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The real inconvenient truth

I fully believe we are destroying the planet. Probably one of the few times I'll be on the crazy left side. Not really a political issue to me.
I can agree with that. Water pollution and air pollution and ground pollution and our buildings all have an effect on the "planet". (Ignoring that the planet is a big rock that will shrug us off like a common cold) The byproducts of our activities have a generally negative effect on life. OTOH, our activities have a very positive effect on a great many things, including human being's lives. So I'm all for minimizing our byproducts while maintaining our positives.

But.... if you're going to demand large price tags for efforts then we need to see large effects. Or at least highly valuable effects. And we damn well better all be in this and not making special accomodations for China and India where they don't have to pay much or anything at all.
 
That's why I toss all of my trash on the street. Let nature do its thang and take it back.
 
That's why I toss all of my trash on the street. Let nature do its thang and take it back.
At some level, throwing it in the trash is little different. We're just moving it from our street to the place where animals live/lived.
 
At some level, throwing it in the trash is little different. We're just moving it from our street to the place where animals live/lived.
Wildlife thrives in our landfills. Regardless, the entire nation has only used up 18 square miles for landfill use in the last 30+ years.
 
Wildlife thrives in our landfills. Regardless, the entire nation has only used up 18 square miles for landfill use in the last 30+ years.
That's a surprising number but wouldn't you think volume is more significant a measure?
 
That's a surprising number but wouldn't you think volume is more significant a measure?
Doesn't really matter. It just means the hill that they cover up with clay is taller with more volume.

Most people don't even know where their local landfill is. That should tell us everything we need to know about how much trash we produce.
 
I fully believe we are destroying the planet. Probably one of the few times I'll be on the crazy left side. Not really a political issue to me.
It shouldn't be a political issue. But neither should wearing masks during a pandemic.

It's a shame those "crazy lefties" politicize every g'damn thing. :)
 
I can agree with that. Water pollution and air pollution and ground pollution and our buildings all have an effect on the "planet". (Ignoring that the planet is a big rock that will shrug us off like a common cold) The byproducts of our activities have a generally negative effect on life. OTOH, our activities have a very positive effect on a great many things, including human being's lives. So I'm all for minimizing our byproducts while maintaining our positives.

But.... if you're going to demand large price tags for efforts then we need to see large effects. Or at least highly valuable effects. And we damn well better all be in this and not making special accomodations for China and India where they don't have to pay much or anything at all.

Sorry, but I have to go back to this. If our byproducts have a generally negative effect on life, why are we thriving as a species? Population growth is at its highest level globally ever. There is more food than ever in history and more people have been brought out of poverty in the last 100 years than ever. This whole Malthusian proposition of overpopulation and overconsumption has been thoroughly disproven. We are miniscule, relative to the planet. Its nothing more than delusions of grandeur.
 
Sorry, but I have to go back to this. If our byproducts have a generally negative effect on life, why are we thriving as a species? Population growth is at its highest level globally ever. There is more food than ever in history and more people have been brought out of poverty in the last 100 years than ever. This whole Malthusian proposition of overpopulation and overconsumption has been thoroughly disproven. We are miniscule, relative to the planet. Its nothing more than delusions of grandeur.
I agree with much of what you’re saying.

I also said above that our activities greatly benefited life as well, especially for human beings. It’s no surprise that we are thriving. But our waste, our consumption of resources, our taking up of spaces not necessary for our lives or any other do actually constitute a negative effect on life. Most of us don’t need >2000 sq foot homes with >quarter acre lots to live. Most of us can not contribute plastic waste in a lot of cases. We can choose power sources that don’t contaminate rivers, kill birds, require miles and miles of cleared ground, rely on batteries that will leach heavy metals upon disposal, etc.

Now, with all of that said, I just want to work towards a better balance and I will always prefer human beings in policy matters over the rest of the animal kingdom. I’m also far more worried about air and water quality than temperature.
 
"Our consumption of resources".

We've been brainwashed into thinking our life sustaining resources are finite or that "consumption" is an actual thing. We don't consume anything. Dinosaurs "consumed" natural resources for hundreds of millions of years and its all still here. Humans have been doing the same thing for about 100,000 years. The only difference is that humans have a god complex that makes us think we are more significant than we are.
 
"Our consumption of resources".

We've been brainwashed into thinking our life sustaining resources are finite or that "consumption" is an actual thing. We don't consume anything. Dinosaurs "consumed" natural resources for hundreds of millions of years and its all still here. Humans have been doing the same thing for about 100,000 years. The only difference is that humans have a god complex that makes us think we are more significant than we are.
Yes, but dinosaurs never consumed more than they needed to survive. We consume water to drink and then for a multitude of other things that really don’t matter. In doing a lot of those things, we taint the water that we use. We can filter it but that just moves the taint into a place where it won’t bother us for awhile and we cannot clean all of the water at this point in time. So, while the amount of water on the planet hasn’t changed, the composition of it has and that makes it more dangerous for life. And our tainting of water had been accelerating unchecked since the Industrial Age. We may very well solve this problem, but it’s still a problem nonetheless.
 
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Humans have been doing the same thing for about 100,000 years. The only difference is that humans have a god complex that makes us think we are more significant than we are.
WTF? So we humans have a "God complex" and believe we're more significant than we really are --- but when it comes to our stewardship of the planet, we can selfishly do whatever the f*k we please and it won't hurt anything or anyone??!?

That sounds schizophrenic if you ask me.
 
it's been a 110 degree heat index for about a week straight in Florida with almost no rain, miserable

And it isn't really out of the ordinary. We have not been setting record highs, though we are within a couple of degrees of them. To get spells of 7 to 14 days of high temps are pretty common.

The guy who wrote the article was named environmentalist of the year a few years back, and still believes in global warming, just not that it is the massive problem some push it off as.
 
Does China and India have an EPA?
I don’t know. I can tell you that I’ve been in Seoul and in Taipei when the air pollution rolls in from China and it looks like fog it’s so bad. This isn’t like Phoenix or LA where you’re in a bowl either; Taiwan is an island. But China is an “emerging” economy in a lot of these climate talks and thus don’t have to do much for 20, 30, or 50 years depending. With the number of people they have, 50 years of the same behavior is going to be brutal.
 
Yes, but dinosaurs never consumed more than they needed to survive. We consume water to drink and then for a multitude of other things that really don’t matter. In doing a lot of those things, we taint the water that we use. We can filter it but that just moves the taint into a place where it won’t bother us for awhile and we cannot clean all of the water at this point in time. So, while the amount of water on the planet hasn’t changed, the composition of it has and that makes it more dangerous for life. And our tainting of water had been accelerating unchecked since the Industrial Age. We may very well solve this problem, but it’s still a problem nonetheless.
The earth filters water on its own. When our species is dead and gone there will still be the same amount of clean water as there always has been.
 
WTF? So we humans have a "God complex" and believe we're more significant than we really are --- but when it comes to our stewardship of the planet, we can selfishly do whatever the f*k we please and it won't hurt anything or anyone??!?

That sounds schizophrenic if you ask me.

Yeah, we have a god complex because we think we can destroy the earth. We can't. I dont think we even have the capacity to make it uninhabitable.
 
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