Well, that's a mature reaction

[Torvald Von Mansee]

http://www.slate.com/id/2251658/

[Platapus]

no, more like a Post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy.

Assuming that there is truly a correlation between Republicans and an increase of energy usage and an additional correlation with the HER program; the hypothesis that the HER program caused the Republicans to increase their energy usage is sophistry.

One should ask why economists were conducting this study. :nope:

[tater]

The price of the utility bill is pretty much all the incentive you need. If the cost doesn't bother you, then it doesn't bother you.

For example, if you make hundreds of thousands for giving a short talk now and again, and are a board member of a computer company, and make zillions trading carbon credits, then it's OK to use more electricity than a small town for your mansion—least if your last name is "Gore."

[UnderseaLcpl]

An ironically condescending thread title, given that the article specifically mentions "illusory superiority". Then again, I've thrown stones from my glass house plenty of times, so I can't really judge.

You know, there's another kind of "illusory superiority". It's been called many things, but my favorite term is "the conceit of the annointed". It's a phenomenon we witness all the time, in every failed government program with unintended side effects. Yet, the state keeps trying and wasting valuable capital and freedoms (which it must reduce in order to gain more capital). The phenomenon is not unique to the state. Private ventures often suffer from it as well, though the market is significantly less tolerant of waste, so the annointed aren't around for very long, and the damage they do is limited (except when the state bails them out).

While there almost certainly are Republicans and other rightists who use more energy because they feel they have more leeway, I think it's more likely that they take the Limbaugh approach: "Turn your lights on during Earth Day to tell the SOBs off." I tend to agree with that view. I think the market, where people make their own decisions, is the best and most practical way of supporting progress in every way, so long as theft, fraud, and coercion are punished adequately. There's a large body of evidence supporting that case, not to mention the value one places on the freedom that a lack of regulation and taxation provides, both societal and economic.

I figure that's probably what most Republicans, and especially Tea-Partiers, are thinking. Theirs is not an immature reaction, they simply don't buy the pro-earth agenda, and why should they? Every time the market prevails it creates new products or finds new resources. As economies develop and become prosperous, industry gets cleaner because people have the luxury of caring about such things. Furthermore, the most supposedly destructive acts ever perpetuated against the environment and mankind with demonstrable harm have always been perpetrated by state institutions. Burning oil fields, Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez Spill (Cpt. Hazelwood, an alcoholic, retained his employment under the ADA), the Bhopal disaster, the Aral Sea, everything sunk, burned or nuked in every war, ever, etc. etc.)

So why should anyone care about reducing energy consumption? I reduce mine when my bills start going up. That's it. The market tells me when to switch providers or be careful with the lights or drive less often. I don't need some incompetent bureaucracy or political entity trying to guess at what I should and should not do. Moreover, I don't need them wasting, nay stealing, my money to support their efforts. If it were purely up to the market, we'd have plenty of energy and a lot of competing energy companies, like we do in Texas. I switch companies all the time, depending on who gives me the best deal. California has to import power and has power had power shortages. Gee, I wonder why?

It's because the regulators get in the way and mess up the market system. They screw with prices and supply and demand when they can't possibly understand what they're doing, which is why they fail over and over again. Some regulation is necessary, but not nearly as much as one would think. All that is needed is a framework, and market muscle fills in the rest.

Perhaps that still sounds like an immature opinion to some, but I think there is a lot more immaturity in thinking that you somehow know what is best for millions or billions of individuals who are, in all likelyhood, just as good as you. That goes double for people who spend years doing what is required to obtain a political office, rather than studying anything productive or relevant to the policies they create.

[August]

Sounds like a big load of crap to me.

[CaptainHaplo]

Funny how it singles out republicans here... when I can challenge anyone here to show me a poor democratic senator or congressman.....

For that matter - while the republicans are supposed to be the "party of the rich", Al Gore's wallet grows fat off the idiocy of the dirt loving tree huggers. While the republicans are the ones that are supposed to be "racist", its the Al Sharpton's and Jesse Jacksons that make their money stirring up racial divides, its liberals who insist that affirmative action (a form of reverse racism) be kept, even after the Supreme Court has found that promoting minorities over better qualified caucasians is wrong (the firefighters case recently). Its liberals who insist that we must repeal "don't ask, don't tell" - when only the leftists feel it is their right to flaunt their sexuality, and the majority of society thinks that what adults do in the privacy of their home is their own business, but keep it off the streets and don't shove it under everyone elses nose...

I could go on and on - but you get the picture. Just another self righteous "right bad, left good" article in many ways.