Now I’ve heard everything. Talk about your “Kyoto protocol”. The original source of this silliness comes from the city of Kyoto. In June, in a bid to reduce greenhouse gases and perhaps become a nationally designated “model environmental city,” the municipal government indicated it would request convenience stores to “voluntarily refrain” from staying open all night.
You can read the complete story here in Japan Today. The worst part about this is the complete lack of understanding about where the major energy use is. Closing the store may result in some energy savings from lighting, but the main power use, refrigeration systems, and that Slushee machine, will still operate.
No more midnight Slushee! Maybe the real reason is the “exploitation of the polar bear” on the cup.
Here is more, a response from the Japan Franchise Association
Convenience stores defend 24-hour operations
Facing attack from critics that want convenience stores to shut down at night as a measure to prevent global warming, the Japan Franchise Association has responded by stating that convenience stores play a crucial role as safe havens for lost children and victims of crime:
More than 13,000 cases of women finding refuge in convenience stores across the country were reported during fiscal 2007. Nearly half of them occurred after 11 p.m. and about 40 percent were due to stalkers and molesters, the association said.
In addition, there were 6,000 cases of lost children requiring assistance and 12,000 cases of elderly people found wandering the streets alone.
The 12 companies that comprise the JFA operate around 42,000 convenience stores.
Explaining the significance of convenience stores, a JFA official said they provide a “substitute for ‘koban’ (police boxes) and streetlights in the middle of the night.”
The National Police Agency says that koban and “hashutsujo” police branch offices are located at about 13,000 places across the country, but that number is down by around 1,000 from five years earlier.
In addition, the JFA has also stated that convenience stores with limited nighttime hours would still have to keep on their refrigeration systems when closed, so the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would be negligible.
From the Japan Times article:
Behind moves to limit 24-hour business is concern about the environmental impact of round-the-clock operations. “Definitely, 24-hour operations eat up electricity,” he said.
Although acknowledging that some people are active late at night, for example because of their jobs, Ando went on to claim “the vast majority have standard lifestyles and get up in the morning and come home from school or work and sleep at night.”
“With no time left to waste to combat global warming,
we are very concerned about whether it is really good (that stores) stay lit up even past midnight,” Ando said.
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Yeah, I guess the next time some punk is arrested for holding up the local Stop & Rob, he can get old Al and Jim to be character witnesses.
They should look at what happens in most of Europe where stores are forbidden to open at nights and on sundays. CO2 emissions keep going UP.
The only efficient way sofar to “act” to reduce CO2 is good recession a la Soviet.
The Bezmenov interview is from 23 years ago. He said the US had “a few years” to avert the rise of communism, and the collapse of the US economy into Marxist/Leninism. He was wrong. That battle was won by the west when the Soviet Union collapsed in ’89.
What we should be more worried about, it seems to me, is the slow creep into a new, 21st century form of totalitarianism based on religious, health and environmental fear.
We’ve moved on from right/left, socialist/capitalist issues, and if we continue to think in those terms, we will suffer.
Several comments who focus on potential harm from restrictions and denials of services and activities, miss the gravest danger we face. There is an onslaught against the freedom to think and express ideas that contradict perceived orthodoxies for culture, governance, science, religion and the liberal arts by those who are determined to destroy democracy and capitalism.
Fanatical Muslims, who kill and terrorize wantonly, justify their actions with a perverted form of Islam. Almost all non-democratic nations deny freedom of expression because controlling thought in conjunction with brute force is most effective means of maintaining control of people.
In Western democracies there is compelling evidence of progress towards the enslaving form of socialism Orwell believed to be inevitable. This evolution is driven by controlling thought and expression.
Lindzen’s new paper, “Climate Science: Is It Currently Designed To Answer Questions?”, describes the process by which a cabal of the UN, NGOs, and politicians and special interests have corrupted scientists, professional societies and organizations and their scientific journals, and government agencies. Those who dare to challenge their orthodoxy are defamed, their research is repressed, and their research funding and jobs are jeopardized.
Obama’s campaign tactics are another example of repressing speech. His campaign, through surrogates have attempted to stop radio stations from broadcasting critical programming. Unfriendly blogs regularly suffer DOS attacks. He attempted to prevent a public university library from releasing documents concerning his participation in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Now prosecutors in St Louis and other authorities are threatening to prosecute persons and organizations that put out purportedly false information about Obama. Simultaneously, the Obama campaign [snip – substitute puts out its own information campaign] . All of this is enabled by a corrupt MSM who make up news and lie about, disguise and withhold facts in order to get Obama elected.
Public education is being compromised. Indoctrination is replacing teaching. It will be far worse if Obama is elected. This is how entire generations are corrupted.
All of these examples have a common thread: thought control and limitation of expression. The process is gradual and accomplished by desensitizing people to persistent encroachment on their rights. Pandering, propaganda corruption are the tools of deceit.
I am too old to worry about being personally impacted by the coupe d’tat that is under way. Loss of our traditional rights and privileges is inevitable unless an active majority of citizens wakes up and stops the process now.
“.. we are very concerned about whether it is really good (that stores) stay lit up even past midnight,” Ando said…”
Umm? No, he isn’t. If he were VERY concerned about this he would be incandescent about street lights. But he’s not. So it’s just something to say to the press when the focus group picks another target to keep the Eco-brand in front of the public. Move along, nothing to see here…
Oh, and I wonder about Lockheed Martin’s primary business being ‘to understand international threats’. I always thought its primary business was to make money by selling weapons. I may be reading a bit much into the original post, but it struck me that if I wanted an accurate view about the environmental threat posed by 24-hour stores I wouldn’t ask an enviro-politician, and if I wanted an accurate view about east-west military threats I wouldn’t ask the military/industrial complex, on either side of the curtain…
I am surprised that no one has mentioned that when a nearby convenience store is closed, many consumers will be driving longer distances to find an open store that has what the consumer wants when he wants it. So any savings from closing a particular store has to be offset by the additional fuel consumption from consumers driving to find an open store.
I cannot say that I have driven long distances to find an open convenience store, but I have driven many times to locate a 24-hour pharmacy.
If the convenience stores were to close, people would have to drive further to get their midnight fixes. How would this save energy?
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Mark Smith,
Bezmenov predicted exactly what has been happening over the last two decades. Read the financial news this morning if you doubt it.
New York Times – September 30, 1999
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.
‘From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
I have often wondered what percent of the work force works evenings and nights. For the airlines and transit systems, night is their big maintenance time. I know, I’ve worked for both. Allot of mechanics,fuelers,and cleaners wouldn’t mind having to shutdown for the night! I don’t think many night workers actually enjoy the schedule they have, it’s usually because of low seniority that they are working the shift their on.
Dodgy Geezer (03:19:19) :
“.. we are very concerned about whether it is really good (that stores) stay lit up even past midnight,” Ando said…”
” Umm? No, he isn’t. If he were VERY concerned about this he would be incandescent about street lights. But he’s not. So it’s just something to say to the press when the focus group picks another target to keep the Eco-brand in front of the public. ”
I think you’ve hit on it.
I wondered when I saw this, of all things, why convenience stores?
Now I think I know.
1 – They sell tobacco
2 – They sell highly processed, non-organic, non-vegan, non-fair-trade food and beverages – disgusting cow-murder products such as “Slim Jims” and murdered-cow-jerky; cheap, industrial, exploitative coffee-like beverage and high-fructose-corn-syrup drinks
3 – They are notorious purveyors of certain non-feminist graphic journals
4 – Eco-snobs NEVER shop there!
Good news! Big brother can now track your travel, location and carbon footprint 24×7 – for the good of the planet.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/29/carbonfootprints.travelandtransport
The first thing that came to mind when I read this artical is that there are some cultural filters at work here. The Shijiku area of Tokyo not withstanding, most Japanese cities roll up the sidewalks right after normal work hours end. By 8 PM, the rare 7-11 really does become the only safe haven, aside from the occational police box. You can drive thru major urban areas and find one or two bars as the only lights on…and the Japanese like it that way. The core of the Japanese culture is very conservative…conforming is expected. Yes, to us this artical appears to be about AGW…but I suspect that a major portion is really about “Why don’t you close up and go home at night like the rest of us?”
cdl
Patrick Henry (09:19:15) :
” Good news! Big brother can now track your travel, location and carbon footprint 24×7 – for the good of the planet. ”
Gotta hand it to those folks over in Airstrip One – they’re always a couple years ahead of us when it comes to this planet-saving technology
” Carbon surveillance: Cellphones to track ‘whether you are walking, driving or flying’… ”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/29/carbonfootprints.travelandtransport
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airstrip_One
One of the encouraging aspects of mass computerization has been the relative lack of intrusiveness as compared with capabilities. We’ve all read and watched science fiction versions of the takeover by machines and encroaching big brotherhood.
But it never really happened. Computers greatly increased and improved employment. Corporations snooped, but did so to gather data to turn a buck, not to blackmail a man into obeisance.
Even public cameras did not take away our freedoms, they just resulted in a lot of bank robberies and other crimes being solved and greater public safety. (And if you get a ticket in the mail for running a red light, you’ll get little sympathy off of me.)
We gained the ability to track via bug, but all we did, mainly, was to chip our pets so they could be found when lost.
Who would have thought Free Man would have been so moral, so responsible relative to enhanced capabilities?
But now we start to see a very disturbing trend. An intrusive, insidious control by the self-righteous. If these dangerous bozos get their way, they’ll be writing us right into the science fiction horror books. They are to be stopped in their tracks. We have only our vote to stop them. Use it.
This is such BS. I have worked at night for 13 years. Even now nothing is convenient for people who are not nine to fivers. This would just make things worse for night shift people, travelers, etc.
One simple solution: make daylight savings time year-round, and also enact double and triple daylight savings. If the populace can forced to get out of bed earlier and earlier, everybody will be too tired to stay up late.
btw, my favorite inconvenience store name is one in McMinnville, OR: the McMiniMart.
Yep, the “Eco-Freaks” are having a field day with our collective freedoms. Oh, and to Mike Dubrasich’s comment about Daylight Savings Time, the original intent was to allow folks in the agrarian businesses more “daylight” to work in the fields and related industries. As we’ve become more mechanical and electronic (read indoor work) in nature, we run lights and HVAC systems MORE thus burn up any savings we initially gained with the time change. If you want to take advantage of the “extra” daylight in the summer months just change your work schedule (called flex time in most businesses) and please leave MY natural sleep cycle ALONE! Why can’t folks see that the time change is merely cutting something off of one end and tying it on the other? Since I’ve moved to Korea to work I do not have to suffer the traumatic “spring-forward” shock to my system every April. Man, I can’t tell you how nice that is!
Let’s see, we have: 1) energy prices which have skyrocketed and remain high (though oil prices have dropped a bit recently), 2) a U.S economy in a tailspin over the mortgage mess, threatening economies worldwide, and on top of everything we have 3) the AGW fraudsters screaming that we have to reduce our “carbon” output immediately, passing idiotic and costly laws, etc. Strike three. Stone age 2, here we come. Which is what AGWers want, of course.
Oops, forgot strike 4 – for good measure, another Dalton (if we’re lucky) Minimum coming, if not already underway.
” Meat must be rationed to four portions a week, says report on climate change
” People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid run-away climate change, a major new report warns. ”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/30/food.ethicalliving
” People will have to be rationed to four modest portions of meat and one litre of milk a week if the world is to avoid run-away climate change, a major new report warns. ”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/30/food.ethicalliving
Not long ago, I was going through two gallons of skim milk per week – just putting it in my coffee! (mostly decaf, natch)
If you want to know why it’s been so warm lately, THAT’S why – all the bovine flatulence I’ve been supporting.