Every year there is a rise in 'real' efficiency ~ in our ability to achieve more 'output' from less 'input', in all our 'productive' processes.

Since all 'productive' processes involve the transfer of materials as they exist in nature into a form that is useful to Man, they ALL involve the use of 'energy'.

And our ability to use 'energy' more effciently , whatever its source, has multiplied and continues to multiply with each passing year through the 'savings' wrought by scientific discovery and technological advancement.

To give one small example. The great steam locomotives that once hauled freight and passengers across this country only utilised about 10% of the energy avaialble in every ton of coal they burned. The other 90% was dissipated as useless heat. Diesels replaced them because they were much more thermally efficicient ~ they used 'more' energy from 'less' fuel, and were therefore far cheaper to run. In time, electricity, more efficient still, will supplant the diesels here , as it already has elsewhere.

The exact same thing has occurred right across the whole spectrum of industrial advancement. The "real" costs of all 'production' are found in all 'consumption' over the same time period, and they are falling, not rising.

This, however, is currently not accurately reflected 'financially'. In fact, it is often completely inverted.

Which is one of the, if not THE, main causes of environmental degradation. It forces us to continually try to produce more than we need or even desire, often of completely superfluous and useless goods, and do so in ways that are anything but 'efficient', simply to generate enough "incomes" to be able to access the things we do need and desire.


Herman Goering, Hitler's henchman, said it best as this applied to the 'economic miracle' his boss had worked in Nazi Germany ~ "Guns before butter." It is no different today here.

We already pay a high enough price for our refusal to make the "figures" fit the "facts", instead of the opposite. And, so long as this is so, attempts to impose still higher prices and taxes on us will only make the environmental situation worse, not better.

Sort of like Canadians being able to afford higher rates for cable.

What a crock of dewy. At first I was all for this green revolution, then it went corporate, now we have to pay through the nose.

In my home and at my work place I still make an effort to reduce, reuse, recycle. As far as paying extra for a product because the manufacturer is doing the right thing, they can go pound sand.

Manufacturers will find that they do not need to charge more, they only need to do the right things and consumers will buy their product over the competitor that is not doing the right thing.

Right on Loki. This whole green thing seems to be about how much money companies can make from it.

If recycling is so viable, why do I have to pay some company to take my materials away? If the materials themselves have some sort of economic value, you would figure that there would be somebody in town more than willing to take my recyclable plastics, etc. for free.

Want to save the environment. Expect less.

Do we really need that third TV in our house. Do we really need a 2400 sf house. Do we really need to use all that chemical to do the food engineering. Do we really need to have A/C in our homes.

Have a bit of inconvienence in our lives, and we will save money and our environment.

I would love to see a real good farmers market in our city. something comparable to Granville island. Support local producers.

Went through the toy department, You really want to save the environment. We should start boycotting buying toys with so much packaging. That is a total waste of resources.

"Do we really need that third TV in our house. Do we really need a 2400 sf house. Do we really need to use all that chemical to do the food engineering. Do we really need to have A/C in our homes."

Maybe, maybe not. But I do not want to have some watchdog organization or governing body telling me what I 'need' and what is 'acceptable'. There's a slippery slope if there ever was one.

Don’t give up. Don’t hang with the cynics, the angry-hearted, the whiners, the blamers, the negative minded. Hang with those who believe in love, hope and beauty and then work with them to make this a reality. This is our planet. This is our time. This is our call to action. - Guy Dauncey

"Have a bit of inconvienence in our lives, and we will save money and our environment." ~He spoke.
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And just what are we supposed to 'do' with all this money we've saved, He spoke?

You sound like the founder of "Earth First!", who proclaims that "...all our problems, social and environmental, could be solved by phasing out the human race."

But he doesn't step up to be the first one "phased out", does he?

Physically, it is impossible for us to "live beyond our means". Tomorrow's meal may be little or nothing, but it can't be eaten today. Not without becoming "today's" meal. If it is physically possible to have that "third TV" and a "2400 square foot home" to put it in, then it should be "financially" possible to PAY for them, fully, from the financial 'costs' that were distributed as 'incomes' when these things were made.

After all, that's the premise of classical economists, including our very own MBA degree holding Premier. That COSTS=INCOMES=SPENDING FROM INCOMES. That the whole financial system as it now stands is always fully "financially self-liquidating". That everything made can be bought and paid for from the "incomes" distributed in making them.

If it couldn't be, then what's the sense in making them, for no one can BUY them?

Socredible, obviously you are disenchanted with the premises of the classical economists. What economical philosophy are you endorsing as a more viable alternative?

You said that it is physically impossible to live beyond our means. Why have there been millions of mortgage defaults in the US due to people assuming mortgages which were beyond their ability to pay for! They didn't have the means to make the payments.

Just curious, of course.

The $$$green movement$$$ strikes again. Give us money and we'll save your soul. Environmentalism is the latest bogus religion.

Not disenchanted, Prince George, it's just that they are now false premises. They should be true, but they are not. The current system is in need of corrections to make them true again.

The present financial system is NOT fully 'financially' self-liquidating, and the exponential growth of unrepayable debt is proof of that.

People in the USA were encouraged to assume mortgages (that they wouldn't normally have qualified for based on their incomes), because the new home mortgage, since the end of World War Two, has been the principal vehicle for introducing necessary 'new credit' into the American economy.

Unfortunately, for the USA, home ownership levels there have now risen to the point where there is no longer a sufficient pool of qualified applicants that are 'credit worthy' for a new home mortgage.

Also, since the economy is NOT fully 'financially ' self-liquidating, COSTS are *greater* than INCOMES. Which are, in turn, then *greater* than SPENDING FROM INCOMES, necessitating continual increases in "Consumer credit" to make up the difference. This ultimately and increasingly fuels 'inflation.'


Without this continual injection of 'new credit', what is entirely capable of being made 'physically', would not be made. For want of 'money' with which to buy it.

"Financially" we cannot fully pay *FOR* what we've done, *FROM* what we've done. Not in the economy as a whole, as it presently is. "Physically" we fully 'pay' *FOR* everything we've done as we do it, or it couldn't be done. The 'Figures' do NOT currently REFLECT the 'Facts'.

They could easily be made to do so, by implementing the principles originally developed as "Social Credit".

Which were never implemented by the two Parties of that name that once formed the governments in Alberta and B C. Alberta tried, during the Depression, but the necessary legislation was disallowed by Ottawa on Constitutional grounds, since it involved some Provincial regulation of banking and finance.

In B C, a long running economic boom fueled by burgeoning export markets for previously largely un-utilised resources precluded any attempt. By the time the boom was over, the original Social Credit principles had been forgotten.)

Another way in which 'new credit ' is introduced into the American economy is through 'military spending', but there are limits to that when there are no longer any equal adversaries engaging in the same kind of spending to the same, or greater degree.