Scary environmentalism

[mark a.]

It's great that environmentalism is becoming more and more mainstream, so hopefully in the not too distant future we'll all be recycling, be energy efficient, not trash the land and so on.

But... Has it become too much of a movement? As soon as politicians get on the bandwagon, I become very suspicious. I probably trust Al Gore about as much as I can throw him. And today's move by M&S, and other moves by e.g. GM (the car manufacturer) may be good, but are they just cynical marketing exercises?

Other worries include:
- Media hype ("It's the End of the World!")
- Buzz-words become meaningless or, worse, become the be-all and end-all (e.g. "carbon-neutral" is probably great, but that's only a teeny aspect of environmentalism).
- Any rational discussion is banned, because anyone who argues against any point of (perhaps irrational) environmentalism is automatically lambasted as a loony and earth-hater
- Many "initiatives" could be a waste of money - money that could be put towards preventing malaria
- Is environmentalism all just a middle-class phenomenon?

I could go on.

Is this is the real beginning of the new age of being at one with nature? Or are we just doomed?

 

[torjusg]

It is commonly accepted that we eventually all are doomed. However, I am a firm believer that many people all over the world will die, what we like to call prematurely, in the very close future.

This because of starvation and war due to a failing economic engine and environmental degredation. Continuing the party with biofuels isn't good for the environment, but will cause even more destruction than oil alone does, because of top-soil depletion. If we are able to scale the production of biofuels enough, we will leave this world a barren place.

Let's for this planet and our decendants hope that biofuels will not be a viable alternative (there is a good indication on that it isn't). The crash of the oil economy will be hard and brutal, but it will at least leave a world where environmental recovery is at least partially possible.

 

[Marts]

Come the hour cometh the oil peak. Soon enough I would think.

 

[Klenchblaize]

Won’t be long before “Air Miles” is a thing of the past and we’ll be trading carbon emissions credits on e-bay to enable travel to our hunting ground – read use of car to access nearest wood or forest.

I listened very carefully to what the Chairmen of M&S had to say and I’m afraid he blew it when the words “seen to be earnest in their endeavours” crept out. That’s just what we are starting to get from politicians and guess what? Yes, that’s right, your taxes will go up in direct proportion to such newfound enthusiasm. I guarantee we also will be paying far more for less packaging, which is one hell of a cool marketing trick by any standards!

Cheers

 

[bushwacker bob]

Ha ha ha
I hate to be the bearer of bad news,but IF the whole of Europe was carbon neutral,our annual efforts would be cancelled by the Chinese and Americans in less than a week.
Global warming is a geological certainty and no amount of effort is going to make a great deal of difference,exept to our own conscience perhaps.
It may be cynical of me,but I suspect its a vote/consumer winner that enables governments to tax us more and industry to charge us more under the faulse pretence of saving the planet.
The last bout of global warming,about 10000 years ago caused the extinction of mammoths and wooly rhinos plus a few dozen other species that no one knew about.
If we think the icecaps are going to stabilise because we are carbon neutral,we have been misled.

 

[Biddlesby]

The first post here sounds like a great description of modern society once it gets a grip on some current issue.

Which is why I think that a system of pure democracy is never going to work, not that I want to get too philosophical. Politics is dominated by fads thought up by the media.

We are never going to change our destructive ways, it's just too ingrained in human nature. I agree with bushwacker: any policies are merely superfluous measures ineffective against some very massive changes and systems (by which I mean nature). Short term action is not really going to curtail centuries of abuse.

But that does not mean to say I am not in favour of environmental actions (negatives a bit messed up there?).

In the long long term earth will continue as it has done. Our effects are drowned in the natural cycles of the earth: switching of magnetic fields, streams, weather extremes, evolution. We are getting up ourselves if we think we are the makers of the apoclypse of the earth. Again, I am not saying we are not having a negative effect on our environment, which we obviously are.

 

[Don Redondo]

Having heard various peeps wittering on about the airline tax being considered - "It's the rich wot gets tha gravy" etc, I'm afraid that far too many won't bother changing.

I've been an environmentalist since the late 60's, an environmental scientist since the early eighties, and I hear nothing new in what's being said, apart from the fact that it's become mainstream....

The deep greens want an eco-fascist world to save the planet, the social capitalists want business as normal [but with a friendly *caring * face] and the big multinationals don't or won't give a toss, as long as they can turn a profit.

the western world is in hock to the financial powerbrokers, and the developing world want to be.... so little change there

30 years of being involved with the green movement and doing my bit to no avail has left me totally pessimistic about the future. There are too many vested interests in keeping things as they are and too many peeps trapped in the system. The best that can happen is a total economic meltdown, before the ecological **** hits the fan. It will all turn to crap. looks like the Montana survivorlists might be right after all.

Inertia rules

 

[mark a.]

I'm actually not too despondent about it. If nothing else, trashing the place we live in will become too economically non-viable, so big business will have no choice but to sort things out.

I just wish that people would get there in a more sensible, rational manner. Ha! Wishful thinking or what!

Funnily enough, caught this on the Dilbert Blog today. His argument (albeit a funny one) basically says that all the things we've worried about pretty much never come to pass. So perhaps the best thing to happen is to everyone to really panic about the end of the world, then we'll be sure that it won't happen!

I suppose what I really hate is ill-informed backlash, whether by slimy politicians, nutter eco-mentalists or evil multi-national companies.

 

[BOD]

Democracy is actually not the main issue.

Most of the previous human civilisations that declined and faded away due to environmental degradation were not democracies as we know it.

Democracy will affect the process by which the society comes to grips (or fails to) with the challenge.

That is not to say that I am confident of the ability of either democratic leadership or authoritarian and populist messiahs to save us.

The first post here sounds like a great description of modern society once it gets a grip on some current issue.

Which is why I think that a system of pure democracy is never going to work, not that I want to get too philosophical. Politics is dominated by fads thought up by the media.

We are never going to change our destructive ways, it's just too ingrained in human nature. I agree with bushwacker: any policies are merely superfluous measures ineffective against some very massive changes and systems (by which I mean nature). Short term action is not really going to curtail centuries of abuse.

But that does not mean to say I am not in favour of environmental actions (negatives a bit messed up there?).

In the long long term earth will continue as it has done. Our effects are drowned in the natural cycles of the earth: switching of magnetic fields, streams, weather extremes, evolution. We are getting up ourselves if we think we are the makers of the apoclypse of the earth. Again, I am not saying we are not having a negative effect on our environment, which we obviously are.

 

[Simon E]

Whether the world is warming from mans actions is moot as far as I am concerned. Burning fossil fuels for energy has to stop. What other technology (ICE) is nearly a 100 years old and we are still using it? Answer: None.

Build nuke and build em fast is my opinion.

We are a minority, we will always be, so its pointless trying to turn around a consumption driven, 'F**K you Jack I'm OK' population. The best we can hope for is that we stop at least polluting the very air we breathe.

Nature may well decide to cull a lot of us soon anyway. (HN Virus)

How many of you have any sort of plan?

How many of you are actually looking forwards to it?

 

[torjusg]

Build nuke and build em fast is my opinion.

So what are we going to use when we run out of uranium then? And in the mean time we have added new billions to our numbers. What will have to happen eventually and it's better sooner rather than later, is a great cull in the human population.

It's cruel, but that's nature. We are about to discover once again that we are not the gods we thought we were, but animals like all other species.

 

[Biddlesby]

Democracy is actually not the main issue.

Well that depends on the question. I was just getting a bit tangential.

Democracy will affect the process by which the society comes to grips (or fails to) with the challenge.

Totally agree, and that was the point I was trying to make.

Most of the previous human civilisations that declined and faded away due to environmental degradation were not democracies as we know it.

Can you give some examples? I am not querying the validity of your point, but I have come across few ancient civilisations in my academic life, and would be interested to hear of some that failed because of their environmental impact. Was it things like depletion of local resources?

 

[Simon E]

So what are we going to use when we run out of uranium then? .

A bit of research turned up that Uranium is 40x more plentiful than silver, so I would say we have a while before its all used up, even if we decide to not develop better technologies.

Before the earth reaches critical mass though with population density I think a nasty virus of a pandemic nature will cull enough to balance out a lot of things. More population, more poverty, more poverty, more squalid conditions, squalid conditions are what is thought to have been the catalyst for the Spanish Flu of 1918 in the form of fowl and swine living in very close proximity with humans.

 

[gregorach]

Can you give some examples? I am not querying the validity of your point, but I have come across few ancient civilisations in my academic life, and would be interested to hear of some that failed because of their environmental impact. Was it things like depletion of local resources?

The canonical example is Easter Island. Originally a lush, forested island, the human settlers gradually removed all the tree cover until the ecosystem collapsed, taking the society with it, and leaving the impoverished, almost barren ecosystem we still see today.

 

[silvergirl]

A bit of research turned up that Uranium is 40x more plentiful than silver, so I would say we have a while before its all used up, even if we decide to not develop better technologies.

.

Yes, but there is the problem of waste. Where do we put it so it doesn't leak into the environment (ever). How many wars will have happened and civillisations fallen in the time it would take to be safe again?

I think war is still one of the biggest threats to the planets survival. That and population growth.

People's behaviour will not change until it is too late.
I'm as pessimistic as Don Redondo.



On a lighter note I went for a 10km walk today in brilliant sunshine, through trees an along side the river, met no-one, saw buzzards,wrens, three roe deer, a couple of voles and a stoat. And hundreds of rabbits .

It really is beautiful out there.

 

[mark a.]

My problem is not that the oil is going to run out and therefore humans will die out through war / famine / disease - that's some way off, and I have enough faith in human nature to believe that we'll figure something out.

My problem is what to be doing now. Talking in buzzwords may get some message across, but it's hardly the whole picture. For example, building the 3 Gorges Dam was probably carbon neutral (ok, a big assumption there, but you get the idea), but it's hardly very environmentally friendly.

How do we get people to discuss things rationally? I want to know more information. I don't want to have to spend lots of money on rubbish electric cars if they're actually overall more polluting than a standard diesel car. I don't want our government spending billions on reducing CO2 emissions if it's a waste of time and would be better spent researching nuclear fusion. However, if the big noise is from the environmentalists shouting "Drive a Prius!" and "Sign up to Kyoto!" then that's not going to get us anywhere.

 

[Lurch]

That and population growth.

Badda bing!

6.5 billion and rising, this is the key problem. Human population at that level is unsustainable if Bonio and his mates 'End Poverty' and all those people want a consumer lifestyle.
We can all have 120g/km cars and low energy bulbs as much as we like it will not make a drop of difference - that is assuming that climate change is a fact and further that the change is directly attributable to human activity AND furthermore that we can slow or halt that change much less reverse it. The first I accept, the second I think is less compelling, the third cloud cukoo land.
Instead of donning hairshirts and whipping ourselves with token green-ness we need to be considering the effects of climate change and how we propose to deal with it.

 

[torjusg]

A bit of research turned up that Uranium is 40x more plentiful than silver, so I would say we have a while before its all used up, even if we decide to not develop better technologies.

How are you going to extract uranium at an affordable cost without cheap oil? You need oil to mine it an transport it.

I don't have the figures, but uranium doesn't have many years if it is supposed to replace much of our current energy demand provided by oil and natural gas.

They'll think of something is the common answer and probably what the Mayans, Easter Islanders and Romans thought too.

 

[QDanT]

just a thought if it was global cooling would they give everyone
a 4x4 and free petrol to warm it up ?
there's been several ice ages with global warming ending them it's only 15,000 years since most of Britain was under the last ice sheet hardly a finger snap in geological time !

 

[Simon E]

Yes, but there is the problem of waste. Where do we put it so it doesn't leak into the environment (ever).

This will start of a little off track (seemingly) but bear with me.

During the second world war the development of the Tallboy bomb was limited by the quality of steel that was available at that time. The Tallboy was a 5 tonnes in weight and designed to be dropped from 25,000ft (it was designed for 40,000 but bombers of that time were unable to deliver that performace)

Anyway, I am going off track a little. The problem with the steel was that there wasnt any available of sufficient quality that it could penetrate the ground before it broke up.

extract

It was an extraordinary weapon, an apparent contradiction in terms, since it had at one and the same time the explosive force of a large high-capacity blast bomb and the penetrating power of an armour-piercing bomb. On the ground it was capable of displacing a million cubic feet (29,000 m³) of earth and made a crater which it would have taken 5,000 tons of earth to fill. It was ballistically perfect and in consequence had a very high terminal velocity, variously estimated at 3,600 and 3,700 feet per second (1,100–1,130 m/s or about 2,500 mph), which was, of course, a good deal faster than sound so that, as with the V-2 rocket, the noise of its fall would be heard after that of the explosion.

The bomb was used to collapse railway tunnels or the 'V' weapons launching areas that were thought to be safe from allied bombers. The bomb would land to the side of the target not on it. Penetrate the earth to a depth of more than 18m then explode (The Grand Slam bomb penetrated 7m of reinforced concrete before exploding in submarine pens in France) then explode causing a huge crater and thus exploding right next to the walls of the buried structure where it wasnt reinforced or displacing so much material around it that it would collapse (railway tunnels)

Darn it, there I go again


OK, so Nuke Waste and where to we put it?

Space

Put it on a rocket that has a proven record for reliability (like the ones the Russkies are using) Aim it into the sun and forget about it. To be safe, encase the waste in a material as tough as the Tallboy bomb casing so that in the event of an accident it can fall to earth without damage. Of course it will have parachutes and the whole 9 yards, but we have ample proof of how tough a casing can be made with 60 year old technology. This way its gone forever and at a relatively cheap price.

How are you going to extract uranium at an affordable cost without cheap oil

Why would we need oil? For fuel? If so, modified diesels running on SVO (Straight Vegetable Oil) this is actually the original idea that Herr Diesel had anyway, the engine was designed to run on peanut oil so that rural farmers would always have access to a fuel source.