Yes, tailing ponds hold such deadly toxic of many chemicals that they don't even know how to get rid of humanly, they were talking about to pump it down old oil sites. I was watching a show about fracking, same here, it's polluting ground water to a massive scale! This is from a write up in: US Department of Defense is the Worst Polluter on the Planet While official accounts put US military usage at 320,000 barrels of oil a day, that does not include fuel consumed by contractors, in leased or private facilities, or in the production of weapons. The US military is a major contributor of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that most scientists believe is to blame for climate change. I was looking up to give me a picture in comparison to our oil sand production, it turns out they use as much a day as Suncor can produce. We're in a vicious circle and needs to be broken if we want a clean planet for future generations. World wide arms reduction and population control should be implemented now! Here is a link that might be useful: Suncor oil production

Shax, most of the people in my valley have similar attitudes. By far, most are on the grid. A few are on solar. There's not frequent enough wind at a sufficient level to go with that. And small hydro requires the right sort of creek on your property. But independence is what a lot of people value in my rural area. Possibly back 25-30 years, there would have been a group here who would have tried neighbourhood-level power genration, it's not likely the case now. The principle would have to be modeled by other communities first, then people here might be willing to consider it seriously. I think of places like Davis, California (which I've never visited -- but have read about, from time to time). I tend to feel that if hydrogen is the near-future's fuel for cars and transport, then it will only really be a good thing if coupled with renewable-sourced electricity as the means to split the water molecule to derive the hydrogen. (That or bacterial production of hydrogen.) Home set-ups may make sense for a small portion of the population, but since the majority of people in most of the world now live in cities and suburbs, home set-ups in themselves probably can't be terrifically significant to planet Earth. Too individually expensive and demanding of maintenance. But they can be useful in some circumstances -- and they sort of make a statement of a positive sentiment, too. J.

I think there are a few rose-colored glasses being donned here. I remember the '60s. Back then, you could figure on replacing a washer and dryer about every five years. (One exception was old Maytags, which ran forever. But they were very pricey, and I recall my mom saying that friends of hers who had them hated them because they didn't clean very well.) It seemed like my dad worked on ours constantly. Besides the frequent breakdowns, there was regular maintenance: the agitator spindle had to be lubricated every three months or so. Once a year the washer and dryer motors had to be oiled. And the dryer needed a new belt about once a year. Oh, and washers didn't have self-cleaning filters then. There was a oblong-shaped screen thing that had to be pulled out of a nook in the tub and cleaned after every load, or else the next load wouldn't get clean. The timer would go out in about three years. Same for the dryer element. And when you finally bought a new set, you didn't sell the old washer and dryer; you took them to the dump because they were completely used up. You could figure on the TV breaking down about once a year. I recall making many trips to Sears with my dad and a bag full of tubes, to use the tube tester. If that didn't get it, time to call the repairman. You could figure on a TV lasting about seven years before the CRT or something else expensive failed, and then it was time for a new one. In the kitchen, the stove needed a new element somewhere about once every two years. That more or less coincided with the schedule on which the fridge broke down. Diswashers weren't a problem because nobody had one. Microwave ovens were unheard of. When a car got to be about four years old, it was worn out. My dad kept a '61 Buick for nine years and I remember his friends teasing him about that old car. Every few thousand miles it ate a starter solenoid. Dad always kept one in the trunk. He got to where he could change one in about 15 minutes. Even a new car needed a quart of oil every fourth or fifth trip to the gas station. Tires were good for maybe 20,000 miles. Shocks for not much more.

I think by and large most politicians, especially those at the national level, are only trustworthy in the sense that they can be trusted to put staying in office above all else, and can be trusted to do whatever the people funding their never-ending campaigns demand of them. I realized a few years ago why the most unforgivable label that could be applied to a politician is for them to be called a flip-flopper. Because if you find a candidate who agrees with you on your important issues, and then spend 10's of millions of dollars of your hard earned money buying the office for that person, and then that politician, due to changing facts or circumstances, votes differently (AKA flip-flops) , you've wasted that money that you otherwise could have used to fix up your yacht. A good first step would be comprehensive campaign finance reform, where the central rule would be: If you cannot vote in a given election, you cannot donate even one dime (directly or indirectly) to a candidate in that election. A good second step might be term limits, but only if they are done in a meaningful way. As in once your allowed terms are over and you are out of office, you must be all the way out. No joining a company and coming back as a 'lobbyist', no serving as a senior adviser to your hand-picked replacement, and none of the other dozen ways they'd doubtless come up with to skirt the law if they couldn't get their Supreme Court buddies to throw it out. But this is just wishful thinking since for either of the above to become law would require the selfsame, power-mad politicians to enact it. Which is about as likely as the next President being a Sasquatch who rides to office on a unicorn.