Brilliant results, even on eco programs*

Bleary eyed, as usual, I staggered down to the kitchen to make myself my morning cup of coffee. While waiting for the coffee machine to do its thing, something tugged at my vision. It was the box of dishwasher soap tablets that I'd left out and on it was the catchy marketing slogan:

Brilliant results, even on eco programs

It's been bugging me for a while now. "Even on eco programs"? Does this imply that the manufacturers have done some research and discovered that actually, making obeisance at the altar of Gaia means that you may have to wash your plates twice? Are detergents becoming stronger to counteract the effects of people using colder water to "save the planet"? Does this mean even more (but different) pollution to worry about later on?

This is what aggravates me about the warmists. They're banging on about how we have to be more energy efficient, while ignoring the fact that their approach may not be the most pollution efficient and it's almost certainly not the most cost efficient.

Ignoring the fact that I think (especially this morning!) that an ice age is much more likely than a boiled planet (in the short term, anyway - in a couple of billion years, a boiled planet is inevitable) I am actually a firm believer in efficiency.

Any believer in the free market and especially anarchist-inclined libertarians is a believer in efficiency. I believe that the free market is far and away the most efficient way of delivering goods and services - but a free market, not a regulated market. And as an milquetoast anarchist, I also believe that there are a handful of services that can be more efficiently provided by the government than by the market. So I'm willing to compromise my loathing of giving money to a bunch of legalised thieves in exchange for those services. Although I accept that there are anarchist alternatives, I'm not sure that they are necessarily the most efficient alternative.

So, efficiency is key. And energy efficiency is just another kind of efficiency. So while I'm all for us being efficient, I want to be just as efficient as a can be, while still getting properly clean clothes and hygienic dishes out of the dishwasher. I don't think it helps anyone if I have to wash my dishes twice or three times because it just doesn't work as well on a colder temperature.

I certainly don't agree with sponsoring Big Eco companies with billions of dollars in the name of something that smells very suspect indeed. "Eco-energy" either the most efficient way of delivering energy, or they need to go back to the drawing board. Artificially inflating the price of traditional energy sources to make Eco-energy look efficient is nothing other than theft.

Homo sapiens has made a remarkable amount of progress in its short time on the planet. I can't see why we need to undo that and place ourselves under an even greater yoke than the one we already labour under.

*Bit of a rambling post, this one.