Environmentalism

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I know full well what he is talking about. I live in southern California. I remember the days of smog alerts and daily air quality forecasts. The environmental reforms started out reasonable enough for the most part, but people with private agendas were never satisfied. Then some creative businessmen discovered they could lobby to make the use of their environmental compliance products mandatory, and replace cheap consumer products with expensive and sometimes proprietary ones. Not only do we have a bunch of unelected anarcho-primitivists justifying their expensive jobs dictating environmental law by decree, but the people trying to provide "solutions" are as bad as everything pharmaceuticals are accused of. Using bureaucracy to enforce complex environmental regulations only fits into liberal 'shakedown economics' economies like California that kill jobs and ruins the means to improve everyone's quality of life!

the issue there has nothing do with restrictions as such,

only the people you allow to make them.

When I'm out in the country, my dog gets to s**t wherever he wants and I don't have to pick it up. When I'm in the city, I have to scoop and so does everyone else, because if we didn't we'd be buried in dog s**t. The only alternative would be for us all to pay collectively for some government worker to go around and pick up the s**t for us, which would be both expensive and less efficient.

The point being, where more people are packed together, we necessarily do more things that impact each other and have to both restrict our behavior in ways that we wouldn't have to if we lived alone in the woods, and we have to take the time to do things that we wouldn't have to if we lived alone in the woods. The same applies to the environment. If you're alone, it doesn't matter if you foul the water supply when you're the only one using it. If there are other people using the water, it starts to become very important. Likewise air, soil, soundspace, lights at night, etc.

Do you know what anarcho-primitivism is? I really doubt those who adhere to it have expensive jobs dictating environmental law. They're too busy learning how to survive "after the crash," or setting SUV's on fire.

I sympathise with the OP's views. I really don't think people realise how much they rely on oil. Shampoo, pens, paper, oils, fuels, perfumes, clothing, shoes, detergents and soaps, anything made of plastic, roads, electronics, entire industries, all based or rely on oil. How do we make roads without tar? How do we fly when there is no oil based jet fuel? What will we write with and clean with and wear without oil?

Even just from this point of view reducing dependence on oil will give us a longer period of having oil, which we can use to find ways to replace our dependence on oil. I read something about a bio fuel company that instead of using crops they used biological waste from agriculture, in this way they could produce oil without competing with valuable farming land. That is a good example of a more sustainable replacement to oil.

Environmentally well there is a consensus that there is rapid climate change and that it is probably caused in some part by human activity. I also agree with comments that most attempts at environmentalism are motivated by personal interest or greed by special interest groups. What we really need to do is use less oil. Drive less, car pool, buy less oil based junk. Consumerism just pushes people to buy but we have to reign this in and be satisfied with less to really make a difference.

It can be said that telling people not to buy as much oil based things is restricting their freedom, yet dependence on those oil based things is the definition of restriction. At this point we are kind of spoilt because oil has made things so cheap. Soap used to be expensive because the only way to get it was rendering fat. Perfume was a luxury. Clothes were made 100% of natural products, could you see yourself wearing hemp or wool clothes today? In any case making materials to replace the oil and plastics we use will be expensive and so a carbon tax can only work if it is used to subsidize the start-up of replacement industries. Once those industries get established they will become cheaper, won't need the subsidies and eventually shove aside the ever more expensive oil industries. The biggest problem with this is the management of it.

My intuition tells me that human beings are being narcissistic in their idea that they actually have control over the end of the world. Not sure what else to say about that, other than I think nuclear war is a much more imminent threat.

The illusion of control and power is one of the more troublesome memes.

ruveyn

the blanket statement that we have no effect equally so.

The trees! They're trying to steal all of our precious carbon dioxide! Join the Republican Party now and help stop the trees before its too late!!

You mean kind of like how communism would be such an awesome setup if the right people could ever be found to run it?


It's one thing to say don't throw crap in the gutters and keep the noise level down after 10, but environmentalists are never satisfied with things like that. You end up with insane regulations like getting fined for kicking up dust, letting dirt get into the water supply, bans on wood fires, and mandating the use of reusable grocery bags that become a public health hazard.

no, i mean that when you allow financial interests to spill into politics (especially with campaign financing like in the us)
you also open up the doors to everyone who wants to pour money into and be pured money on, if that is a non issue many of those problems simply wouldnt happen.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw0jwrWqOKI[/youtube]

For now, the corporations are needed to counterbalance the influence of the unions and environmental lobby.

but is that whats actually happening?

it seems as if all the different financial lobby groups all serve to fracture a political system,

Corporations and unions act in synthesis to create monolithic public/private cooperatives. The beast just gets more beastly.

can you give an example? The only non-toxic examples that come to the top of my head is the overplowing/overgrazing (during a drout) that led to the dust bowl, and I'm sure you can see why no one wants a replay of that.


this is old news:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2 ... 49,3330550
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/day ... 58902.html
http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/regions/centra ... t1-eng.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_runoff
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... _11190336/
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-02-14/ ... coral-reef


http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/952 ... ealth.html
http://napavalleyregister.com/news/loca ... 002e0.html
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv ... g_problems
http://www.asthmawa.org.au/About-Asthma ... nd-Asthma/


http://www.cawrecycles.org/issues/plast ... gs/problem
http://www.bcb.uwc.ac.za/envfacts/plastic/index.htm
a note on 'health hazard': the links I found were all pointing out the fact that people need to *clean* their grocery bags occasionally - quelle sorpresa.