Buzz
If the road to hell is truly paved with good intentions, then the route to climategeddon must surely be built from the pages of the green agenda. For decades, well-meaning environmentalists and politicians focused on their public image have pushed for planet-saving measures that often miss the mark. These initiatives include:
10. Carbon Offsetting
Imagine you're environmentally-conscious but have to fly. Enter carbon offsetting: for the cost of a coffee, you can pay a farmer in a developing country to stop burning coal or fund a company to plant enough trees to offset the emissions from your flight.
If it seems too good to be true, that's because it likely is. The entire concept of carbon offsetting is so fundamentally flawed that environmental writer George Monbiot likened it to pushing food around your plate "to create the impression you have eaten it." The numbers simply don’t add up: if Western countries decided to offset even fifty percent of their emissions targets, developing nations would need to somehow start emitting "negative amounts of carbon." Commercial offsetting is equally problematic; investigations regularly uncover companies "fudging their figures" or "outright lying." Without an industry standard, there's nothing to gauge improvements against, allowing companies to claim anything they wish.
9. Organic Food
Organic foods are often marketed as eco-friendly and free of chemicals; however, this is not entirely true. The harmful substances we use in agriculture were created to solve efficiency problems; without them, we'd return to square one. For instance, a liter of organic milk can require up to eighty percent more land to produce than "regular milk." This leads to deforestation, habitat destruction, and other issues that aren’t typically associated with organic. But it gets worse: several studies have found pesticide levels in supposedly organic foods; and researchers have concluded that eating them is no healthier, while their production may even contribute to "increased pollution." The gap between what we expect and what we get from organic food has grown so wide that even staunch environmentalists have abandoned it in favor of local and sustainable options.
8. Water Conservation
If you're male, you've likely encountered the waterless urinals at McDonald's. And, if you were thinking about it, you might have even considered them a good idea; after all, conserving that much water must surely be beneficial, right?
Well, not if you want to avoid the constant "stench of urine." It turns out that stagnant urine doesn’t mix well with copper piping, and by that, we mean it actually corrodes it. Chicago City Hall ended up decommissioning their waterless urinals after this exact issue led to waste flooding the toilets. But what about day-to-day water conservation, like in your own home? Maybe—unless your neighbors are constantly flushing. In Germany, people have become so efficient with their water usage that their sewers are starting to back up, forcing utility companies to push huge amounts of water through just to "keep them working." As a result, water rates have soared, providing little to no benefit for the environment.
7. Insulation
One green group claims that a single town with below-average insulation can waste as much energy in a year as the BP oil spill. By my calculations, that’s something like the equivalent of a bazillion oil spills happening every year. No wonder governments are subsidizing home insulation.
Which is fantastic, as long as people choose the right type. See, skinning cats and insulating houses have one thing in common: there’s no universal approach. Some materials, like mineral wool or denim, are incredibly eco-friendly—while others, involving blown hydrofluorocarbons, are like punching Mother Nature in the face. It’s estimated that this poisonous junk has a global warming potential nearly 1,500 times greater than carbon dioxide, meaning it’ll take about ten lifetimes to offset your environmental impact. Even worse, as the demand for insulation rises, so does production, leading to more pollution, and so on, until Armageddon.
6. Wind Turbines
Anyone who has ever lived below an RnB-loving neighbor knows that hearing things you’d rather not can be incredibly annoying. The same applies to wind turbines.
No study has yet found a connection between turbines and physical illness, although there may be a psychological one. According to that link, while those living near community-owned turbines rarely report health issues, people forced to host them in their village often do. Complaints typically center around the low-frequency humming noise and shadow flicker, a sun-blocking side effect officially classified as an annoyance, but likely enough to send most of us into a blind, murderous rage. Obviously, they could just build these turbines farther away or take the Denmark approach and give locals a stake in them, but that might be too much to ask.
5. Electric Cars
Alright, Science, now you’re just messing with us. Regular cars are like environmental cyanide—how could electric ones possibly be worse?
It all depends on where in the world you are. As a Norwegian study pointed out, there’s no advantage to driving an electric car powered by a coal-fired power station. If you live in a town with an outdated grid, all you’re doing by driving your electric car is proving you don’t understand science. To make matters worse, the production process for green vehicles is more polluting than your average gas-guzzler, and this will continue until market pressure accelerates technological advances. At the current rate, you can expect that to happen sometime after the last trumpet.
4. Biofuels
The Biofuel movement has been on the decline for a few years now, but that didn’t stop Germany from trying to make the switch in 2010. By introducing E10 to gas stations at 10 cents per liter cheaper than regular petrol, the government hoped to boost the country’s already solid green credentials. You can probably predict how this turned out.
What happened next was the opposite: a joint study by nine European environmental organizations found that large-scale biofuel production had led to deforestation and a shortage of farming land in South America, increasing the risk of famine. But it’s not just E10; for years, environmental groups have opposed biofuels, claiming that their production wastes water and causes pollution. Yet, the government continues to offer subsidies, perhaps because Obama despises petroleum and the environment.
3. Forgoing the Scientific Method
Imagine you’re in a field where the planet's future might depend on your actions. The smartest minds on the planet agree with you, governments are starting to pay attention, and even the most skeptical members of the public are beginning to see things your way. What’s the one thing you would never do?
How about undermining the scientific method? In 2009, a leak of emails briefly made the world question the legitimacy of climate research. While claims of falsified data were quickly disproven, the basic foolishness of those involved is almost undeniable. Instead of relying on peer review to weed out poor research, some researchers at the CRU at UEA apparently used their influence to silence debate, censor information, and act as though they had something to hide. The fallout from this scandal severely damaged public trust in their research and made a joke of their claims to scientific impartiality. This wasn’t simply shooting yourself in the foot; it was blowing your foot off with a cannon.
2. Recycling
I’m not saying recycling is a bad idea; I’m just pointing out that its implementation isn’t perfect. As a global business, recycling is driven more by profit than by environmental concern. This can lead to some strange ecological consequences: for example, if demand for recycled goods decreases domestically, suppliers may ship them halfway around the world to offload them, all while ignoring the carbon footprint. Additionally, recyclable materials are often discarded for no other reason than their appearance. Take PVC—when it’s melted, it turns a weird brown color that most consumers avoid like Bronie slash fiction, so recycling centers often just burn it.
Then there's our own lack of understanding. Most of us have no clue which plastics our city actually recycles. We just toss everything in the recycling bin, which often leads to delays at the processing plant and ultimately results in the materials being incinerated anyway.
1. Energy Efficient Light Bulbs
Remember the story about a woman who had to call in a hazmat team to clean up a shattered CFL light bulb? Seems a bit over the top, right? It’s not like there’s enough mercury inside to do any real damage, is there?
Actually, there is—if you’re on the production side. In Jinzhou, China, one factory tested its workers and found 121 out of 123 were suffering from mercury poisoning, with one employee's levels being 150 times higher than what’s considered safe. Another factory had to hospitalize 68 of 72 workers, while the reopening of abandoned mercury mines has caused entire regions to be destroyed. So why this sudden surge in hazardous substances? It's due to demand from the UK and the EU, where we seem to be hell-bent on going green, even if it means ruining every other country on the planet.
