>>When it comes down to it, people are all for stopping global warming - until they have to live without:
>>
>>- air conditioning
>>- airplane trips
>>- big screen TVs and monitors
>>
>>Call me a skeptic, but if it comes time for real choices, people are going to keep their conveniences.
>
>My point is that they don't actually need to give up much, if they just employ their brains.
>
>- AC: insulate your house, so you don't waste energy cooling your yard
>- airplane trip is still consuming less fuel per passenger than a car, for the same distance. If they didn't start replacing small planes with small jets (which consume about three times more fuel - heard this from a pilot), the ratio would be even better. And if there were fast trains like they have in France or Japan, that'd be even better than that.
>- I have a revolutionary solution for the TV: skip the advertisements altogether, which would then reduce the airtime by about 30% :). The downside to this is that people would watch TV more. Though, any of those industrial-size-washer TVs with projectors or huge tubes are just ridiculous.

Maybe a HDTV is an energy waster. I'm sure it is. But I love mine. I don't watch any more TV than I did before. It's just a hell of a lot better picture.

As far as skipping the ads, I find myself increasingly watching ballgames that way. (A significant portion of my TV viewing). If I can avoid finding out what is going on I like to set the recorder, a fake TiVo, give it a head start of an hour or so, and then watch the game, zipping through the commercials. Usually the recording just about catches up to the live broadcast around the end of the game that way. Beautiful.