There's something I've never understood coming from critics of the environmentalist movement: Where do you get the idea that people want to drag down the standard of living?
Generally I get it from the people in the environmentalist movement who seem to be against the application of power to solve everyday problems because it's 'wasteful' somehow. For many, their agenda is to push their own values on to me in the name of 'conserving' things - electricity, air, water, environment in general, etc. A small example: you should dry your clothes on a line to save the electricity a dryer would use (typically despite any other considerations: schedule, availability of clothes lines, it's raining outside, etc). Some environmentalists would deny me dry clothes for a day or more because its' raining outside. That lowers my standard of living.
Spending $3 on a light bulb will make me poor?
Not me, but someone much poorer than me. The shame of all of this CFL business is that it's a fairly large upfront cost: you'll spend hundreds of dollars to replace all of the bulbs in your house to save maybe $5-$10 a month. It's definitely a choice I'd make, but I have more than a hundred dollars sitting around. If you live in the People's Republic of California and you can't buy the $.50 incandescent anymore, suddenly the $3 you spent on the bulb is money you can't spend on gas or food or something else. The poor don't see the benefit of saving money on their bills monthly because they don't have the upfront money to invest in replacing all of their bulbs, and when push comes to shove the far left environmentalist position denies the poor folk $2.50 to spend on food. Or $2.50 to spend on cigarettes and booze - it's their money anyhow.
What exactly brings down my standard of living when I ... drive in a more fuel-efficient manner (NOT buying a different car)? All of these are 'environmentalist' choices, yet they cost nothing except the effort required to modify my behavior slightly.
Are you serious? Do you know what a Prius costs in comparison to a cheap car? Add $10K or so. That's a car for the rich. And it's such a marginal improvement in gas mileage it's hardly worth it. Remember kids, you save a lot more gas going from 15MPG to 30MPG than you do from 30MPG to 60MPG. I can't believe any environmentalist would approve of that choice BTW.
For me it comes down to environmentalists NEVER performing a cost/benefit analysis on the measures they propose and the costs are always on the end user - us. Is $3 here and $10 there that bad? Not individually, but together, yes! Some people do NOT have the means to afford the difference between $.50 and $3, and not everyone can spend $10K more to have a car that saves you $5 on gas a month. But the furthest left environmentalists would make cheap incandescents and marginally less fuel-efficient cars illegal and push the cost onto the poor because they always assign a value of infinity to the smallest and most insignificant part of nature (of which man is obviously not a part) and assign next to nothing to the potential suffering of their fellow man.