An Inconvenient Truth

[Occhidiangela]

I guess where I'm going with this is that there are efforts to reduce the impact of buildings, roads, etc. on the environment, but you only get the spin that the media wants you to see. You don't get what is really going on because they don't interview the people that are making the efforts, they jsut interview the people that get "results" that further their agenda.

Neat post. :) I will point out that all recycling efforts have an associated energy cost. Balancing that cost against the energy cost of harvesting "fresh from the ground" materials is no trivial problem. Which costs, to include the energy to get to work, is included in the total energy cost of a process? What is the thermal cost of choosing an ashpalt or concrete as a road building material? Reflection or absorption, what is the net effect on the local and Macro environment?

What "accounting rules" are the standard, and what are the loopholes? (GAAP have loopholes, I expect bounding any civil engineering problem creates a loophole of a sort.)

What is the "zero based" cost of recycling? Not poking recycling in the eye, I believe in it and was taught as a kid to "waste not, want not."

Occhi