MOJO article: Are Shorter Showers Beside the Point?

Mother Jones' e-magazine just came out with an interesting table and short article, "Are Shorter Showers Beside the Point?" When you look at the table it's about everything you'd expect -- the things individuals do make no impact, while the things industry does makes all the difference. The biggest reduction in CO2? Reducing it 13.2% by using half the amount of energy produced from coal and replacing it with wind turbines.

The article, written by Steve Aquino and Gary Moskowitz, states that "we could trim the nation's ghg footprint by almost 30 percent over the next 25 years by getting business to invest in efficient cars, appliances, and buildings as well as cleaner energy, with incentives including tax credits, subsidies, offsets, and fewer 'regulatory hurdles.'"

But that's the problem. We need to use less of these appliances, build less, and regulate more. tax credits are fine for industries that need to have made these changes to cleaner, more efficient methods of production, but subsidies? I'm tired of mollycoddling industry who have their corporate heads so far up their asses they can't think beyond making a ton of money at the expense of the environment.

The problem with GM is a case and point: they were so worried about shareholder investments and the huge markup they were getting on gas-guzzling SUV's that they forgot that the time to start making more fuel-efficient cars was 10 years ago. Now the U.S. is bailing them out and not because we want to, but because millions of jobs are at stake if the U.S. auto industry goes under.

Okay, going back to my thesis, now...