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Originally Posted by Yakk
But we can pay for land to make land-fills. Sure, people who consume things should pay for their disposal -- but that isn't that hard.
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The environmental cost of a widget isn't entirely dependant upon the cost of the space in a landfill, though. There's the reduction of remaining resources used to produce it, various environmental impacts of the manufacture of the widget. Will the widget leak toxic chemicals into the environment while it sits in the landfill? Does it deplete some limited resource? Heck, even the environmental cost of the transportation of the widget to the landfill counts for something. Consider this:
Iron is a fairly valuable resource. Sure, there's lots of it, but not an infinite supply. It's used to make lots of things. The environmental cost to produce these things is fairly high. We mine iron ore from the ground, extract the pure iron, form it into a widget. Use the widget. At some point the widget wears out. Does it make sense to just throw that refined iron into a landfill? Or does it make more sense to recycle the iron? It's already in a fairly pure state - it seems almost silly to just throw it back into the ground after we spent so much effort getting it out in the first place.
Now, lots of iron (and steel) *is* recycled - old cars are a good example of that. Lots of iron, fairly easy to separate from the rest of the car...a perfect candidate.
However, even *recycling* iron has environmental consequences! Whatever energy is used to recycle it certainly has consequences. If nasty chemicals are used, those have environmental consequences depending on the method of disposal...you get the idea.
My point is, it isn't just any one factor that you can say "Oh, well, I did this and this, so my consumption didn't have any net environmental impact." That simply isn't true! Everything we do has an environmental impact! If the sum environmental impact of the entire human race is such that it's going to negatively impact our quality of life in a short time, we are in deep shit. It seems pretty clear to me that this is the case right now. How can we change that? The two main ways seem to be:
1) By changing our habits - by consuming less, by making intelligent choices so that our lifestyles have less of an environmental impact. It's encouraging to me that more and more people are aware of this, even if it is in terms of the too-simplistic 'carbon footprint' idea.
2) By having fewer people. This, to me, is the key. And (almost) no one is paying attention to it! I'm not suggesting any sort of draconian methods here, so don't get excited. For instance, here in the U.S., where birth control is cheap and widely available, where medical care and a high standard of living are the norm, birth rates are such that the population would decline without immigration. That's pretty encouraging. Other parts of the world, however, are in a different situation. People routinely have more children than they can afford to feed. Birth control (aside from abstinence, which the human race does not seem psychologically adapted to practice) is prohibitively expensive, or simply unavailable. What if free, effective, and safe birth control were universally available? I would argue that this would be the single most beneficial environmental policy possible. Unfortunately, in large part due to misplaced religious dogma (Hello, catholic church!), and fears of eugenics-style population control, this is a political hot-potato, and considered essentially taboo. I fear that unless this taboo can be broken, we are doomed.
To be clear - I would never advocate preventing people from having as many children as they want. I simply advocate providing everyone with access to free, safe, and effective birth control (as safe and effective as science can make it). Everyone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Yakk
As can the other costs of emissions. You'll notice that the emissions from most industry have been reduced by many orders of magnitude over the last 30 years...
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They have? I have not noticed such a thing. Do you have a citation for that?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Yakk
Human ingenuity?
Remember: the economic cost of (say) emitting CO2 is bounded above by the cost of fixing it (removing the CO2). It can quite often be cheaper than this.
Also note that the answer "don't mess with the environment, leave it alone" is not a sustainable answer. The environment will produce ice ages, asteroid/comet impacts, super-volcanoes that shut out the sun, etc.
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I would never advocate such a position. It is simply impossible. We are part of the environment, just as much as everything else. We can't help but have an impact on it. The question is, does our impact result in a reduced quality of life for ourselves? By 'ourselves', I mean the human race collectively - if my quality of life is secured by keeping millions of other human beings in intolerable conditions, that simply isn't a morally viable option for me.