I just proof-read my comments and realized how rough my prose is in spots. Sorry about that. I think I got my point across though.

Also I just realized that I am the on who introduced the phrase “pollution limits” into our discourse - sorry for accusing you of being too vague on that count!

and/or

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060523000408.htm.

And lastly, I leave you with the following thoughts:

“…the hippies of the 1960s did understand something. They were right in fighting the plastic culture, and the church should have been fighting it too… More than this, they were right in the fact that the plastic culture - modern man, the mechanistic worldview in university textbooks and in practice, the total threat of the machine, the establishment technology, the bourgeois upper middle class - is poor in its sensitivity to nature… As a utopian group, the counterculture understands something very real, both as to the culture as a culture, but also as to the poverty of modern man’s concept of nature and the way the machine is eating up nature on every side.” -Chapter 2

“If God treats the tree like a tree, the machine like a machine, the man like a man, shouldn’t I, as a fellow-creature, do the same - treating each thing in integrity in its own order? And for the highest reason: because I love God - I love the One who has made it! Loving the Lover who has made it, I have respect for the thing He has made.” -Chapter 4

“The man who believes things are there only by chance cannot give things a real intrinsic value. But for the Christian, there is an intrinsic value. The value of a thing is not in itself autonomously, but because God made it. It deserves this respect as something which was created by God, as man himself has been created by God.” -Chapter 4

-”Pollution and the Death of Man” by Christian Theologian Francis Schaeffer

1. It seems, I suppose, that yours and my communication is suffering from a lack of specificity. When I said “green laws based on sound science”, I meant “those laws whose topic is the environment, that are in fact based on sound science”. I didn’t mean to address water heaters per se, but simply the grouping of laws that regard nature, that are in fact properly motivated and properly written. For example, laws curbing mercury emissions would fit into this category (cf. “Idaho lawmakers are a bunch of dumb-asses.” for a timely treatment of sliding standards on this matter in Idaho, for example).

2. The reason that your Prius reference qualifies as a slippery slope fallacy (the link for which apparently got lost…?) is because you gave no argument or evidence to support your implicit claim that stricter building codes (which, within the actual bounds of my argument as clarified by my previous comment, are, more specifically, those “green” building codes whose purpose is to protect the environment in ways that are scientifically supported to be life-saving), would inevitably lead to very specific and arbitrary governmental prescriptions for vehicular consumption. The window panes aren’t the issue. The issue is your categorically and abstractly dismissing all legislation that you arbitrarily and vaguely label “green” out of hand without specific treatment.

3. This point isn’t applicable to the discourse in light of my previous two.

4. “Pollution limits”? Can you be any more vague, please? If a substance is properly called “pollution”, then yes, limiting it is scientifically warranted! I suppose you and I may have disagreements about which substances are to be labeled “pollution”. I have a history of calling Al Gore and other Global Warming alarmists out on their bogus claims and fraudulent organizations (cf. my Global Warming thread). But that doesn’t mean that suddenly all “green laws” are categorically irrelevant! Surely mankind is laced with the capacity and depravity to adversely affect his surroundings! But surely we also have the, qualified, capacity to check ourselves as well. I agree, we should be reasonable and scientific about it. We should pursue consensus, and we should be outraged by those that hijack environmentalism in order to fear-monger and wrangle votes and carbon credit purchases and nobel prizes. But, like I said, that doesn’t mean that we can’t rebut them with equally forceful but pure and true environmental standards.

Personally I am not committed to defending “pollution tax” categorically in this thread. I am just rebutting your categorical rejection of “green laws”. You seem to take the worst efforts of those standing up for the environment (or disingenuously doing so), demonstrate their absurdity (for surely they are!), then draw an equals sign and chalk all “green laws” up to bad science, fraud, manipulation, and leftist politics. Your arguments here are a bit straw-many, false-dichotomy-y or just generally unparsimonious/uncharitable.

I just don’t want to see us conservatives throwing the baby out with the bath water. Let’s go ahead and rebut specific bills/politicians/organizations, without wholesale disregard for simple good stewardship.

The fact of the matter is that green laws based on sound science can make life a crucially safer. I am willing to argue for this claim if need be. Let me know.

Fallacy #2: You say “If I am required to install double paned windows what stops lawmakers from slipping a little farther into “Buy one of those Toyota Prius””. Please cf. Slippery Slope. Let me know if you have any questions.

The reason we have to enforce these practices on other people is twofold:

1. We share the environment. If you want to poison your immediate environment in a way that doesn’t violate my right to life, go ahead.

2. Green laws based on sound science may be more than life safening, they may be life-saving. You yourself admit the benefit of enforcing speed limits! Why not pollution limits?