
Originally Posted by
tarajunky
Unfortunately, I believe that most "green" living ends up being more harmful than good.
For example, all of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs that are the big fad now contain mercury. They save some electricity, but will eventually end up in landfills and leech into the groundwater. Meanwhile, LED lightbulbs are just a couple of years away from being widely used, and will save even more energy with less toxic components.
The same thing happened with MTBE in California. Back in the 80's the greenies were very concerned that gasoline wasn't being fully combusted in cars, which caused smog. So, they mandated that MTBE be added to all gasoline in California, to help fully combust the gasoline. That worked fine, but MTBE is also very water soluble and very stable, and not very healthy. It started leaking out of gas storage tanks into the groundwater, and is now contaminating groundwaters all across the state. Now instead of blaming themselves for mandating MTBE, they're blaming the gas stations that leaked it.
Sure, the gas stations are partly responsible, but leaks happen. They should have predicted that leaks would contaminate the ground water, and realize that mandating MTBE was a bad idea, but they still required it to be added for over 15 years.
Not only did they harm the environment more than smog ever did, they were so arrogant they refused to admit it was a mistake and overturn it for so long.