Eco-Capitalist

So my thoughts of late have revolved around the environment. I consider myself a pretty “green” conservative, which in most people’s minds sounds like a walking contradiction, but I don’t think so. Anyway I have a small collection of some interesting thoughts regarding energy efficiency:
1. CFLs – Compact Fluorescent Lights you may know these as those swirlly looking light bulbs, they are about 7 times more efficient in their use of energy over your standard light bulb, and they last about 12 times longer. The downside is they have a ballast structure built into the base of the bulb that contains Mercury. Mercury is a toxic chemical that requires disposal in a toxic waste site (check the CFL package, they are not to be discarded in a standard landfill)
2. Hybrid Cars – we now have a whole gamut of “hybrid” cars, trucks, and SUVs hitting the market. I have several issues on this one,
a. First is the inflated MPG numbers that are often reported, this happens across the board for the most part, in my experience Toyota and Honda are the most prominent offenders.
b. My other gripe is the fact that the Hybrids really aren’t all that environmentally friendly. While they may provide better gas mileage, they generally use Nickel Cadmium as the base for their batteries. The mining of this ore uses strip mining, and leaves a sludge that is highly acidic; it destroys vegetation and water for miles. Then you have an issue of how to deal with the battery once it is used up, that is another story though.
c. Finally, the maintenance cost is very high, the batteries are very expensive (~$5k), and don’t last beyond 100,000 miles, most are only guaranteed for 30,000. So you pay a premium on the initial car purchase, then within 10 years you get to pay another premium. Hybrids on average are about 15% heavier, this leads to an accelerated schedule for other maintenance items such as tires, axles, transmission, etc.
3. Cow Farts – These things are toxic, comprising an estimated 15% of total greenhouse gases (per myth busters). Scientists should be spending more time finding ways to streamline the digestive process of livestock, beano for cows or something.

Going back to where I started; I think that being a capitalist doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive from having environmental responsibility. My evidence that this is successful is to look at all the “Organic” food in your grocery stores, if they can charge a premium for that label then why can’t we charge a premium to sell items that are environmentally friendly. The challenge is being able to charge a premium high enough to offset any additional costs incurred to create a more environmentally friendly product/service. I don’t think it is that hard, and I think the real problem is not the additional “cost”, but the all too common misconception about “green.” I saw a survey, forgot where sorry, that said that most CEOs estimated the cost to make their company green at about a 25% premium above their current costs, when an outside analysis was performed it was found the costs would only increase 5%, on average, and that is short term. So the work that needs to be done in my mind is creating more awareness for environmentally friendly alternatives and the benefits of these products over their less friendly alternatives. However it should also be given a fair analysis, I think some of these “green” alternatives are just hype and no substance.

Finally just an interesting thought (I couldn't figure out how to create a poll): Which house do you think uses less energy Al Gore's primary residence or George W. Bush's Ranch? You could probably guess by the question that it is actually old W who has the smaller carbon footprint, how's that for some irony, or maybe it's just "An Inconvenient Truth."