A laughingstock by choice
California now has a law “making it mandatory for cars to be labeled with global warming scores.” What a joke and waste of taxpayer money. The state government is also tackling the previously unknown but important problem of cement — it too causes global warming, you know. Sacramento Bee:
California’s historic attempt to put an entire state on a low-carbon diet as a way to stave off global warming is going to reach into every corner of the economy, changing the way we live, what we drive and many of the products we use…Californians will use more than 12 million metric tons of cement this year – nearly one-third of a ton for every man, woman and child in the state.
But there is a problem. The production of cement creates a lot of carbon dioxide, the gas scientists believe is causing the temperature of Earth’s atmosphere to rise. The 11 cement plants in California produce about the same amount of CO2 every year as 2 million passenger cars driven on the state’s roads…For every ton of lime produced for cement, nearly a ton of carbon dioxide is produced as a waste product…
The state could order the plants to use different fuels as a heat source, or to use more efficient equipment that creates less CO2 in that part of their process. But if those changes drive up the cost of making cement in California, cement from elsewhere – Nevada, Utah, even China – could become more competitive. And if imported cement replaces California cement, the result could be more greenhouse gases…
(Note that, as with oil, one proposed solution for the new “Can’t Do” America is to let some foreigner do the dirty work, and the prissy Americans with their exquisite consciences can just import the stuff.) Maybe California should get those fellows who were going to build the mud-hut village in Virginia and ask them for a solution to the awful problems that science and prosperity cause.
July 8th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Re the car labels: One wonders if the car labels are the foundation for a discriminatory tax policy to be implemented at a future date?
July 8th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
“Re the car labels: One wonders if the car labels are the foundation for a discriminatory tax policy to be implemented at a future date?”
Right on feeblemind. We can’t just hate them guzzlers without punishing them… and get a little money for the state while were at it. I love a big, nosy, badgering nanny state, don’t you?