[Greenbuilding] ENERGY STAR Clothes Dryers Program Launch

[Reuben Deumling]

Lots of very good arguments, Matt. I'd only weigh in on one of your points:

On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 6:52 AM, Matt Dirksen <dirksengreen at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> Look what happened to all the various products over the years since
> EnergyStar began.
>

I'm fairly familiar with what happened to the various products. With or
without Energy Star many of them use somewhat less electricity
[individually] than they did. As a whole, though, we aren't using much less
electricity. As far as I know, plug loads in the US continue to rise.

"The variety and number of electronic devices presents one of the biggest
challenges to the energy efficiency industry. The average household now has
25 to 30 of them – compared to 13 or 14 in 1995."
http://www.calmac.org/publications/BCE_FINAL.pdf

>From *Through the Looking Glass*
"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the
same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice
as fast as that!"
[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race#cite_note-0>

This is no solution. Efficiency as a policy is missing the boat. We need to
come to terms with our overall energy consumption, take responsibility for
it. We can wait for experts and standards and manufacturers to give us
slightly more efficient versions of the products we already have--or still
covet--or we can accept that we've overdone it, that to get ahead of this
we need to recognize the consequences of acquiring all these gadgets and
ask ourselves if we really need them all, can afford them--or could we do
without them?
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