shesus

So, I was watching Penn and Teller Bullshit tonight. They were interviewing people about global warming. It was interesting as always.

I'm not sure what I think about the whole global warming, go green craze. I've seen the haze from pollution, Phoenix had the red cloud. I grew up around a lot of chemical plants and saw the flames on the towers that emitted by-products of what ever they were making. I've seen exhaust fumes from cars, buses, and semis. I believe that it is lowering our air quality and causing an increase in asthma sufferers. However, I'm not sold on the fact that it is going to cause all the doom green people are threatening.

I understand that deforestation is bad. Trees supply us oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from the air. Carbon dioxide can cause warming in the atmosphere. If there are less trees to intake the carbon dioxide, the temperature will raise. However, is it as dangerous as they say?

On the show, they delved into carbon credits. They compared these to the sin tax before Martin Luther. Background on this: People would sin (everyone does) and go to the church to give money for full forgiveness. The church did this to raise money. Is the government or green programs guilting people over driving SUVs and causing harm to the environment in order to make money?

There are alternatives to energy. Driving through California, Missouri, and some other states, you can see the windmills on hills sometimes for miles. There are also choices of hydro and nuclear power. My question is how are these powered? And do we really want nuclear power plants scattered about when we are on constant terror alerts?

My opinion is that we aren't helping the environment. However, I think the Earth has cycles and we are just speeding up the inevitable ice age. Carbon credits are ways for people to make money. Other energy sources are a good idea, but I'm not sure if they are really better for the environment. What are your thoughts?

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Willravel

There are reasonable limits to what we should allow to be done to the environment. A little pollution probably isn't bad, but when one starts to see an effect on entire ecosystems, the climate, etc., we could face unforeseen consequences.

We should make serious attempts to reduce the depositing of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. This means federal and state regulations on industry and those who manufacture pollution-causing machines. It would be amazing to see the instance of asthma decrease over time instead of increase as it has for decades.

We should seek out more reasonable sources of energy, which are renewable, stable, and don't require a massive economic investment in a natural resource that means global instability when it becomes rare. Technologies like wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, etc. are all worth exploring and seeking to improve. I read something nearly every day about how solar is becoming more and more efficient.

I'd like for my children and my childrens' children to enjoy real forests with real animals. This means that we may need to start really looking at recycling, reducing use, and reusing for our wood and paper needs.

jorgelito

I love the environment. I wish everyone else did too. To me it's pretty straightforward: you don't shit (pardon my language) where you eat, you don't piss where you drink. I love money too (go capitalism!!) but for the love of God, is nothing sacred? There's plenty of money to be made AND preserve our environment. As a conservative, I feel one of our core values IS conservation.

I try to reduce my carbon footprint. I enjoy doing so. I also like to quantify it as well. i have begun an organic vegetable garden in my yard, I recycle regularly, and try to reduce waste in my life. My main struggle has been my obsession with paper napkins. But other than that, I'm good. My next project is solar power. Don''t know how I'm gonna do it since I'm renting. I have made lifestyle changes. Being conservative, reducing, reusing, recycling, changing out all my light bulbs to compact fluorescent (5 for 1$), changing my driving habits (going from 25mpg to 33mpg).

It's fairly simple. We all can do it and reap benefits.

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Daniel_

As a perso from a small island, I find the thought of sea level rise allarming. If I were in the continental US I'd probably not give a shit about sea level rise - why worry when it's 50 miles away?

The problem is that all of us, everywhere are tied together in a web of nature and it's clearly getting more stressed.

I love it when people say "we have to save the earth". As I stated on the thread about national pride the other day, Shaw said that patriotism is the belief that your country is best because you were born there. We all behve like the earth will end if people are in trouble. The Earth will be fine - but we may well find that the parts of it where people can comfortably live shrink, and that will cause wars, famines, die back, all sorts of things.

In the 18th Century, the main wars were expansion into areas of lower population. In the 19th Century, the main wars were clashes between economic empires. In the 20th they were clashes between political empires. In the 21st they are likely to beover water and resources.

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Comes willowing across the sand;
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Martian

Am I the only one who thinks Ustwo's absence rather conspicuous in these threads?

My issue with global warming is that the science isn't really there. Most of what's said is based on the IPCC studies, which are themselves based almost entirely on meta-analysis of smaller studies. Meta-analysis is not good science.

I'm skirting the rules maybe, by bringing up the IPCC studies. But given that I've actually sat down and read them in order to form an opinion and am now working based on prior knowledge, I think I'm okay.

So if the science isn't firm, then the question becomes why it's such a big deal. In order to know that we have to look at who the loudest proponents are and what motives they might have. I admit I'm a little uncertain what a politician like Al Gore should have to gain by taking such a firm stance on an issue like this. </sarcasm>

Anyway, I think history has adequately shown that we don't need to save the planet. The planet has proven time and again that it can take care of it's own damn self. One of the pitfalls of humanity's intellect is arrogance; sooner or later mother nature is going to throw us in the reject pile with the dinosaurs and five-legged zebras and that will be that. In the meantime, what we do doesn't seem likely to have much of an impact on anything other than ourselves. Oh, sure, we may end up taking a few other species with us, but the planet will continue on regardless.

I conserve where it makes sense to me. This is mostly in the form of finite resources. Recycling plastics makes sense, because they're petroleum based. Most of our energy comes from fossil fuels and the energy grid can only take so much, as was adequately proven in 2003 to people in my part of the world; plus, energy conservation has a direct impact on my personal finances. Paper I'm less concerned about, but trees are nice and it doesn't take any extra effort to use the facilities that are already in place. I harbour no illusions about saving the world, though. The world will carry on just as it always has regardless of my actions. It's big and I'm not. Big usually wins.

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dc_dux

Flash back 40 years to the start of the environmental movement in the late 60s and those wacky "tree huggers" who wanted to save the planet by regulating our lives.

Most of the waterways in the US were polluted and facing serious endangerment from the dumping of industrial and agricultural waste directly into our rivers and streams ...fish kills were at an all time high and medical evidence was compelling that consuming such fish posed serious health threats.

The smog was so thick in many urban areas from spewing of industrial toxins into the air and burning trash at open dumps that you could scrape it off your face after walking through an industrial part of town.

But oh no....the naysayers said...it would cost too much...you crazy environmentalists want to kill the economy in order to save the planet.

Well guess what....it worked and only the blind ideologues can deny the fact. The Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, the Solid Waste Disposal Act, the Hazardous Waste Management Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, etc.....have made a significant difference, not only in restoring and protecting the environment, but doing it in an economically sustainable manner that has led to innovation and contributed to economic growth.

Today, the impact of the ever-growing emissions of millions of tons of C02 and other greenhouse gases from power plants, industrial facilities and cars may or may not have a significant impact on the environment.

The options are clear...do nothing, like some proposed in the 60s, and hope that your conclusions are correct. Or act now in an environmental and economically sustainable manner, before it is too late. And if we're wrong, the worst that happens is cleaner industrial practices and fewer emissions.

Rachel Carson was vilified back then just as Al Gore is today...described as extremists and non-scientists who didnt know what the fuck they were talking about. Carson's legacy is now safe and enduring (I would encourage members to read Silent Spring)....Gore's legacy is yet to be determined but it will be through such leadership that both displayed that the earth may be a better place for our children and grandchildren.

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Cynthetiq

The same thing was said about London during the Fog years, and also when the Thames was so polluted it smelled so bad Parliament could not convene. That was way before the 60's tree hugger movement, and heck not even in the US of A.

I'm in agreement that the worst thing that happens is a big benefit. But you should want that already without having to resort to a bogeyman. You do good things because it is right, not because if you do wrong things you go to hell.

Conservation for me is important inasmuch as it affects my wallet. I don't spend money to waste it which is why I drive a practical small car instead of the car that I want to drive.

Science is about reproducing verifiable results, not guessing. I see the global warming scare as at best a guess.

I also dislike the idea of models that are being used to doom and gloom the future. If the models work so trustworthy, then you should be able to go back in time to known measurements and hit those marks time and time again.

You want people to reduce, tell them to reduce, give them incentive to reduce. To tell them that some bogeyman will come and get their children is intellectually dishonest.

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dc_dux

Cynth....at a personal level, voluntary conservation is great for whatever motives one may have.

But at the societal level, would a reliance on industries to voluntarily dump less waste and toxins in the air and water have accomplished as much as the environmental laws of the 60s and 70s with their tough and enforceable regulatory standards?

I think not.

Are the waterways and air significantly cleaner than 40 years ago as a result of those laws? Was the US economy adversely impacted by those laws?

I think the answers are indisputable.

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roachboy

the environment?

so there is this machinery called you that engages in these actions, let's call them verbs, that impact upon this collection of objects external to yourself. these objects come in a container. the container is the environment.

because this you-machine orients itself up/down left/right with respect to the collection of things that is the world, de facto the machine "you" thinks itself separate from the collection of things and the container in which they are positioned.

so the environment is separate from you. at the level of naive theory--the environment is separate from you and you are separate from it.

besides, when you look at what is outside you, you are separated from it by a vertical orientation that follows from what holds you eyes up off the ground, say. so clearly you are separate. because what you see is what there is and there's no particular need to worry about the ways in which what you see might be truncated. you know, limited.

so because what you see is what you get, it, the environment, becomes something about which you can have vague sentiments: i like the environment, i do not care about the environment: my liking for the environment passes through my aesthetic dispositions, which also contain my politics because this is america dammit and one's politics are in general a matter of aligning non-information about the world with one's sense of what looks or feels pretty; my indifference to the environment passes through my aesthetic dispositions which also contain my politics. because the environment is a spectacle about which one can gather types of infotainment that align with what one understands to be pretty, a pretty arrangement, and because in the states politics is aesthetics and so what one thinks pretty can be reinforced at every level, and because capitalism american style is grand in every way, it is possible that you, consumer, can compile heaps of infotainment that connect you, in your bourgeois isolation, to the Big Container, along any number of logics.

if you are inclined to want to see the possibilities of action, you can find information that says "action is possible"; if you are inclined to think action undertaken by more than one petit bourgeois Hero is communism, you can find information that persuades you of the correctness of that view.

because what matters is that your preferences be fed, not anything else. information and the aspects of the world shaped by them are all commodities and you, consumer, are all-powerful.

because the environment is something you watch on television or go to visit when you leave the city, it is a place where magic capitalism keeps it's tree or grass collections or a place where the ocean is arrayed so that you, who otherwise has no environment, can go look at it.

hello there environment.

what do we want to put in our environment, which colorform indicators of infrastructure do we want to put there, a sequence of large cupcake-shaped things we'll call nuclear reactors, a sequence of crosses on sticks we'll call windmills? which looks better?

sustainability is vague, but in general it refers to a practical orientation and it is hard to see a practical orientation.
sustainability is of a piece with a view of being human that does not recognize a distinction between the results of, say, neural network formation and functioning and their results in the mind--differences of scale and matters of translation are such that you do not see yourself as a system of living systems, but that does not mean you aren't. but you'd need information that was able to restructure something of your view of yourself to get to it. left to a "common sense" or naive viewpoint, the world is outside yourself and you move around in it.

sustainability is an aspect of a politics. a politics is an assemblage of information about the world and assumptions about actions that can or should be taken based on that information.

"the environment" is both experience-near and experience-distant. the more distant, the more mediated the relation. information mediates the relation. when you have a chat in a bar about "the environment" you are recycling information you have available, what you choose to remember, what you choose to suppress or forget. so in a conversation, you are recycling information and shaped by your aesthetic dispositions, but because you do not present the information, you are not accountable for the dispositions or the information.

cupcakes or crosses on sticks, then: which looks better?
i'll have another ale and an order of calamari, please.

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abaya

I also try to do these kinds of things, and I enjoy doing them--it feels less wasteful to me, and whether or not it effects global warming, etc, I like to know that all the crap I am producing with my modern lifestyle (bottles, newspapers, printer cartridges, batteries, etc) will not be taking up eternal space in a landfill. It's just my personal feeling.

But the really discouraging part is that a single, long-distance flight will pretty much overwhelm everything you could possibly do to "save the earth" in one year. Pollution from commercial flights is one of the worst environmental offenders out there, and it's so huge that basically any small things you are doing on a day-to-day basis, mean nothing if you travel by plane even once a year. This is very hard for me to swallow, because travel is one of my top priorities in life, and I fly a LOT--not to mention that Iceland is an island, so getting anywhere by "land" would be pretty nuts (there is one ferry that takes a week to get to Europe, lol). So until the airlines manage to find a way to reduce their gargantuan carbon emissions, all of us frequent flyers will continue to leave massive carbon footprints just by virtue of stepping onto those planes...

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Cynthetiq

I'm not so sure about that, cleaner is relative right? There are many indications that cleaner waterways have huge algea blooms that have killed off wildlife just as pollution had. The Chesepeake watershed is an example of this isn't it? The crabbing industry doesn't think so from what I read a couple weeks ago in the NY Times. Stocks have declined steadily since the 70's. Culprit is algae blooms living off the run off from the over developed areas.

Agreed. Which is why I'm not interested in paying anymore than I have to for my tickets. The costs are already skyhigh and with less service and more attitude. Carbon credits paid for directly by me seems like an Indulgence to me.

I'm not going to stop travelling any time soon. The planes go to these destinations with our without me. I'd believe the whole owning the carbon footprint a bit more if I was chartering a flight, but I'm not. The transportation infrasctructure moves with or without me.

I read somthing interesting the other day, that there is a tipping point about travelling wherein even with the most economical vehicle an airplane gets the best miles per person per gallon. In effect, it is a very economical way of travelling with regards to fuel econonmy. Do I believe it? I'm not sure yet.

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ASU2003

I like the environment and feel that it should be put before any economic interests that companies or individuals have. And I'm really liking this $4/gallon gas we have since it has done more to reduce wasteful pollution than any other measure in the last few years. I've ridden my bike more, and I've seen a few other people are riding now. Traffic has only decreased about 5% though. I would rather see it go down about 25%. I think we need to look into other ways to power semis and airplanes though. If transportation costs and airline costs were lower and cleaner, that would make a huge impact.

I don't care why global warming is happening, but I am more concerned on how can we prevent major cities from flooding and the ice caps from melting. Because the fallout of that would be bad. I also worry about food production and if weather patterns change.

I would also like to see the brown smog cloud over LA and Phoenix (and other cities) be eliminated in a few years, and I would be willing to look at nuclear, renewable and personal alternative power production to reach that. I am willing to spend the $4.00 or so a month that it costs me to use renewable power than coal power.

And what the government did in the 70s made life so much better today, it would be crazy thinking what it would be like if they hadn't done anything due to corporate interests.

JumpinJesus

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shesus

Thank you JJ for clarifying that. You beat me to it.

It seems that my views aren't too far off from the people that are posting in here.

The Earth can take care of itself as has been seen in the past.
We are only harming ourselves with our wasteful and polluting ways.

I find that environmental people use guilt as a platform. I don't agree with this method. The other method is fear, which I'm generally not a fan of either because it can be exaggerated. However, if backed up by facts and figures, I'll be more willing to listen.

I'm happy not to be driving anymore, but that is mostly because I hate to drive and gas is so damned expensive these days. I have the environment-friendly light bulb out of laziness. I don't have to change them so often.

Here is my question for those who are recycling promoters. I used to recycle in the 90s. However, when I watched the garbage men toss the recycling in with the other trash bags, I gave it up.

My questions to recycling advocates are:
How do you know for certain that your recycling bin isn't being tossed in with the rest of the garbage? How much electricity is it using to recycle? Is it really as environment friendly as it appears?

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Choose Heaven for the weather and Hell for the company

Martian

This is also an interesting point. I remember reading a few years ago that some types of plastic are simply tossed out at the recycling centre because they're not cost effective. Eventually the price of new plastic will raise and this will change.

At the same time, separating my recycling from my garbage is such a low-cost activity that I have no problem doing it.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

kutulu

I didn't see the show but that is a terrible comparison. A sin tax is just giving money to the church. Carbon credits are credits for real and quantifiable emissions reductions. They make emissions reduction programs cost effective by getting the public involved.

I work as an environmental consultant and our clients are the landfill industry. The decay of waste results in the production of methane and carbon dioxide. Landfills that exceed certain thresholds are required to install landfill gas collection systems that combust the methane in the landfill gas. Since methane has a much higher global warming potential, converting it to CO2 is a net emissions reduction. Smaller landfills, however, are not required to install collection systems.

Recently my company has become involved with carbon credits through the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). The CCX will give you carbon credits that you can sell on the open market. There are a few catches:

1. You can only get credits if you can prove that the reductions are real
2. You cannot get any credits if there is any regulatory rule forcing you to make the emissions reductions.

Meeting these conditions requires confirmation by third parties.

We've completed a few projects and it has been a huge success. The carbon credits paid for all of the costs of designing and building the gas collection system. On top of that, the cities that we did this for made money and we made money as well. It is a win for us, a win for the city, and a win for the environment.

Big business doesn't spend money unless it is forced to. If nobody is forcing them to spend a million dollars on building a baghouse to control particulate emissions, it won't get built. Even then you might have to fight them to the death for it. Maricopa County spent years in court trying to get a brick manufacturer to install a baghouse. They finally won but it took forever and cost a shitload of money.

Yes it moves on with or without you but every person on the plane results in increased fuel consumption.
-----Added 25/7/2008 at 12 : 38 : 12-----
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. It all depends on the market conditions at the time. In reality, they plastics industry does a lot more pre-consumer recycling than post-consumer recycling. It is also complicated, only certain types of plastics can be recycled and then they have to sort based on color and other properties.

Plastics are created from petroleum products. The raw materials are brought from wherever the oil is extracted to the plant. Recyclable materials only have to go from the recycling facility to the plant.

shesus

Thank you for the information. I don't know much about it and that is why I wanted to discuss it. It sounds like your company is doing a good thing and making money. This goes along the lines of the changes in the 60s and 70s that was posted previously. I can understand companies being held accountable if they are truly causing dangers to the atmosphere.

However, on the show, they were having individuals buy carbon credits. I found that to be a bit ridiculous and that is what was being compared to the sin tax.

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I heard you sold it

Choose Heaven for the weather and Hell for the company

kutulu

That is the whole point of it. These projects are being voluntarily subsidized by regular people that want to help to reduce emissions. The individual's motivation to buy the credits is irrelevant, the environment benefits as a result of the activity that resulted in the credit.

It really pisses me off that they are reducing the credits to that. Bullshit is right. They throw out their strawman attacks and give people a false perception of a program designed to give us clean air.

robot_parade

Huh? This makes no sense to me. Yes, we're having a different environmental impact on these areas than we were (I think the algae blooms you're talking about are related to fertilizer and agricultural run-off - I just don't have time to check ATM). This is worse than other toxic chemical pollution how, exactly?

Every living thing (and lots of non-living processes) have an impact on our environment, and are in turn effected by the environment. People aren't an exception, we're just an extreme case in that we (especially in the last 200 years) have more of a capacity to affect change in our environment, while at the same time have the ability to adapt to a wider range of envoronmental conditions. What other species, even before industrialization, existed everywhere from alaska to the sahara desert?

With the ability we have to change the environment, either deliberately, or as a by-product of our other activities, we have to be careful, or we'll end up changing the environment in ways we don't like. We may not like them for purely asthetic reasons (Most people would prefer parts of the coast of alaska before thousands of gallons of oil got spilled on them, even if it doesn't affect them directly), or for reasons of pure self-interest - life is likely to get pretty uncomfortable for everyone if the free mercury in the environment gets much higher, or a few billion people are displaced by rising sea levels. Even if you don't live near the coast, where do you think the people who *do* live near the coast now are going to want to live if the sea level rises 15 feet in the next 50 years?

No reasonable scientists are projecting the death of the human race (outside of a global nuclear war). What they *are* telling us is that our activities are changing the environment in drastic and sudden ways. No one can predict exactly what will happen with any degree of certainty, but what they *are* telling us is that if our carbon dioxide output continues to rise at the rate it is predicted to, the best models they have predict a precipitous rise in global temperature, and the resulting rise in ocean levels. The could be wrong. The earth is a very, very complicated place, and impossible to model acurately. But this is their best informed scientific opinion. They aren't predicting the end of the human race. They are predicting these changes, and we can easily imagine some of the impacts on our own lives if they come about.

That said, the problem I have with the focus on CO2 is that people seem to be ignoring the *other* environmental impacts we have. Toxic chemicals, including mercury, continue to be a big problem, and have a negative impact both on the qualitative state of the earth (most people would prefer fish and crabs in those rivers you mention to algae - fish, crabs, and algae are all life living in the environment in question - we just like the fish and crabs better than the green stuff), and our own quality of life. How many people, living at a certain quality of life, with a certain lifestyle, with a certain environmental 'efficiency', can the earth support, without lowering the quality of life for everyone?

If everyone lived the American lifestyle, at our current level of wastefulness, we'd be in Big Trouble. And there are a billion Chinese and a billion Indians all wanting the American quality of life. With another billion Africans not far behind. If they all suddenly started living like Americans (and most Europeans), what do you think would happen? How long would our oil and coal last? What would be the impact of all those happy meal containers being piled up, or buried, or burned, or tossed in the ocean? I'd be willing to bet anything that the lifestyle of the average industrialized-country citizen is just not sustainable for a population of 6 billion. We aren't going to keep everyone else at their current level, and the population is going up, not down. So we *have* to lead the world in finding a better way, because we led the way here, and because it's simply in our own self interest not to use up the plant we're sitting on.

dc_dux

Thats absolutely the case..unregulated (or unenforced) agricultural runoff is responsible.

I also agree that the focus on environmental degradation should be on more than C02 emissions. There are growing dead zones in the world's oceans...severe land degradation in the rainforests, etc. as a result of environmentally callous human activities. These have global impact.

And I disagree with those who say the earth will heal itself....perhaps over millennium if left alone and given responsible environmental practices both on the personal and societal level...but it will be that much harder and take that much longer.

And it cant be done by one country alone...air and water pollution dont respect national borders.

__________________
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Willravel

The environment's awesome.

robot_parade

The whole idea that the earth will 'heal itself' is a complete misconception, I think. In some cases it's an apt analogy, but in others, not so much. For instance - sure, if you cut down some of the Amazon, and then leave it alone, in 50 or 100 years, it will grow back, and you won't be able to tell the difference. But if you cut it down, turn it into farmland, use intensive agricultural methods (lots of fertilizer and weedkiller), you're changing the nature of the environment in lots and lots of ways. Some of which we can understand and predict the results of, some of which not. It isn't so much a case of our actions causing 'damage' that will be 'healed', its the fact that we're having an impact on the living systems we depend on for our current quality of life. If we change those systems drastically, will we have the same quality of life that we have now? Probably not.

thespian86

YAY! Now who wants cake?

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Strange Famous

a temp increase of 4 degree's C will kill 250 million people at least.

I dont think we are talking about the end of the world scenario's, but certainly mass destruction on a previously unimagined scale.

No one disagree's that the world is getting hotter, and most of the known science suggests that human action is acting as a catalyst to a natural process. I think if we arent at the tipping point we are very close. Certainly waiting 25 years for the end of oil will be too long.

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The Gospel of Thomas

jorgelito

I don't know if there's global warming or not but I don't have to. I'm no crazy left-wing hippie trying to force my views on others. What I do know is that it makes good sense to take care of your (one's own) living and working environments including the earth's natural resources. To me it's just common sense. Every day I look out my window or go outside and I can see with my own eyes there's heavy air pollution. From a selfish perspective, I don't want to breathe that in. From a community perspective, no one should have to breathe that in. Asthma rates in children have increased significantly in metro Los Angeles from the rise in air pollutants. Likewise with the rise in respitory illnesses. One can speculate that translates into increased health costs as well.

I don't go to the beach that often anymore because we get frequent beach closing dues to high levels of pollution, bacteria and red tide. It sucks that so much coastline is polluted and unusable.

When I get a letter in the mail from the Water Department because the water has been contaminated with some chemical spill, that's real. There's no debate if Al Gore made shit up. It's real. Someone "shit" in the water supply.

Shutting our eyes to Exxon Valdez or the recent Mississippi spills and subsequent closure is real. It has consequences. This isn't some wide-eyed misguided liberal arts college drop out interfering with business. These environmental disasters have real consequences and cost us billions in losses. There are human tolls too. Look at Minimata. The chemical (mercury?) spills there have deformed their population.
This isn't a left-right issue. This is a quality of life issue and it affects all of us.

Good sound environmental policy need not be opposed to business. There is a synergy there that can be exploited for the benefit of all in a win-win.

Edit: I want cake. Please.

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"The race is not always to the swift, nor battle to the strong, but
to the one that endures to the end."

"Demand more from yourself, more than anyone else could ever ask!"

- My recruiter

Bacchanal

They covered recycling in another episode of Bullshit. Basically what they said (that I remember) is that outside of aluminum, recycling actually harms the environment more than helps. Driving to pick up the recycling and take it to the plant releases pollutants, the plant itself releases pollutants and uses energy and leaves behind excess chemicals.

I don't know all about it, but I don't recycle either...

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Universal Truth Is Not Measured In Mass Appeal

abaya

I don't know how it works in the States--but the ironic thing is in Iceland, they SHIP the recyclables to SWEDEN for processing. Yes, they don't have the means to actually recycle things here--so they put it on a ship and send it to another country, and they actually buy it from us (because it's become a valuable commodity, in some strange way). But you can imagine the inefficiency and irony in the whole thing... very weird.

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And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran

Willravel

Maybe after every pub discussion we can all go out for cake.

dc_dux

Voluntary personal recycling is probably not very efficient or cost effective, but as more and more communities implement mandatory curbside recycling programs, the benefits increase significantly.

Aluminum is still the most cost-effective, but paper contributes more by volume and paper recycling has a much great upside. Recycled paper costs much less to produce at paper mills than virgin paper, with much greater energy savings and lower environmental impacts.

Recycled glass (for new bottles and fiberglass insulation) is a relatively good energy saver.

Plastics are a bitch.

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"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

filtherton

I think more emphasis should be placed on the "reduce, reuse" aspect of personal involvement in environmental efforts. As has been stated before, the actual effectiveness of recycling on waste reduction is a complicated issue, and isn't necessarily one that can be settle with across the board endorsements or condemnations.

Reducing and reusing will always help. Don't drink bottled water. Get a reusable bag for your groceries. Get a travel mug for your coffee. Ride a bike, fatass. Take the bus. Don't live 20 miles away from where you work if you live in an urban area. Shut your lights off. Don't waste energy inadvertently heating or cooling the outside of your house.

It isn't that difficult to conceive of ways to be more efficient. Efficiency is cheaper too, if you don't happen to find the idea of squandering our planet's natural resources all that compelling.

The problem is that the plight of the environment isn't all that interesting to the vast majority of people. They're more concerned with other things, like how to fit in. Efficiency isn't sexy. It is the exact opposite of the kind of wealthy extravagance that is the bread and butter of modern western (and increasingly eastern) culture.

Concern for the environment is cultural, and until we start treating it that way, any attempts to cultivate mass appeal on its behalf are doomed.

It will be unfortunate if this whole global warming thing doesn't pan out (we're kind of locked in to this little experiment at this point) because it will mean that a possible cultural in for environmental consciousness has been squandered. But then again, if global warming doesn't end up being the doom and gloom it's supposed to be, that'd probably be a good thing.

ASU2003

I can see shipping aluminum and other metals. Mining and processing ore isn't easy or energy-friendly. Rubber from tires can be shredded and made into other products pretty easily.

Glass takes a lot of energy, but it is heavy. And plastics are tough to deal with. I wonder if they make plastic wood out of shredded plastic and epoxy.

CandleInTheDark

So what level of degradation in the environment is acceptable to maintain an enjoyable lifestyle? What level of reduction in your standard of living is acceptable to reduce your environmental impact?

I will try to answer from my perspective, as a future forester. I know trees. I know forests. In Europe and North America, the landbase was deforested to an extent. Deforestion is the conversion from one land use (forest) to another (suburb or agriculture). In order to raise the standard of living in these areas, land had to be deforested. Poor people and forests are incompatible (unless the poor want to stay poor).

Currently, in the developed world, deforestation is essentially zero. Forested areas are harvested, but generally not converted to other land uses. The forested land base is actually increasing in some areas. A high standard of living is essential to protecting forests.

In the undeveloped word, deforestation is occurring. A large number of poor people with no agricultural experience conduct shifting agriculture in an area where they have little or no property rights. Until these poor become wealthier, they will continue to convert forested land to temporary agriculture and finally invasive grasslands. Only by increasing the wealth of the poor can deforestation be stopped, but some deforestation is necessary to increase their wealth.

Short of a permanent world underclass, this process cannot be stopped.

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Where there is doubt there is freedom.

spindles

Fluorescent globes have quite a lot of mercury in them - not exactly as "environmentally friendly" as they sound - certainly not something that should be thrown in landfill when broken.
-----Added 28/7/2008 at 05 : 22 : 12-----
The local ABC had a show called "Carbon Cops" (Carbon Cops - Transforming Energy Use). One episode they had the family living in their McMansion, with a zillion lights on at all time and they bought carbon credits to offset the flying/driving/power boating that they were doing and ended up "carbon neutral". The credits they bought were part of a tree planting program. It seemed like a bit of a wank really as they didn't really do anything to change the way they lived.

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dc_dux

LED lightbulbs have no mercury or halogen gases and have more than double the lifetime of fluorescent and five times the lifetime of incandescent.

While still not cheap, the price is coming down on LEDs and IMO, it makes for the best lighting for reading at any price!

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"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

snowy

Largely it depends on what part of the country you are in. My SO is a student in environmental engineering/chemical engineering, and he took a class on polymers (plastics) not too long ago; one of the big things they looked at is recycling plastics. Recycling plastics isn't always cost-effective; they're expensive to reprocess into new plastics, but at least if they are recycled (truly recycled) they aren't taking up precious landfill space. But more often than not that isn't what happens; in our area, plastics put in the comingled bin that the garbage collector picks up are sorted out and shipped to China. That is all the garbage company will say on the matter; they don't imply that those plastics are actually being recycled. In fact, it's much more likely that they're being burned to power something.

It's an easy matter to call up your garbage collector and ASK them what happens to your recycling, though, and it's also not hard to find alternative recyclers who do actually recycle plastics. We recycle our plastics through the hippie food co-op recycling center, because they take the plastics to a more local company where they are reprocessed.

To me, environmentalism is more than a fad; I've been one since I was a kid and my mother bought me a book called "50 Ways Kids Can Save the Planet." Of course, it seems that out here in the PacNW it's more of a way of life; I honestly feel like the rest of the world is just starting to catch up with stuff we've been doing for a long time. For instance, Cyn recently posted about an article in the NYTimes in regards to front-yard vegetable gardens. In my community, those are very common, and have been for a long time. Furthermore, a lot of what I do just makes simple economic sense. It's cheaper to buy locally-grown organic produce at the farmer's market than it is to buy factory-farmed vegetables, and it makes more health sense too. It's cheaper--free--to ride my bicycle everywhere instead of driving. I also live in a bottle bill state--each can or bottle is worth a nickel. Would you throw a nickel away?

But I'm not going overboard with this green nonsense. I'm just doing what I've always done--reduce, reuse, recycle. Next summer I'm going to plant a vegetable garden, because it makes economic sense, and I love gardening.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

CandleInTheDark

The benefits of planting trees as carbon offsets are dubious at best.

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Where there is doubt there is freedom.

jorgelito

Are you serious? I changed all my light bulbs to CFLs and was patting myself on the back. Plus I have back up for years to come. Now you're telling me they are polluting? Damn. What about the LEDs then? I haven't seen any beyond flashlights etc. Do they come in household form (bulb)?

__________________
"The race is not always to the swift, nor battle to the strong, but
to the one that endures to the end."

"Demand more from yourself, more than anyone else could ever ask!"

- My recruiter

spindles

Yep - at the time I watched this on TV I thought it was a complete wank to make rich people feel good about their excessive lifestyle.
-----Added 28/7/2008 at 11 : 36 : 48-----
Well, they are significantly less energy hungry, so they do get a tick on that. They can be recycled - I know our local council has a recycling centre where they can be dropped off and also Ikea locally allow you to drop off old bulbs. In the US (according to wikipedia) The Home Depot also has a recycling scheme for them (see Compact fluorescent lamp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

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Yakk

Ignoring for now the problem with some kinds of carbon credits (it is far harder to measure "carbon reductions" than "carbon emissions"), emitting carbon isn't a sin.

It is a cost.

The amount of the cost is not perfectly clear (the impact of CO2 emissions, and what can be done to fix it, has not been exactly determined), but it is a cost.

Currently, the cost is dumped on the entire world. You produce the CO2, and everyone in the entire world pays for it.

Your "they didn't really do anything to change the way they lived" seems to be talking about carbon emissions as a sin -- something that, once done, cannot be fixed. But that isn't what carbon emissions are!

Carbon emissions are just a cost -- a resource, even. If you pay the price for a resource, or pay the world for the cost of what you did, or do something that undoes the damage done by your actions (quite perfectly, I might add -- the world doesn't care that much if you emit 1 kg of CO2, then sequester 1 kg of CO2) -- there is no harm done.

This does not match up with the "emitting carbon is a sin" position -- because emitting carbon is a sin is a religious-style viewpoint on the problem.

Having a religious-style objection to carbon emissions can be useful -- it can make people feel good and virtuous about reducing their carbon emissions, which motivates them to reduce carbon emissions without being otherwise compensated for it. But it brings with it that baggage: that people who find a way to eliminate the damage they are doing in CO2 emissions without "sacrifice" are bad people.

...

Going back to the original issue: we do know that humanity is emitting CO2 at levels that are a detectable fraction of global carbon exchange. World wide CO2 production is at about 1% of the current atmosphere's carbon levels, and about 2% of the 'natural' carbon in-out of the global chemosystem (I think that is a good name for it -- more than just life, but all of the myraid chemical reactions that move stuff around).

...

I mentioned the "other fixes". It is within the GDP of a relatively small nation to launch sulphur particles into the upper atmosphere, and produce a short-term global cooling effect. This is apparently a huge source of the short-medium term cooling caused by large volcanic eruptions.

It might turn out to be way cheaper to cool the world using this technique than to control CO2 emissions. Of course, doing global climate engineering is something that many won't want to risk, in the case someone uses ft/second and someone else reads it as meters/second. . .

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

robot_parade

Aha - the above is all true, but, the problem is, that measuring one's environmental impact based upon CO2 is a very poor yardstick. The coal power plants that probably power that families house produces more than CO2. The waste that the nice garbage men carry off every week has to go somewhere. Etc. etc.

This argument re-enforces my point above. CO2 is not the whole story.

So we release CO2 that warms the earth. We release sulfur to cool the earth. What are the environmental impacts of the extra sulfur? Acidification, off the top of my head. I'm sure there are others. How will we deal with those?

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly...