March 22, 2007
Prius hurts the Earth
Wretchard examines an article claiming that the Toyota Prius is less eco-friendly than the GMC Hummer, and decides that it depends on your assumptions going into the analysis.
One of the most subtle problems in public policy is to decide what exactly one is trying to optimize. By changing the definition of Green-ness to include total pollution rather than simply minimizing a "carbon footprint" it may well be the case that a Hummer is Greener than a Prius. But given that Canada is a friendly country an energy security case might be made for being more dependent on nickel from Ontario than oil from Saudi Arabia. By that measure a Prius might be better than a Hummer. The sage advice of all public policy professors is to redefine a problem until it is expressed in terms favorable to one's self. And, faced with the energy security argument, it might be countered that since a Prius is made by a "foreign" corporation, then that additional factor might make it "better" to buy a Hummer after all. And so on.
The sad fact about most of these environmental question is that it may require us to trade off one set of objectives against another. Maybe the "world" should decide which it values more. In the case of "Global Warming" for example, many of the policies designed to reduce "Greenhouse Gases" may exacerbate poverty in the Third World. How does one rank different goals -- such as for example reducing "greenhouse gases" and reducing hunger -- and combine them into a single policy?
There's always been a strong suspicion that much of the moonbat eco-weenie movement would prefer the Third World-types to avoid the horrors of industrialized modernity and just stay in their authentically primitive agriculture-based societies, progress be damned. I wonder how they'd choose if the choice was between ending hunger -- Give that kid a sammich! -- or global warming.
Posted by Mike Lief at March 22, 2007 06:20 AM
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Comments
I vow to live no more lavishly than my eco-leader Al Gore.
Posted by: Bub at March 22, 2007 05:38 PM