The lack of self awareness, and irony in the beliefs of some of the interviewed … it burns!!

Which do you want: a little mercury inside a bulb or lots of mercury in the air and in the fish we eat? (energy savings from more efficient light bulbs reduces the coal burned; coal is the major source of airborne mercury and the mercury in fresh water fish.)

Of course you don’t have to buy a cfl. You can buy bulbs without mercury. You have three choices: cfl, halogen and led. 20 years ago you only had florescent and incandescent. Your choices are expanding, not contracting.

How is expanding the choice in home lighting a bad thing?

How do we collectively reduce harmful pollution? Apply regulations to industry or to consumers? I’d like the pollution regulations to occur at the point of least harm and most economic benefit. Setting efficiency standards gives the flexibility for industry to sell whatever technology meets the standards while achieving pollution reductions. It also let’s consumer buy what they want within limits. Clean air is one of those shared resources that only government can protect us from polluters. Give your alternative or is this one of those cases where you have a god given right to spoil the environment and everyone else be damned.

Sure, since both pollution and reproductive choices have implication in lifespans, we can apply a cost benefit analysis to see how different choices work out for the common good.

Fertilized eggs are pretty cheap. I can get lots of unwanted ones down at the fertility clinic for free if it weren’t for regulations. Over time, as that egg grows and develops relationships, it’s value to society grows. The cost to kill it, emotionally, medically, grows too.

So if we want to disassociate sex from procreation (and I think we have a more civil society without so many horny people running around) we want to make sure that we reduce the cost of unanticipated fertilized eggs as much as possible. That means handing out contraceptives to everyone who would risk having sex without concern for the procreative consequences since the cost to society of an unwanted child is greater than the cost of contraceptives. Maybe even work more on a male contraceptive. A child should not bear the sins of their parents.

I think you are really stretching to turn a pollution argument into an anti-abortion argument, but I’ll take the bait.

But a squatter can claim adverse possession of the womb if They weren’t evicted during the first six months. …essentially regulation of the womb because late term abortions of viable children who could then be adopted is a value to the community provided it does not unduly burden the health of the mother (the same self defense argument for shooting an intruder in your house applies here.)

Back to the list. Why shouldn’t people be encouraged to develop healthier lifestyles and we regulate industry that is at cross purposes with healthy living; we are all on the hook for health care costs.

Sugar is a drug. The pushers of sugary drinks should be encouraged to replace the high sugar content with artificial sweeteners which is what will happen if we regulate the caloric content of drinks. (individuals still have the option of buying multiple drinks.) Sugar Is more harmful to health than pot. So why do we outlaw pot but refuse even the minimal regulation on sugar?

Special Ed is officially out to lunch. What mental order do you have to employ to get to that jackassed equation? It left the “normal” people in the room slack-jawed.

Type II Diabetes is a dangerous and expensive disease that costs society in health care costs, lower productivity, and uncomfortable accommodations on airplanes. Sugar is the source of the extra calories that creates obesity, a precursor to diabetes.

If you don’t want to regulate the cause of diabetes, ok, but then don’t claim that government should be able to regulate weed use because it “might” be harmful. And Jack, no reefer madness lies.

From a practical level (e.g lower taxes) we’d want to look at keeping people working and paying taxes instead of on disability sucking up medical resources. And yes, government subsidy of agriculture is partly to blame but putting government on a diet isn’t likely to take much off our fat asses.

Recycle CFLs to eliminate the mercury in the landfills. Loudoun has hazardous waste events and I save up the burned out CFLs to give to them.

“Recycle CFLs to eliminate the mercury in the landfills”

Good luck with that enforcement. People do what they will, and that introduces them to landfills. I suppose your answer is a SWAT team for enforcement.

Sure have, Ed. I’m a contractor and I’m there weekly. LED’s are prohibitively expensive in light of the failed economy. And that light bulb facility in Winchester canned 2500 folks. Don’t worry, McDonnell and some good ‘ol Republican elbow grease restored those jobs in other sectors.

Diving into the actual science!!! Oh, the horrors.
How dare we get into the minutia that kills your “feelings”.

The natural cane sugar is brown. All stuff comes from natural resources, but that doesn’t make everything natural. Corn is natural. Corn syrup is man-made.

More attempts to stay away from the topic that you brought up… Which political philosophy provides the most personal freedom of choice? And who do we trust to have our best interests in mind: government or corporations?

That’s a self-serving definition of political monopoly. Current party in power and the ability to use that position to bar competition (e.g. Redistricting, passing laws to reduce opposition votes, using government projects …military bases…to buy votes, passing legislation that favors constituents) is my definition of monopoly. Toggling between polarized political monopolies is not a stable political system and it is very expensive restructuring a government every 4 years. You have to have a reason bigger than a personal dislike for Obama to want to tear it all apart and start over. Good reform will occur with bipartisan support when parties accept that neither side is going to get all the marbles.

Misspelling Democratic Party and Obama in a derogatory way and claiming everyone in an opposition party in positions of power are either ignorant or liars is pretty personal. If your party does not prevail in the election you have burned any bridges to compromise. That’s how we got ACA instead of bipartisan legislation. Independents do not find this political gamesmanship appealing.

Having an opinion that something is a fact doesn’t make it so.