Day: February 13, 2007

GE – we bring good things to life (and kill them with Diesel exhaust).

Clean Air Watch – Blog for Clean Air

General Electric Co., which is running a marketing campaign promoting itself as environmentally friendly, has pushed to weaken smog controls for railroad locomotives in rules about to be proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The rules, which could take effect between 2011 and 2017, are designed to cut smog and soot levels and would replace standards adopted in 1997. Since the rules would apply to new locomotives and could require changes on older ones, they would have a big effect on GE, which dominates the nearly $2 billion-a-year North American locomotive market. While the nation’s other locomotive maker and diesel-engine makers say they are prepared to meet the proposed new standard, GE argues it is “unlikely to be achieved” and has proposed a weaker one.

I have nothing to say, just another example of the plutocracy-protectionary principle, nothing new, same old Modus Operandi.

This blog(ger) is not prone to order people around, but it is going to now. STOP DRINKING BOTTLED WATER. If you live in a reasonably well taxed/well run town in the first world, just drink from the tap. If your town’s drinking water sucks, get a water filter/purifier, use a refillable drinking water system, and lobby your town council hard to improve their drinking water infrastructure so you can drink from the tap.
Pablo Calculates the True Cost of Bottled Water TreeHugger

In summary, the manufacture and transport of that one kilogram bottle of Fiji water consumed 26.88 kilograms of water (7.1 gallons) .849 Kilograms of fossil fuel (one litre or .26 gal) and emitted 562 grams of Greenhouse Gases (1.2 pounds).

Yes, he corrected his calculations down to 6.7 gallons, but that is an awful lot of wastage, criminal wastage in fact.