The Oil Drum

287 comments on DrumBeat: October 17, 2006

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Valuethinker on October 17, 2006 - 9:06am

The kicker on this is all the EU countries have to agree.

It's quite difficult to make that happen. I'm not exactly sure of the Constitutional process, but there has to be a Directive, and it has to be Enacted.

So don't hold your breath, the EU does nothing in a hurry. We are better at producing hot political air than real legislation or change.

This one will happen, if it happens, because at the consumer and voter level, the EU citizen cares enough to make it happen.

I'm sure our politicos will go back to arguing about 'important' things, like whether 8 million Bulgarians get EU work permits when they join the Union.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

expat on October 17, 2006 - 1:19pm

I agree that the EU is very cumbersome at best, which is why the other two examples, of 'voluntary' improvements in energy efficiency and Greenpeace's 'free market' effort to force change are also there.

Generally, most Americans who fit into the doomer camp seem to find it hard to imagine that societies can actually plan for the future and then implement those plans.

Obviously, entropy wins out in the end, which is why the catabolic collapse perspective seems an interesting tool for analyzing such essentially universal processes, but in my opinion, the idea that everything ends is not all that insightful.

In other words, to quote William Shatner -

Live life
Live life like you're gonna die
Because you're gonna
I hate to be the bearer of bad news
But you're gonna die

Maybe not today or even next year
But before you know it you'll be saying
'Is this all there was?
What was all the fuss?
Why did I bother?'

Now, maybe you won't suffer maybe it's quick
But you'll have time to think
Why did I waste it?
Why didn't I taste it?
You'll have time
Because you're gonna die.

Yes it's gonna happen because it's happened to a lot of people I know
My mother, my father, my loves
The president, the kings and the pope
They all had hope....'

A great song, actually. Goes well with the one he wrote about finding his wife drowned in their swimming pool, or the one about how he is not the man to call if an asteriod is about to smash into the Earth.

'....I tell you who else left us
Passed on down to heaven no longer with us
Johnny Cash, JFK, that guy in the Stones
Lou Gehrig, Einstein, and Joey Ramone
Have I convinced you?
Do you read my lips?
This may come as news but it's time
You're gonna die
You're gonna die

By the time you hear this I may well be dead
And you my friend might be next
'Cause we're all gonna die'

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Search The Oil Drum with Google

Peak Oil Primers

“Where ideas are concerned, America can be counted on to do one of two things: take a good idea and run it completely into the ground, or take a bad idea and run it completely into the ground.”

—George Carlin