Personally I don’t hold to this whole global warming thing. In the 70's it was overpopulation and we would run out of food in the 80's, then it was global cooling and the hole in the ozone (don't hear anything about the ozone hole anymore) and now it's global warming. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against taking care of our environment. I like clean air, all for finding new sources of energy, obvious that we do have water shortages in some areas of the country, however some of the solutions are….well… just plain stupid.
Take green toilets for example. No, no, no, not toilets that are painted green to remind us to be kind to the environment, I am talking about the “low-flow” verity. For years standard toilets used between 3 & 5 gallons per flush. The house I grew up in was build in 1972 and had one of these standard toilets, and boy did it work. You could flush a football down that thing with no problem (I know because me and my brother did). Our toilet was not just the final resting place for a few expired gold fish, but hamsters, gerbils, gunnie pigs and the occasional small dog. 35 plus year in that house and my parents never owned a plunger.
A few years ago we built a new home and discovered that due to government regulations you can only install new, low flow toilets with a 1.6 to 2 gallon per flush rate. Translation, my 3 year old goes to the bathroom uses a couple pieces of toilet paper and I am headed to the garage for the plunger. Now I am not a math wizard but lets see:
Old toilets: Take care of business, flush (3 gallons of water down the toilet, literally)
New toilets: take care of business, flush….flush again, plunge, plunge, flush, plunge, flush, plunge,flush (at 1.6 gallons per flush that is 8 gallons of water plus extra carbon dioxide emission from your heavy breathing from all the plunging and not to mention all the noise pollution from your yelling and cursing out the blasted, tree hugging no good #*%#))# that invented this #(@)! thing).
Now you tell me which is better for the environment the old one flush and done toilets or the flush three times just to get a roach to his final resting place ones. The answer is logical, however logic and things like government regulations or global warming are oxymorons.
Well I must be off to celebrate Earth Day by in one trip to the bathroom flushing away enough water to supply a small town for an entire earth day.
Oh, and one more reason to hate Earth Day, the annual All day Captain Planet Marathon on Boomerang. Makes the Smurfs and Hammerman almost worth watching.