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Comment by GregorStocks | Hacker News Reader

A ton of carbon sounds like a whole lot, but according to the EPA (http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-resources/refs.html), a typical coal-fueled power plant puts out 3.8 million metric tons of carbon per year. Kinda puts it in perspective.

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That's one of the major complaints about consumer-focused environmentalism. Sure, it helps to recycle your trash. But if you don't deal with industrial waste, you're beating a dead horse on the margins and letting all the live ones run by on a giant racetrack.

The wall warts thing mentioned above is another good example of this. You'll save a few watts per person... but the US averages 10,000W/person of energy consumption, so it will barely be noticeable. Moving to more efficient designs is a good thing, to be sure, but it's barely relevant in terms of making things better. You'll never find enough initiatives of that size to make a dent. You need to attack major energy wasters, like cars and air conditioners if you want to accomplish something.

It's why I stopped recycling. The amount I contribute to the waste stream is insignificant. In fact I would wager that the fuel I use to drive to the recycling center more than offsets the environmental benefit. To say nothing of the wasted time, the hassle and low level stress caused by having bags of trash sitting around until there's enough to haul away.

Simpsons did it, of course:

"A half-ton of newspaper and all we get is 75 cents? That won't even cover the gas I used to go to the store to buy the twine to tie up the bundles."

I recycle a lot of stuff, but it's convenient for me, because my trash service picks it up weekly. I think we actually recycle more than we throw away at this point. But without people coming by regularly to pick it up for me, it's hard to see how it would be worthwhile.

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