How will it be explained?

[Squid]

Somewhat separately:

 

I am coming to the conclusion - completely apart from the global warming debate - that some type of modest, non market based carrot and stick approach (emphasis on carrot) to energy consumption should be adopted here in the US. I would say that a childless Seattle couple living in a 2500+ square foot house is at least as gluttonous as the lone SUV driver. I would also question giving additional, per-child tax credits to couples with more than two or three kids.

 

Sounds suspiciously like

 

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!"

- Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, 1874

 

I think we have a RED hidden in our midst!

[snoboy]

try $2.91... 92 cents a liter these days...

[Fairweather]

Remind me to avoid the concept of compromise here on this board. First time I've ever been called a commie.

[Dru]

try $2.91... 92 cents a liter these days...

 

79.9 in Abbotsford

Take that Kootenay hippie!

[snoboy]

Yeah, but with the longest drive I regularly do being 4 minutes, then I don't really mind how much the gas costs...

[Squid]

Remind me to avoid the concept of compromise here on this board. First time I've ever been called a commie.

 

The first step in curing your communism is admitting you're a communist.

[Dru]

i could cut my driving time to 4 minutes, but i'd need a pilots license for my airborne Subarocket

[whirlwind]

I hear it makes good lamp oil.

 

 

and good soap, fight club anyone?

[AlpineK]

Remind me to avoid the concept of compromise here on this board. First time I've ever been called a commie.

 

The first step in curing your communism is admitting you're a communist.

 

Mr Fairweather; Are you, or have you ever been a member of the communist party.

[JayB]

To claim that all environmentalists are catastrophists is as absurd as claiming all religious persons believe in imminent armageddon.

 

This is surely true, but my point was that at the extremes the two resemble one another quite a bit more than most people think. Head for an Earth-First rally or a Louisiana tent-revival and you're going to see roughly the same wild-eyed zeal,

the people held in thrall by the conceit that they and they alone are in posession of a true vision that the rest of society is oblivious to or has foolishly rejected, and the same eager anticipation of the armageddon/end-times/enviro-catastrophe that will finally vindicate them and lay the unbelievers low. These are just a few of the more striking parallels. At the fringes, the movement has become a secular religion inspired by a righteous paranoia that has as little to do with promoting a judicious use of resources as a televangelism has do with the actual teachings of Jesus.

 

When we talk about "ecosystem collapse" there can be multiple meanings. The most extreme meaning I could ascribe to it is that our environment would no longer be able to support any of the humans who live in it. In other words, human extinction. Well, that's pretty absurd, most would agree. But if you change the definition to "no longer able to support all of the humans who live in it", then we have reached that point ready. There are populations in parts of the world who are suffering greatly from environmental degradation.

 

Cross reference environmental degradation with the Index of Economic Freedom and you'll see a striking correlation between authoritarianism and both a degraded environment and the amplified human suffering that goes along with it. My hunch is that this linkage is much, much tighter than any connection between environmental damage and consumption, especially if one controls for population density. The average person in India may consume far less than we do, but I'd still rather breathe the air in LA than in Bombay, and if someone put a gun to my head and told me that I had to down a shot of water taken from some random point along the course of the Mississippi or some random point along the Ganges I'd have an easy time choosing, and it's equally easy to choose where I would elect to be reincarnated as a member of an endangered species, as starving people that live amongst their own sewage aren't likely to be all that concerned about my welfare. This goes for pretty much any third-world country with a population-density of any significance whatsoever. The poor resource allocation and inefficiency that go along with centralized economic planning and forced collectivism go a long way towards promoting the resource exhaustion and poverty that so many on the Left decry while simultaneously waving the pompoms for the likes of Chavez, Castro, and any other leader still engaged in the socialist experiment against reality.

[Jim]

Good points on the fringe group scene. But the comments about degradation in less-economically advanced countries ignores a major factor. As the badest one armed grollia in the room, the US thirst for resources is fostering degradation in other contries. Whether it's oil in Nigeria or tantalum mining for our precious cell phones in South America, our affects spill outside our borders in a much greater proportion than visa versa.

[JayB]

I am not sure that it follows that either the people or the environment in the said third-world nations would be better off it wealhy countries quit buying the few things that these nations can produce to generate income.

 

Do a little thought experiment with your own health and home, and imagine that the market for what you have to sell - your skill-set/labor - evaporated and your household income declined in tandem. Odds are that you'd have a significant decline both in the state of your health and your home.

 

Protecting the environment requires a population that's comfortable enough to care about things, a civil society that's capable of enforcing the environmental regulations passed by the legislature elected by the population that gives a shit about the environment, which requires a tax-base capable of funding the insitutions necessary to enforce the said regulations, which requires taxable revenue, which requires income, which requires profits. The fiscal ecosystem is not unlike those in the natural world, in that removing one of the key components often results in the whole thing imploding.

[Jim]

Some good points in there, but the underlying theme is that our brand of capatilism (and often exploitation of resources) is better that anything these poor natives had without our noble help. One of the major problems we've seen in open trade agreements and IMP and World Bank policies is that the strong countries dictate the terms to the weak. It's a difficult to argue that villages in Shell Oil's kingdom in Nigeria are better off than before the appearence of drilling rigs.

 

And before you pull out the inevitible commie card - that's not what I'm advocating. There's some well written books on the problems with government as overseer of both markets and the regulatory system at once. But enforcing our idea of market systems on developing countries doesn't always make for happy natives.

 

Back to the orginal thread - there's no doubt that the US far out-consumes the world in proportion to our population. We're behind other developed contries in energy effeciency, mass transit, general green-building technology, and any vision of energy conservation. And the argument in favor of this is that the more resources we use (and waste) the better for the rest of the world because they're selling it to us? Excellent!

[j_b]

there is another form of extremism that is hardly ever recognized: it's called "economism". it calls for a nearly blind faith in "The Market" to solve problems that have little to do with commerce (except perhaps being victim to it), whereupon you can always spend or sell your way out of trouble. you'll also note that the folks in the thrall of "economism", including its high priests, are never held accountable for their pronouncements on how "The Economy" will take care of it.

 

lest we forget reality:

http://www.maweb.org/en/Article.aspx?id=58

Experts Warn Ecosystem Changes Will Continue to Worsen, Putting Global Development Goals At Risk

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 | London, UK

 

 

A landmark study released today reveals that approximately 60 percent of the ecosystem services that support life on Earth – such as fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water regulation, and the regulation of regional climate, natural hazards and pests – are being degraded or used unsustainably. Scientists warn that the harmful consequences of this degradation could grow significantly worse in the next 50 years.

 

[...]

Edited March 31, 2005 by j_b

[cook]

[ScottP]

No matter how you slice it, we live in a finite world. Unregulated growth of human population, and related resource exploitation, will ultimately result in an environment unsuitable for habitation in anything close to what we in the industrialized world now enjoy, if it is at all life-sustainable.

There are those who are trying to reverse that trend, those who are trying to maintain the status quo, those who are ambivalent/apathetic and those who don't care for reasons of greed, egotism or the need to merely survive.

 

Nit pick all you want. We are ultimately fucked if we don't get our collective 6.5 billion strong (and growing) shit together.

 

"If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst."

-- Thomas Hardy

[JayB]

In large swaths of the developed world, the trend towards population growth have steadily declined to the point that reproduction is below replacement level. This pattern has been consistent across virtually all cultures - as development and prosperity increase, reproduction decreases. The only place where you see rampant population growth these days are those locales where poverty is still rampant, and it is in those places where the condition of the local environment is the worst. Moreover, as development increases, the capital necessary to fund the improvements in technology necessary to increase efficiency increase as well, and the net output per unit input of labor and raw materials increases - which is precisely what has kept the Malthusian prophesy at bay for the past two hundred years.

 

If you look at the way things have actually worked in practice, it seems clear that the best way to "reverse the trend" of overpopulation and habitat destruction is to fight poverty.

 

With respect to our consumption of the world's resources, take a third world country that depends on the export of a given resource for a considerable amount of its GDP, and cut the global market for that resource by 10% a year, and monitor the local environment in that country. Odds are the environment and the health of the inhabitants will decline in tandem with the net decrease in national income. People that can't afford kerosene don't go without heat - they start cutting the trees down. People that can't afford to buy food don't philosophically resign themselve to their fate, and lie down and starve - they eat whatever they can get their hands on, and aren't all that likely to know, notice, or care if the creature that they are eating is endangered or not. Or they prostitute themselves, sell their kids, kill the folks with food and or resources - none of which does much for the inhabitants or the planet. They - like you - depend on someone providing a market for what they have to sell. For you it's your expertise, for most developing nations, its either resources or cheap labor.

 

Increasing efficiency on the user-end, and mitigating the environmental impact on the producer end seems like a better plan than hoping that human nature will fundamentally change in a way that's to your liking and vountarily relinquish the things that make their lives more pleasant and comfortable, or depriving the poorest nations on earth of a market for the few things that they have to sell.

[Dru]

JayB

[j_b]

classical fallacy: "the dirt-poor-rabbit-breeding-like-3rd world is the cause of resource and ecosystems depletion. we just need to lift them out of poverty to solve the problem"

 

breaking newws: the first world with its low birth rate is the main cause of unsustainable development such as fossil fuel depletion, global warming, overfishing and raping of the ocean bottoms, illegal logging of exotic woods to be exported, destruction of mangroves for shrimp aquaculture to feed us and tourism for our jet-setting, etc ...

 

the population explosion has already occurred and these folks want what we have and do what we do. considering the state of resources, it's simply mathematically impossible no matter how much gdp spewing you do.

[JayB]

My main point with respect to the third world was that adopting policies that will, in practice, increase local poverty in those countries will also result in more a rapid deterioration of the local environments in those countries.

 

Global depletion of non-renewable resources is a related problem, but not identical to the condition of the local environment in the third-world. The bottom line is that mankind has yet to categorically reject any technologies that result in increased comfort and well-being, so the only way to repress effective demand for the resources used to produce those things is either by limiting effective demand through poverty or imposing restrictions on their use via state power of some sort. I personally don't think that Ming Li and Motombo are going to forsake electric lighting and hot meals voluntarily, so the only hope is more efficient resource utilization. Converting all of mankind to super-efficient flourescent bulbs, well insulated homes, and recycling is a hell of a lot more realistic than fundamentally altering human nature. Your comrades tried that one and the experiment went rather poorly.

[selkirk]

two points.... first you want to decrease birth rates? Educate the women and give them access to birth control. As memory serves this has been pretty effectively established. Make them literate, give them the tools to thing rationally, and the backbone to stand up and they stop having oodles of midgets.

 

 

as for "Economism" (the believe that free markets can be truly self regulating.) There's two fundamental flaws in it. It assumes that either the entire population is cognizant enough of the long term effects of purchasing power and current decisions to self regulate, and to regulate problems sufficiently early before they have consequences that are too dire. Or it assumes that companies are ethical and forthinking about something other than their own profit. Maybe Patagonia, kind of, or Whole Foods, kind of. Business are in it to make a profit and to grow, if they can't do that they fail and have no effect at all, and those goals seems to be almost directly opposed to altruistic ends. Some of the businesses moderate their impact a bit but that's about all you can hope for in the way of self regulation.

 

As for the first it's been my experience that very few people have the will, desire, or forthought to do this, and even the ones who do give it thought do it inconsistantly (I know i'm guilty of this). The vast majority of people tend to do what's in their immediate best interests, or act on immediate desires. (what's cheapest, most abudant, most desirable.) and we get the rise of Walmart in small towns, Oil conglomerates, etc etc. Individuals acting independatnly can think and act intelligently, but the larger the group of people, the lower the collective intelligence, until you end up where we are now.

[j_b]

My main point with respect to the third world was that adopting policies that will, in practice, increase local poverty in those countries will also result in more a rapid deterioration of the local environments in those countries.

 

classic strawman argument. nobody argued for increasing poverty in developing nations.

 

Global depletion of non-renewable resources is a related problem, but not identical to the condition of the local environment in the third-world.

 

say what? depletion of resources and destruction of ecosystems is not "a related problem" but the main topic of discussion in this thread, and despite what your tendencious discourse implies it is principally the doing of developed nations. playing the wittle-fiddle-of-eradicating-poverty-in-developping-nations to justify the continuing policy of resource extraction beyond sustainability is nothing more than demagoguery.

 

The bottom line is that mankind has yet to categorically reject any technologies that result in increased comfort and well-being so the only way to repress effective demand for the resources used to produce those things is either by limiting effective demand through poverty or imposing restrictions on their use via state power of some sort. I personally don't think that Ming Li and Motombo are going to forsake electric lighting and hot meals voluntarily, so the only hope is more efficient resource utilization. Converting all of mankind to super-efficient flourescent bulbs, well insulated homes, and recycling is a hell of a lot more realistic than fundamentally altering human nature.

 

what? you are now aguing that conservation will make the difference? this is what you wrote earlier:

 

" The other morsel of irony in the Left fringe's critique of the Right Fringe's ecological track record is that when you look at actual BTU's per household, there's not much difference. You have electric lights, modern appliances, an automobile - etc - just like they do. Hardly enough of a difference to warrant the self righteous grandstanding and condemnation issuing forth from the Left fringe"

 

so which is it going to be: is conservation key or not? you can't have it both ways.

 

your interpretation of "human nature", the supposed desire of some to change it and the means available to address the problems belong to the realm of cartoons.

 

Your comrades tried that one and the experiment went rather poorly.

 

and the demonization goes on ... weak. let's face it, under the pretense of an educated argument you debate like a rightwing thug.

[Alex]

wow, it took you a thread like this to come out of 4 months of retirement? sheesh

[ChrisT]

Looks like Brazil is way ahead of US in reducing its dependence on foreign oil. Almost 20% of Brazil's cars run on Ethanol only and 50% of all new cars sold in Brazil this year will be "mix-fuel" (gasoline and ethanol). In addition, Brazil has embraced the use of biodiesel for trucks and buses with a plant expected to produce 12 million liters of biodiesel fuel per year.

 

Granted this is a plan that has been 30 years in the making but it's certainly an example the US would do well to follow.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Looks like Brazil is way ahead of US in reducing its dependence on foreign oil. Almost 20% of Brazil's cars run on Ethanol only and 50% of all new cars sold in Brazil this year will be "mix-fuel" (gasoline and ethanol). In addition, Brazil has embraced the use of biodiesel for trucks and buses with a plant expected to produce 12 million liters of biodiesel fuel per year.

 

Granted this is a plan that has been 30 years in the making but it's certainly an example the US would do well to follow.

 

how much rain forest was destroyed in executing this policy?