Looney Labs EcoFluxx Mailing list Archive

["Jonathan Grabert" <jonathang@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It's always good to dip back into an older stream.  There's good stuff there.

----- Original Message -----

From: Daniel Brashler

To: Eco Foundation Discussion List

Sent: Sunday, February 04, 2007 12:35 PM

Subject: [Eco] (no subject)

Quite right -- I stopped too soon in that paragraph.  What I was trying to articulate was a defense of the motives behind the desire to recycle -- I don't think people should feel bad for wanting to take care with what they throw away.  That value shouldn't be tossed out, but tapped to motivate some significant, objective analyses and communication of the costs and benefits.  Clearly there's a question to be answered about what the benefit of a recycling program really is, and whether the work that's being done to save digging up another plot of land isn't just clogging the air with burned fossil fuels in the end.  Taxpayers can't make good decisions without good information.  Links posted in this forum are interesting and valuable, but don't seem to have made it into the public consciousness.

Unfortunately, there isn't any debate about recycling.  When I try to tell people that it really doesn't work, I usually get rolled eyes or quickly dismissed.  Recycling is an issue that, in general, has moved beyond reproach.  I think it's great that Andy is bringing up the issue for us to discuss, but people have been convinced that there is a crisis regarding landfills and trees, and that we need to do something NOW.  And that just isn't the case.  So, yeah, I'd love for there to be more public discussion, but any time someone suggests that recycling isn't a good thing, they're usually written off as a crackpot.

2. While we may not be running out of landfill space, land itself is still a fundamentally limited resource.

But even here, you're exaggerating the size of the landfills that we need. 

3. The oil too is going away -- it's a finite resource as well.

Again, we are in absolutely no danger of running out of oil for thousands of years.  Even if that weren't the case, there *will* be a better fuel source developed well before we'd run out.  (Solar, anyone?)  

If your goal is comfort for the next couple hundred years, that's one thing; if your goal is sustainability for the long term, that's different.  With any 'how-much-have-we-got' way of looking at things, you're either saying 'I don't care what happens when we run out' or you're going on faith that some magic bullet will come along to save us from the problems at some point.   Neither of them really solves the problem, they're just ways of rationalizing not doing so.  Not all of us are content to simply set the date for the crisis farther away -- we'd like to find a way not to have one.

It's not faith that some magic bullet will come along, nor is it even a magic bullet.  Looking at the history of progress and technology, looking at what's been developed so far, and looking at what's likely to be developed, I trust that the technology is coming to make fossil fuels far less of a necessity.  It's a far larger folly to say that we'll stay at the same technology level for the next two hundred years.  We're not living at the level that they did in 1807, so it's unreasonable to say that in 2207 they'll be doing what we do.  Look at the progress that's been made just in the past decade.  From gas efficiency to a real marketable hybrid car, this shows that you can't assume that we'll be in the same place we are now when the oil is supposed to run out.  (And, again, this estimation is loaded with assumptions about the current technology.  We've been hearing dire predictions about running out of oil for many decades now.  We should have run out by now if they were to be believed.)

 

So, yeah, it's a way of saying that we shouldn't do anything now.  But that's a good thing because it isn't a problem right now.  We're in no danger of running out of oil nor are we in danger of running out of land.  It's like going to the doctor for a runny nose and getting sent in for chemotherapy.  This is my biggest problem with the general environmental movement.  Everything is a crisis that has to be fixed NOW, and fixed using whatever drastic means are necessary.  That just isn't the case.  Sure, it would be wonderful to use less landfill space.  But is it worth the fleets of trucks, the expense of labor, the vast amounts of time, and the huge taxpayer cost to do so?  I don't think it is.

 

4. Ultimately, all our efforts at recycling are tiny in comparison to the one on-going juggernaut event that is the growth of human civilization.

The population problems aren't in the developed world.  

By human civilization, I'm trying to refer to more than just population growth and include the continuing use of resources of all types by humans.  India and China's use of fossil fuels has increased significantly, and shows no signs of decreasing.  As well, relegating the problem to "the developing world" like it's some other place is ridiculous.  Just because they're not in your back yard doesn't mean they're irrelevant.  Right now they're answering huge amounts of our tech service calls and manufacturing many of our electronic gizmos.  We're helping to fund their population growth. This article is interesting at least as an overview:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that because it's in the developing world that it's not a problem for us.  That isn't what I wanted to say at all.  I wanted to say that the best way to help with population growth is to get these countries more economically stable and with a higher standard of living.  Make it so that you have less infant and child deaths, and so that it isn't critical for people to have as many children as they can.

 

But even in the population issue, I don't think we're anywhere near a crisis point.  And even so, how can you control it without trampling over people's rights?  Looking in states like China that have population controls, you're seeing people kill female babies to meet the government mandate.  (Not that government has any business telling people how many children to have.  Of course, China's never really cared about silly things like "rights" anyway.)

One thing I've seen that works remarkably well:  vehicles that burn vegetable oil.  Here's a case were we *are* making some new oil (a little) that we can do something with.  Perhaps we should spend some more money and fit out all the garbage trucks and landfill bulldozers with veggie engines.  A good friend of mine drives his family around in a bus fueled by the fry-vats from a local restaurant.  Anybody have some good links?

I do like the research that's being done with alternative fuels.  Things like ethanol are especially useful because even though it's a costly fuel that could never meet our needs, it can be used as a suppliment to standard gasoline.  The "vegetable cars" are also interesting, especially if they can find ways to get it as more than a niche market.  I'd be delighted to someday in the near future pull up in my affordable hybrid, fill up with mix of petrol and ethanol, and instead of there being regular, premium, super and diesel, the choices are regular, premium, diesel, and some kind of completely source.

 

J/