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Old 03-07-2009, 04:40 PM   #52
detbuch
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 7,725
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnnyD View Post
That's my opinion on it as well. But, behavior will change either on the energy producer end or the user end. If because of the Carbon Credit a company decides it isn't going to change it's behavior and is going to forward the cost to the consumer, eventually the consumer will change their behavior and switch to renewable energy sources.

I refuse to accept the "Let's not do anything at all and *blank* (insert: corporations, the economy, consumers, lending companies, government) will fix itself" attitude that some people here feel will resolve all our problems.

This society has *reaction* as opposed to action attitude. What I mean is there is no foresight in this country. No one tries to avoid issues before they happen. People wait until the absolute worst case occurs and then want the government to respond and fix it right away. People only think about now and never about tomorrow.
Unfortunately, issues don't exist until they happen. We are constantly warned about consequences due to new behaviour, and there is usually disagreement about what will happen. Hasty action usually leads to worse problems than predicted consequences. No one knows and only the most prescient can predict how things will actually shake out. It would, seemingly, be wonderful if we could invent a prediction machine that produced a 90% or better success rate. Meanwhile, passionate arguments by those certain of their knowledge abound. Hasty "action" is, at best, hit and miss, but it is usually more destructive than helpful. Against all intuition, the most efficient response to new behavior is to let the competing elements work through the arising problems. It's slower than doing something right away, but more correct in its outcome and will come to the best solution more quickly as it will avoid false solutions that slow the process down.
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