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[littlefallsmets]

Oh, man... a political arguement where I ain't gotta be extreme because, while I got an opinion on the matter, that opinion is quite low on my list of axes to grind. This is new. I gotta go get some chips...

[theinevitable]

Every generation has believed that their generation is in some absolutely pressing situation that only they can solve by acting radically and immediately.

I tend to listen to scientists when they tell me how things work. And right now, they are telling me we are in a crappy place, and are heading down a crappy path.

[theinevitable]

Well, both. America uses a really disproportionate amount of resources per person in terms of water, electricity, oil products, etc. So we need to improve on that front a lot. At the same time, places like China and India are rapidly catching up as they modernize and quality of life improves. China and India  have both signed the Kyoto Protocol, and we have not. I am not really up on my figures in terms of what the Kyoto Protocol is actually accomplishing. Some states (I believe California is one) are enacting laws which will reduce their emissions to essentially bring them in line with the protocol, but others are not.

One part of the treaty, which I think is rad, is that it differentiates between Developed and Developing nations-- the developed nations have to sign that they will reduce emissions, but developing ones do not. However, there is a system where, for instance, if Ghana wants to build a power plant, and they cannot afford an environmentally safe one, the UK or another Developed nation can help them build a better plant, and will be rewarded with credits towards their own carbon emission reduction. Or, as wikipedia says--

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is an arrangement under the Kyoto Protocol allowing industrialised countries with a greenhouse gas reduction commitment (called Annex 1 countries) to invest in projects that reduce emissions in developing countries as an alternative to more expensive emission reductions in their own countries. A crucial feature of an approved CDM carbon project is that it has established that the planned reductions would not occur without the additional incentive provided by emission reductions credits, a concept known as "additionality".

The CDM allows net global greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced at a much lower global cost by financing emissions reduction projects in developing countries where costs are lower than in industrialized countries.

In addition, there is a cool Credit system where if you can't meet your goal for reducing emissions, you can buy a Credit for that amount of emissions from a country which has overachieved.
This kind of system is also in place in the EU, I believe, for factories and the like, and is pretty successful so far-- the free market at work and all that.

Also, A-CAP, what are some examples of the fallacious assumptions of importance that previous generations have faced? I took that statement at face value, and then realized that I couldn't think of any.
Except things like beating the Nazis/Axis or communists?

[side_show]

Inev, I almost never think of you as a kidlet, but maybe here I do.  Yes, scientists are basically at a consensus that there are huge, massive changes coming down the pipes and radical alterations of how we live might need to happen.  Total turn around stuff.  If you look at what scientists are telling us, a lot of it is actually stuff we as humans have dealt with before, within recent human memory.  There are people all over this continent who remember and know how to function when the shit hits the fan.  I've sat down and talked with many, many people who lived through the Depression and it was shitty ass times, yet at the same time, it is not the end of the world to have to relearn how to be self sufficient.  It is not actually a tragedy that young people 40 years from now here in the Americas may not know what it's like to drink water flown in from Paris, but that they might know how to dig a well.  It is not actually the end of the world if every grocery store closes down and we have to learn how to grow our own food.  A life of luxury and ease is nice, but life goes on without it all over the world right now.  And yes, we who won the lottery and got to be born where we are will be the lucky ones, and even if it means the mass extinction and reinvention of communities and cultures, that's actually part of the ebb and flow of how nature works.  Yes, we may have brought it about ourselves, but so did so many civilizations before us.

I'm around kids all day, and I worry about them constantly, but to worry about if they're going to be thirsty, or hungry or disease ridden is moot.  People are living in those conditions right now.  Right now, while you read this sentence, there is a kid somewhere dying of a disease that one simple injection could have prevented.  It's not okay, but maybe it's too far away for you to see that even in third and fourth world conditions kids still laugh and play and grow up and have babies of their own.  In my experience, they even go so far as to make and create art and innovation.  You talk of your peers as a weak and spindly stock, and maybe that's true.  When you look at humans or trees, they don't grow strong roots unless they're blown by the wind.  The imperative to survive is so fuck*ng strong you wouldn't believe it.  The shit people survive - I don't wish bad things on anyone, but people survive shit that isn't talked about much in polite society.  Some of your whiny ass buddies might just surprise the hell out of you by learning to milk a goat, carefully tending a stolen, fertilized egg from chick to egg producing hen, or by slitting the throat of some now unmedicated psychopath who was about to slit your throat.  

Like I said, I worry about kids all the fuck*ng time.  In classes I meet them at the moment they first meet each other, when all they are is monstrous little id egos running around, appetite and destruction and chaos.  Little inconsiderate assholes.  And that's how every group of kids, around the world and across time behaves without guidance.  Selgiraffeness works for babies who need to demand to survive, but after say 6 or 7, that's not how it rolls.  When we talk in vague ways about future generations, we neglect to see the real armour we can give kids has little to do with providing them with the luxuries we may have enjoyed.  Real tools, timeless tools, relate to teaching creativity, resilience, stoicism and respect.  40 years from now could be heaven or hell on earth, and the real imperative is that we teach future generations how to process and function within what ever that world will be.  And if it's back to living in caves and foraging, do you want your kid to be the kind who others like enough to teach to avoid the radioactive mutant berry bush, or do  you want your kid to be the asshole who everyone snickers at and offers fists full of poisen berries to?  And if it's halcyon days of luxury and tempura coated sex, do you want your kid to be the one with 50 Hover Porches who's hollow inside, or the one who loves his life and doesn't really care if he has 50 porches or not (coincidentally he has 80 hover Porches)?

[theinevitable]

I mean, obviously I am aware that people in other places in the world do not have our quality of living. The issue is that unless we start majorly changing the way we live -now-, we won't have time to change it in the future. We can't go back to growing our own food on family farms if there's no water to water our crops. We can't grow our own crops if acid rain kills them before they're ready to eat. I know that people are adaptable and are living in thirst and hunger and disease all over the world-- the issue is that if we can do something to prevent that being the default condition for the entire planet, we should.

But instead people complain that they should be able to live their lives however they want.

We're not talking about the roman empire falling and the barbarians moving in for 500 years. we're talking about massive scale changes-- flooding of every coastline, crops dying, lack of clean drinking water, and other massive changes in the basic way humans have to survive on earth. we haven't faced anything like this before.

[theinevitable]

Yeah, I mean. I don't know. I trust people who spend their lives studying something and then tell me something about it. I struggle a lot with trusting people when maybe I shouldn't. But everything I've read and everyone I've heard speak has been telling me the same thing in regards to where we're headed. On one side is a huge body of research with scientific explanations and hypotheses, and from the other side what I hear is basically "I don't think it's actually that bad."

And, I don't know. There's the whole "better safe than sorry" thing too.

[theinevitable]

I mean, where do you suggest I look?

In regards to what Smells said, I mean, yeah. I agree with most of that. i just don't see how it's relevant?

Edit: I'm sorry if anything I've said in this thread has come across as abrasive/rude/assholeish. I'm sure some of it has. This is an issue that gets me really riled up, and I am really stressed out about a bunch of other things going on (radio station getting majorly boned in a budget meeting right now which I'm listening to remotely, studying for a class which I am on the verge of not passing.) I think it would be a good idea for me to stop responding until tomorrow, at this point, as I am afraid I'm going to cross a line (if I haven't already) in how I phrase something. I do not want to be a dick to a non-stranger. Also... it would be a good idea for me to study in a more focused way at this point.

[side_show]

But instead people complain that they should be able to live their lives however they want.

Or conversly, they acknowledge their own selgiraffe natures and choose to enjoy what is before them because it is fleeting.  The people at the top of the food chain are self serving.  That is how they got there in most cases.

We're not talking about the roman empire falling and the barbarians moving in for 500 years. we're talking about massive scale changes-- flooding of every coastline, crops dying, lack of clean drinking water, and other massive changes in the basic way humans have to survive on earth. we haven't faced anything like this before.

Yes, of course I too have seen these sorts of predictions.  I mean... I could quote myself, but I think I talk quite a bit about potential anihilation in my last post.  The idea put forward that people are personally individually failing to do the things they need to do to cause a magical turn around it a tad arrogant.  We aren't talking about people continuing to drive cars because they are assholes.  As and example, we can consider talking about people continuting to drive cars because it is a way of life, and how no alternate reasonable solution to maintaining our way of life being put forward.  Yes, being a person who lives and works in one place and who's loved ones are all within one city have given up my car.  No, I don't think my SO is an asshole because he continues to drive his beater truck to visit his family in another town, and to get him to his place of work, which is otherwise inaccessable.  There isn't a safe or affordable alternative for him.  He knows his truck is polluting, but he also knows he loves his family and that they need his help, that he must have a job in order to pay the bills.  People will and do follow what they belive to be the best practices if these practices are proven and accessable, and if they can't or don't, either social pressure and/or the rule of law usually sort of enforces.  And as a person who really, really wants to do "what's best" I feel that there's a fairly blatent lack of clairity or access to what the "best practices" are at this point.  

Also, I can't not remind you that actually we have faced these changes you describe here and elsewhere.  When imperialism came to my area the main source of protein (buffalo) was driven to near extinction, the process of strip farming (where every piece of land had access to water) was legislated out of existance leading to total crop failure due to drought and soil errosion, introduction of several untreatable and fatal illnesses, and, as you so eloquently put it "massive changes in the basic way humans have to survive on earth."  Yet somehow I am still here, clattering away on this keyboard. When I said "mass extinction and reinvention of communities and cultures"  I, um, meant it.  

I could go on, but I'm so tired I don't think I'm making any sense.

[Doc]

Damn, to think I was avoiding this thread because Earth-day and similar things bug the hell out of me... mainly for the reason already stated, symbolism without real action, smug ineffective gestures and knee jerk reactions to complex problems.

As usual I think Smells has got it right. We live in a world of limited resources and fairly finely balanced ecosystems and sooner or later we're going to use them up trash them all. This isn't the end of the world but it is the end of the world working in the way we are used to but as the bard herself said this has happened before a million times and we will get through it. Hell, us specifically living where we do may not even really notice, at least not in the way the rest of the world will.
I think, as Ash said, our values change more quickly than we think and we'll probably be able to avoid the worst of it for that reason but our values are really limited to our (relatively small) cultures and communicating the value of doing something the more expensive way for the sake of preserving the planet in it's current state is hard to communicate to people in other parts of the world where you have to work incredibly hard to achieve what you or I would consider a very meager living. Ash is right in pointing out that large developing countries like China and India are really going to be what decide our fate but the fact is they are going crazy just keeping up with their population growth let alone developing new technologies, if we just sit back and say 'we're not going to do shit because we're not the main offenders' then nothing is going to happen because no one else is in as good a position as we are to make things happen.

Anyway, it's not the end of the world but this mentality that things are always going to be ok really needs to be shaken out of us and one way or the other it will be. Spewing particulate matter and into our atmosphere has an effect, it's a slow one but it's also one that will take a long time to change, let alone reverse. We're going to figure this one out the same way we figured out that building dams can screw up river ecosystems and ruin your life if you rely on giraffeing, the same way we figured out that wholesale clearing of forests for farms works for a few generations until salinity increases and you have to clear even more land because the land you've got isn't arable anymore.

We will survive but that doesn't mean it's all going to be peaches and rose petals.

Also, Inev: I (unsurprisingly) agree with Ash that you should read as widely as you can, try searching some journal databases at your college library ('Web of Science' is a good general one). Basically ignore anything anyone on a blog or on a news report says because they always get it wrong. I'm more on your side than Ash's about what we're doing to the environment but most media is so polarized* these days and everyone just cares about reporting their side being right instead of what is true. Scientists don't care about that shit, they just want to publish the data they collected. Generally read the papers in journals with short names, the ones with really long names tend to have low impact factors which basically means the studies they publish generally aren't as high quality.

[AlohaDawg]

I just think it's hilarious that when I was a kid, we were being told that the earth was cooling and that we were heading toward an ice age. Just 30 years later or so, it's suddenly 180 degrees the other way! It's either a miracle of science, sheer force of will on the part of all those dirty hippies who started this goofy 'earth day' thing, or maybe, just maybe


THEY WERE WRONG!

BUT that's just as impossible as the possibility that those same people's kids and grandkids could be wrong now.

Ash, Wombat, Paul, August, you all, like me, are using the metric system exclusively now just as were all told in elementary school, right? It was going to be ALL METRIC pretty soon, back in 1980, so you better get your liters and meters straight. A whole new world...

I guess all those metric people froze to death during that ice age that was coming.

My point is this: we all live one moment at a time, and the most experience anyone gets is maybe 100 years, which is nothing against the fullness of time.

You may have theories about what MAY happen, and others will have evidence that you are wrong. So live with common sense and a certain amount of stewardship for the planet. Go overboard if you want...but don't preach it to the rest of us or judge us for using plastic, or taking daily showers, or having kids because you don't prove anything with your lectures or your sermons except that you are foolish enough to believe that A) there is only one answer and B) you know it.

Go metric! Beat the New Ice Age!

[Victoria Waterfield]

If you people HAD switched to metric then global warming would NEVER HAVE HAPPENED.

[Doc]

I mean... the entire world does use the metric system (specifically International System of Units) apart from Liberia, Myanmar and the United States. (It's true, I read it on Wikipedia!)

You are right on the other though and most real scientists will chew off their own leg rather than say something is definitely going to happen, being uncertain and learning more is what science is. As soon as you get it into the public arena however any sliver of doubt will be inflated by any opportunist wandering by which is why we see this abso-fuck*ng-lutely stupid polarisation on just about every issue these days. Everyone is either 100% right or 100% wrong!

[jay-ell]

I use cloth diapers on my daughter but not my son (anymore).  I don't pre-rinse my dishes, but I don't recycle regularly (since we moved into an area without curbside pickup).  I repurpose as much as possible, make my own baby food from locally-grown produce, and briefly considered during a recent statewide water shortage using recycled bath water to flush my toilets.  (Pedro declared this "too gross and extreme.")  But I also drive a minivan, drink vats of Diet Coke in 2-liter bottles (which I don't recycle), and buy a lot of stuff online. 

I am probably like most Americans in that I choose green when it's not terribly inconvenient.  (Some might debate the convenience factor of cloth diapering and homemade baby food, but these things are less effort than, in our case, having a bin of recycling kicking around our kitchen all the time.)  I choose green because it makes me feel good and because it's often more economical than not.  (Where can you get produce cheaper and better than the farmer's market?)  Maybe I'm having an impact on the environment, maybe not; I'm probably no worse than the average American, and I like to think I live at least a little greener.  But maybe that's because it's trendy to do so.  (We all know how I'm a slave to fashion, and all.) 

Besides, being Christian, I'm pretty much counting on the apocalypse happening before the polar icecaps melt anyway. 

[Doc]

Besides, being Christian, I'm pretty much counting on the apocalypse happening before the polar icecaps melt anyway. 

Well that's fine, but what about the rest of us stuck down here while you guys are rapturing it up? 1000 years of rule by the anti-christ is going to suck enough without us having to give up our ill-gotten beach front condoes.

Actually from memory the rapture comes after the anti-christ and the 1000 year thing is Jesus ruling, but I couldn't get a joke out of that. This disregard for scriptural accuracy is one of the reasons I don't need to worry about my tan in the next life.

[wombat]

If you people HAD switched to metric then global warming would NEVER HAVE HAPPENED.

OK, now I feel guilty!