Diet coke soothes the conscience of fat people because it let's them think they're doing something about their health. In reality, coke represents everything bad about the American lifestyle - low cost, readily available, and just awful for you. We're scared of calories, carbs, and type 2 diabetes. The American economy solves things like over-consumption not by reducing consumption but by increasing safety - we remove the sugar, put in preservatives, artificial sweeteners, and keep on eating. This merely eases our heads but doesn't do anything to help the root cause, and so you find people at the movies eating tubs of popcorn covered in artificial butter, twizzlers, and half a gallon of soda - but never fear: it's diet. We ignore that the artificial sweeteners lead to cancer and get us addicted because we only think about sugar.
There's no difference with renewable energy - where the energy we use comes from is just a fraction of the problem of over-consumption. Using alternative energies to reduce our carbon footprint or eliminate our dependence on imported oil merely solves a minor problem on its own not for a noticeable physical benefit but to sooth our conscience. No longer bound by concerns of dirty energy we keep guzzling everything the energy produces. Even if you believe 100 percent that renewable energy is a good thing, reject the flawed motives because they don't solve the root cause of the issue and because nothing tastes worse than diet coke.
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