[Psudo]

The Telegraph wrote:

A survey of travel habits has revealed that the most environmentally conscious people are also the biggest polluters.

"Green" consumers have some of the biggest carbon footprints because they are still hooked on flying abroad or driving their cars while their adherence to the green cause is mostly limited to small gestures.
[. . .]
eco-adopters are seven per cent more likely than the general population to take flights, and four per cent more likely to own a car. The survey found similar trends in France and the United States.

But they're excused because they're fighting the good fight. I'd say "The ends justify the means," but there hasn't been sufficient success from the global environmental movement to justify anything. It's more like "The claimed intent justifies the means."

I believe the true motivation to preserve the natural world resides in those who love hiking, camping, hunting, and experiencing nature for themselves rather than in the politicized environmental movement. The man that wants to take their grandson fishing someday the way their grandfather took them fishing have the strongest, most intensely personal incentive to preserve that fishing experience. That is where protection of the environment becomes a traditionalist, conservative philosophy. That's where I see people working themselves to repair the natural world rather than calling for government to act for them, using the environment as a tool to collect political power.

This story is only a survey, potentially subject to plenty of errors or problems, but it exactly matches my personal observation. There's an irreconcilable disconnect between "Greens" and the actual environment's interest.

[fire_i]

Careful though - environmental consciousness and polluting behavior aren't linked *directly*. They're just both related to the level of education.

What you can say though is that people are hypocrites for while they (at least if you account the mitigating factors) don't pollute more when they're environmentally aware, they also *definitely* don't pollute less, which one would think would only be natural.

Personally I'm not certain I'm preaching by example so no comment. (Not saying I'm not though, I honestly don't know) Anyway, it seems to me that in this society where overconsumption is rendered under a positive light and where owning a car is a near-necessity, I think going above the small gestures requires a sudden and huge surge of willpower. It's like "the next level" is simply out of reach for most.

[Quantum_Wizard]

Psudo wrote:

That's where I see people working themselves to repair the natural world rather than calling for government to act for them, using the environment as a tool to collect political power.

I don't think you can infer that from that article.

Since that article talked about individual acts rather than government acts, I could just as well claim that government action is needed since individual efforts seem to be, based on that article, often misguided or hypocritical. This is hyperbole of course, but the point still stands, since the problem mentioned in the article was not people "calling for government to act for them".

[Psudo]

You're right, you can't infer that from the article, QW. It was my personal opinion. The article only demonstrated the disassociation between the politics and lifestyles of Green advocates.

fire_i, don't you see the inherent danger of using government imposition in place of personal responsibility? It is inherently a sacrifice of identity in submission to authority. If Christians were pushing their morality in this manner, you'd call it a theocracy.

[fire_i]

Well first, I'm not sure how you can conclude I think that from reading my post?

Second, well huh, we have anti-cartel and anti-monopoly laws, yet I wouldn't quite call this country a haven of communism. Saying environmental regulation is always bad and agenda-pushing is essentially like saying that any form of protectionism is a mistake.

Sometimes regulation there needs to be. Heck I'd even say the environment is one of the issues on which governmental interference is the most necessary : if people always favor their present-day luxury over medium and long-term welfare of the community, we'll end up blaming the govt for letting things slide so easily in the future. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have personnal responsibility here, but I *am* saying that the lack of such responsibility the population is showing is just another reason why clear boundaries need to be established to at least prevent things from getting ridiculous.

The thing here is that the inherent goal of governmental regulation would be forcing along personal responsibility... sure that's not a nice way to obtain it, but looks like it won't come by itself except in the most dire situations. We need both regulation and personal responsibility - the concepts aren't opposed, they're meant to be used in conjunction. And if we can't get one of them, then we might as well use the other to go fetch it, or at least try to. Anyway what is there to lose? The worse situation I can imagine here is one where environmental regulation is not only quasi-useless but also seen as a bad thing - sure that's not cool, but it's not the end of the world. Exaggerated laws would simply not go through, too much opposition. So at worse, we just get another irritating but non-lethal situation. Doesn't sound like a big risk to me.

[sasquatch2]

Psudo

Quote:

fire_i, don't you see the inherent danger of using government imposition in place of personal responsibility? It is inherently a sacrifice of identity in submission to authority. If Christians were pushing their morality in this manner, you'd call it a theocracy.

Because this is fire_i religion, he does not consider it the imposition of a theocracy although that is exactly what it is.

Much like this secondhand smoke (environmental tobacco smoke) any studies conducted (by the EPA and WHO) find no hazard......Much like the earlier DDT studies found no health hazards with DDT but DDT was banned to further the political power of the EPA and WHO. The DDT ban has since been repealed in the face of decades long human fatalities to malaria since the ban.

[fire_i]

And sasquatch, your religion is trolling. Have your fun. I'm not getting into it.

[CanadianJeff]

wouldn't this be what one calls Junk science? Science that does nothing from it's outset but to simply serve an agenda one way or the other?

Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if it's true or not one way or the other. All I care about is getting more people to use everyday enviromental incentives.

Frankly how can saving a few forests and using less oil be a bad thing? Sooner or later we are going to have to make our resources last a lot longer.

[fire_i]

Personally I'm of the idea that everyone would benefit from a reduced dependance of oil, even if it ends up global warming was a hoax... I think that's at least one thing nearly everyone can rally after.

[Psudo]

My overall point is about making people believe as you do, or at least act as if they do. And that's what political environmentalism is: belief. There is science related to it, but it can be taken different ways and is hardly conclusive.

When we banned the insecticide DDT, we undermined our ability to protect human health from insect-born diseases without any environmental benefit. We used force before the science was in, and the science came out differently than we expected. It took us, the U.S., 40 years to reverse the ban on DDT, and it still hasn't made it's way into the use of areas overrun with malaria and dysentery. We wiped those diseases out in North America 50 years ago with DDT. Despite sasquatch's use of it, it is an extremely valid example of the damage that can be done when we act with force before the conclusion is secure.

Maybe we need to reduce our dependence on oil. Should we force the issue? Impose rationing or taxation or some other limiting regulation on a national or global scale? These would certainly impact our still-oil-dependent economy harshly. That is an inherently bad thing. And, if you're wrong, what counterweighs that bad thing? What if abiotic oil turns out to be a radically higher proportion of all oil than we expect? Then we'll have hurt ourselves for no reason. Environmental belief has been similarly wrong before.

If you want to live a Green lifestyle for yourself, that's fine. But if you're looking to use government power, the threat of fines and prison, to force everyone to meet some standard of "Greenness" you're hurting everyone on the assumption that you're right and despite a reasonable alternative view. You're gambling with all our lifestyles, and against many of our wills and judgments.

Then this article comes around suggesting that Green advocates are slightly worse polluters than the rest of us. Why should I adhere to their prescribed lifestyle when they themselves distance themselves from it? I don't see any value to being Green by argument or example. I don't even see that it's possible on the scale of industrialized society. What reason do I have to be persuaded? Why, then, jump straight to the force of law to demand I conform?

That is what I oppose.

If a Christian government banned "homosexual behavior in public" on the gamble that their view on homosexuality as sin turns out to be right, wouldn't you condemn it as theocracy? The morality of homosexuality is just as controversial, and the arguments behind it just as divided and subjective as those on Green political issues. Even the hypocrisy of preaching one thing and doing another fits the metaphor. And, in both cases, the regulation is wrong.

If you believe in Green living, go live it and let your harshest critics suffer the fate they've chosen. If you are independent of oil and I am not, I will suffer when oil depletes and you will not. Go, Noah, save yourself and let the flood take those that rejected your beliefs. But don't drag us, kicking and screaming, onto the ark with you. Whoever is right, force hurts us both.

[sasquatch2]

fire_i

Quote:

Personally I'm of the idea that everyone would benefit from a reduced dependance of oil, even if it ends up global warming was a hoax... I think that's at least one thing nearly everyone can rally after.

Nice sentiment but what the alarmist seek is not reduced dependance on oil or fossil fuels but reduced dependance on energy.........which is akin to banning food in the interest of banning saturated fat.

[Zipperfish]

Psudo wrote:

The Telegraph wrote:

A survey of travel habits has revealed that the most environmentally conscious people are also the biggest polluters.

"Green" consumers have some of the biggest carbon footprints because they are still hooked on flying abroad or driving their cars while their adherence to the green cause is mostly limited to small gestures.
[. . .]
eco-adopters are seven per cent more likely than the general population to take flights, and four per cent more likely to own a car. The survey found similar trends in France and the United States.

But they're excused because they're fighting the good fight. I'd say "The ends justify the means," but there hasn't been sufficient success from the global environmental movement to justify anything. It's more like "The claimed intent justifies the means."

I believe the true motivation to preserve the natural world resides in those who love hiking, camping, hunting, and experiencing nature for themselves rather than in the politicized environmental movement. The man that wants to take their grandson fishing someday the way their grandfather took them fishing have the strongest, most intensely personal incentive to preserve that fishing experience. That is where protection of the environment becomes a traditionalist, conservative philosophy. That's where I see people working themselves to repair the natural world rather than calling for government to act for them, using the environment as a tool to collect political power.

This story is only a survey, potentially subject to plenty of errors or problems, but it exactly matches my personal observation. There's an irreconcilable disconnect between "Greens" and the actual environment's interest.

That's why hunters are among the best environmentalists. And this is what drives the seal hunters here in Canada around the bend--that a bunch of champagne liberals who've never been out of the big city and hunt their meat at the local Safeway would fly up and cast jdgement on them.

On the other hand, I would argue that there are a lot of affluent "greens" out there, who have reached the top of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, if you are into that sort of thing. Their large carbon footprint may be more an artifact of their wealth than their intent to pollute--rich people travel more, live in larger houses, create a greater demand on infratsructure, consume more and therefore waste more. Should we castigate Bono for trying to help hungry people because he isn't starving himself? Also, politically connected champagne environmentalists are probably responsible for a lot of legislation that has helped protect the environment and human health by driving legislation such as the ban on tetraethyl lead in gasoline.

The bottom line is that our relatively advanced civilization is simply subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, one statement of which is "in order for a system to become increase organization, it must create more disoorganization in the environment." Just the same way a humna body, looked at one way, is an organism that takes perfectly good food and manufactures it into shit, so civilization takes low entropy feed and manufactures it into high entropy waste, which necessarily degrades the environment.

[Zipperfish]

Psudo wrote:

When we banned the insecticide DDT, we undermined our ability to protect human health from insect-born diseases without any environmental benefit. We used force before the science was in, and the science came out differently than we expected. It took us, the U.S., 40 years to reverse the ban on DDT, and it still hasn't made it's way into the use of areas overrun with malaria and dysentery. We wiped those diseases out in North America 50 years ago with DDT. Despite sasquatch's use of it, it is an extremely valid example of the damage that can be done when we act with force before the conclusion is secure.

A few things: First of all DDT was already on its way out. Insects were starting to show a tolerance to DDT and a new generation of pesticides was both more specific and more effective. Given its undesirable side effects on the ecosystem, its use was restrcited in the US in 1972 (there were allowances for agricultural and public health emergencies). Secondly, in Canada (and I believe also in the US) only DDT use was banned. Manufacture and export of DDT was allowed to continue until relatively recently. Thirdly, at that time, the US didn't enforce its domestic laws on other countries like it does now. So it did't "ban" DDT anywhere else. African countries had the choice to use DDT, and many did. Finally, to say that there were no health or environmental hazrds from DDT is simply wrong. DDT is a biocide; it is designed to kill things. It is not specific with respect to insects and its kills them all, which is not a desirable outcome. Also, given the realtionship between DDE (a DDT metabolite) and eggshell thickness of certain birds and consequent increased mortality of these birds. Given the volume of the product used, the demonstrated environetmal impacts, and a lack of understanding of its effect on halth adn the environment, adn the fact that resistance to DDT was becoming an important issue, restrciting it in Canada and the US made sense.

Furthermore, if you want to make the libertarian argument--what right does a DDT sprayer have to introduce his chemical into my body--where it bioaccumulates over my lifetime--without my permission?

Note also that malaria was not an issue when DDT was restrcited; it has not been an issue in North America since it was restricted.

[sasquatch2]

Zipperfish

Quote:

Also, given the realtionship between DDE (a DDT metabolite) and eggshell thickness of certain birds and consequent increased mortality of these birds.

In the period leading up to the EPA reporting all the bad things about DDT, the EPA funded serveral studies.

One study involved several chicken farms where DDT was feed to the chickens at high rates on a daily basis for a period of two years. No consequences were observed---no problems with shell strength or thickness.

Another study involved feeding DDT at high rates to volunteer prison inmates for a period of two years during which no ill effects were detected.

Despite this the EPA recommended banning and cited "studies" done by the drowning Polar Bear clan about arctic birds eggs.

link

[BartSimpson]

Zipperfish wrote:

That's why hunters are among the best environmentalists. And this is what drives the seal hunters here in Canada around the bend--that a bunch of champagne liberals who've never been out of the big city and hunt their meat at the local Safeway would fly up and cast jdgement on them.

Reason #646 why I like you.

Zipperfish wrote:

On the other hand, I would argue that there are a lot of affluent "greens" out there, who have reached the top of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, if you are into that sort of thing. Their large carbon footprint may be more an artifact of their wealth than their intent to pollute--rich people travel more, live in larger houses, create a greater demand on infratsructure, consume more and therefore waste more. Should we castigate Bono for trying to help hungry people because he isn't starving himself? Also, politically connected champagne environmentalists are probably responsible for a lot of legislation that has helped protect the environment and human health by driving legislation such as the ban on tetraethyl lead in gasoline.

Celebrating an environmental achievment of the 1970's (getting lead out of gas) does not excuse green hypocrisy in the present day. Al Gore, for instance, does not need to have a mansion. He does not need to fly to every event (where he lives on the East coast he could easily take the train). But he keeps up a standard of living no different from the people he often criticizes. You just don't tell everyone else to drive a Prius when you're flying about in your own private jet.

Zipperfish wrote:

The bottom line is that our relatively advanced civilization is simply subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, one statement of which is "in order for a system to become increase organization, it must create more disoorganization in the environment." Just the same way a humna body, looked at one way, is an organism that takes perfectly good food and manufactures it into shit, so civilization takes low entropy feed and manufactures it into high entropy waste, which necessarily degrades the environment.

The solution then, as we keep hearing from the Greens, is to impose an agrarian society on the world and reverse the gains of industrial civilization.

That's okay.

I prefer that we seek additional sources of energy that do not pollute.

I also am okay with suggesting that we do away with all of the packaging materials used on day-to-day products. Most of the packaging for small items these days is not meant to protect the product, but to frustrate shoplifters. Dispense with the packaging and take a note from the muslims and chop off a few sticky fingers and we'll reduce crime and trash in one fell swoop.

Myself, I've been recycling and etc. for long before this current fad came along. I know it sounds trite, but I go so far as when I am out for coffee to put my cream and sugar in my cup first and then pour in my coffee to mix it. This saves one coffee stirrer with every cup of coffee.

I have not used (wasted, really) a coffee stirrer in well over 20 years. Likewise, I do not use straws with my drinks as they are equally wasteful.