Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
This forum is in permanent archive mode. Our new active community can be found here.
Hippie myths
Here is a great article that cuts through the conformist hippie crap and talks logically about global warming and other "green" issues. The 10 Green Heresies are spot on.
I've always been amazed at how unabashedly hypocritical the green movement can be. This article says what I've been saying for years.
I've always been amazed at how unabashedly hypocritical the green movement can be. This article says what I've been saying for years.
Comments
EDIT: The organic food bit is very true. I could rant for ages about the organic/natural foods movement, but suffice to say, there's more to saving the environment and being a responsible consumer than buying organic everything.
I'm not sure about the hybrid thing, though. Have you ever driven one? That Ford Escape is pretty cool the way it switches to electric at traffic lights.
In my limited experience, green types aren't against cities. They think that cities can be disgusting places when care isn't put into the infrastructure, and would prefer to live in the country, although the more thoughtful ones will acknowledge that this isn't really an option for everyone. I don't think I've ever met a greener who was pro-suburbs.
As to the disapproval with air conditioners, it seems like that has more to do with a belief that people ought to use technology to adapt to the local environment rather than to resist it. Some people might be wary of air conditioners simply because they aren't aware of improvements that have been made with the technology.
The bit on how organically raised cows fart and burp more than their non-organic counterpart is amusing, but is it really a serious source of concern? I think most of the more thoughtful greenies would agree that buying local food is often more important than buying organic. Of course, optimally they'd prefer both.
Not sure I understand the old-growth forest bit. Rotting trees emit greenhouse gases so... cut them down before they die?
From what I've heard, greeners' complaints with China aren't about the things made there, but about the way those things are manufactured.
It seems like the issue has more to do with monoculture farming and the risk of catastrophic crop failure than with Frankencrops in particular... the greeners I know don't talk about it much.
Too bad about the carbon trading.
Nuclear plants don't emit smog, but radioactive waste comes with its own difficulties.. It seems like it would be replacing one set of problems with another unless more research was done.
Not surprised about the hybrid cars, although I think you'd have trouble finding used fuel-efficient cars for everyone.
There are, however, problems with local food as well. Having multiple smaller food production centers, instead of fewer larger ones, is far less efficient in terms of amount of energy spent vs. quantity of food produced. One big wheat farm in the midwest makes a lot more wheat more efficiently than if everyone had a small local wheat farm. Also, more smaller farms are harder to regulate. If there are a few big farms, it's easy to check up and make sure they aren't growing dirty poison disgusting food. If there are lots of little farms, it costs a lot more to check up on everyone to make sure they are pasteurizing the milks.
I think a lot of the problems we are running into with the greenness is that people seem to follow their feelings as well as common sense. However, the reality is that what is actually better is often contrary to common sense. Oh, an electric car, obviously that's better for the environment. Oh wait, the electric car saves X energy, but it cost 1000X energy to make the batteries at the battery factory. This car will have to drive 500,000 miles in order to make up for that initial energy cost! Also, buying a fancy new electric car means that the used car you would have bought goes to the scrap heap.
The world is such a complex and intertwined system that it is virtually impossible to know all of the effects of any decision you make. Even if you scientifically figure out that a used car is better, ok, you buy a used car. However, the brakes on the used car are not as good as a new car, and one day you accidentally crash into an endangered species. If you had made the less environmentally sound choice of a new car, you wouldn't have killed the animal. I know, it's a crazy example I thought of randomly, but I'm just trying to prove the point. There is almost no way to actually know if you are helping anything or not. Thus, the best place to worry about saving the environment is up in the big places like factories and such. The closer to the heart of industry you are, the easier it is to determine the actual costs and benefits of decisions, and the easier it is to get huge results.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think that we should be spreading toxic materials into the earth. However, isn't mankind's conquering of the earth as natural as a hummingbird pulling nectar from a flower? We're both animals trying to thrive. Why is a human footprint so terrible? We need a healthy planet... to keep us healthy. We need a planet that will grow our food and won't poison us. But do we really need polar bears? Haven't species been killing other species for years?
On the other hand, I'll be the first to admit that natural selection probably never envisioned a species as powerful as humans. So I struggle with this issue.
Humans have a bizarre ability to underestimate their ability to solve their way out of a problem. Yes, oil is a finite resource. However, we'll figure something out. We always have and we always will. Nobody thought that we could ever feed 7 billion people. But we do. That's because we invent things to survive. Don't sell mankind's intelligence short.
You might think you are doing one animal a favor by removing the predators but then they overgraze and the population explodes to the point where many of them starve.
Take a look at some of the problems in Australia that occurred when new species were introduced and took over. We even see it in the USA when invasive species take over and destroy the local ecosystem. Humans are not the only invasive species on the planet, we are just the most mobile invasive species.
The problem with human-impacted plants is that, in the wild, plants cross-pollinate. It's one thing to modify plants via cross-pollination but it is something entirely different when you cross a plant with something that it can not possibly cross with in nature. Even worse is when bio-genetic companies create crops that can not re-seed. What's up with that? The only motivation there is profit and slavery. You make the farmers a slave to your type of seed because they can not save a portion of the crop for next years planting.
Anyway, some of the stuff I agree with, such as the fact organic is basically a marketing buzz word. Rather than buying Whole Foods tomatoes from Brazil, go to the local farmers market. You should all read the Omnivore's Dilemma. It is an interesting little piece of journalism about the food industry. I also know that cities are the way to go, (I'm green, living here in this population dense metropolis), Nuclear Power is okay with me, and Genetic Engineering is not quite the monstrosity most people think. However, the article makes a good point about the best way to create sustainable food crops - eat less meat. I'm not a complete vegetarian, but I make an effort to have less meat in my diet. I don't take meat for granted, but think of it as a treat. The thing about cutting down the old growth forests argument is the same as the cow one. It's not just the Carbon! Sustainable lumber is a really good thing. People should give U.S. logging more credit. Slash and burn, however, does more harm than good. Preserve the forest, but use it in a symbiotic fashion, getting wood without destroying the forest as a whole. And Kilarney, the thing about polar bears and all the other damage that might be done if we are not careful is that nothing exists on its own in an ecosystem. Things disappearing from this closed system can have effects on things that we might consider completely unrelated, consequences only apparent in hindsight. I believe that humans will be better served by trying to keep the population down to a reasonable size than completely wrecking the earth. If we look farther ahead for the survival of the species, it's better not to think along the lines of "I'm human and I rule everything, so I can do whatever I want! Fuck the Environment!" Think of deer, when they get over populated. They eat all the food and then they starve. Going by your way of thinking, that is humans with their resources. Sure, we could pull through (maybe) but it would suck. Better to plan ahead and use science to help us see the all the elements as a whole, and to create some sort of equilibrium between us and the planet we have peopled.
Regardless the biggest issue I have with this statement is the fact that you are quantifying X energy while ignoring the source of the energy. An electric car can be powered from multiple sources (solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, hamsters on wheels, etc.), whereas the fossil fuel car consumes an expendable resource that is more restricted in origin, and faces less competitors to keep costs down.
http://skepticblog.org/2009/05/28/the-fallacy-of-locally-grown-produce/
Obviously, you're still not having to go and get the meat yourself from the farm or anything like that, but Queensland supermarkets get meat from Queensland farmers, as do most Restaurants and other food outlets - To ship meat from another country (or even another state) - would be ludicrously expensive, compared to the price of locally grown food. Thus, less distance traveled from Go to Woah.