Slashdot Mirror
Green Geeks?
sigmatt asks: "I've often wondered where Slashdot readers stand on environmental
issues. This might be considered a little off topic for this site, but so many programmers that I know, including myself, are outdoorsy
people in their other life, and I'm interested in the opinion of the wider geek community. The local issue in my part of the world at the moment is logging of old growth forests, primarily used for wood chips. The wood chips are not very valuable (as low as AU$7 a ton - that's US$3.50!), but it
is the easy option - and I suspect it leads to the highest profits and quickest company growth. Unfortunately, our wonderful forests - with
so many potential future uses (fine furniture, tourism, and, of course, my own hiking trips) are being wasted away at an alarming rate. Recently
the tactics of those opposing the practice of woodchipping our old growth forests have turned to attacking the tourism industry in order to try to make a government who won't listen change its mind. For example this site
ripping off
another site, and the posting of a controversial bill board in Sydney
airport. What do you think about these approaches?"
..then the terrorists have already won.
seriously, removing a CO2 sink? do you want to be roasting 50 years down the road when global warming is rampant?
Check out what the greens really believe in:
http://www.davehitt.com/dec00/green1.html
Don't vote for a party if you think just by the name they are pro-environment.
And remember, the BIGGEST polluter in the world is the US government, and the worst one in this country is the all the federal and state governments. Private and coroporate pollution is almost nil by comparison.
And the greens want MORE government, not less.
A company wrongs you, you can sue them. When the government does it, you have no recourse.
Best solution for the environment is privatization of land and a rational court system to sue for damages. You pollute my drinking water, I sue you. EVen if you are the government.
And, while we're at it, how many jobs would exist if all the large and small companies in the country were destroyed? Where would the tax money come from?
If you don't understand economics, and want to help the environment, you vote green, and your vote is an endorsement for wholesale environmental destruction.
If you DO understand economics, and you want to protect the environment, you vote libertarian.
Most geeks are actually libertarians, though the geeks on slashdot seem to be mostly socialists-- I suspect this is because most geeks don't hang out on slashdot, and mostly the slashdot is the LAN admin, Server Admin crowd (rather than computer, electrical and software engineers.)
I know, a bunch of socialists are going to scream their empty heads off about this post- but please, don't waste my time. Show how market economics supports your position. (And if you think market economics are irrelevant, then you fit the definition of "not knowing anything about economics."
This country is heading towards tyranny and socialism, and will go the way of the USSR (with a similar 58 million klilled) if we don't reign in the out of control federal government.)
Economics are a science. A Geek, should take science into account- rather than following a religion. You wouldn't look to the church to decide your OS, would you? So why look to the church (or the agnostic mysticism of socialism) to determine your economic policy?
Don't be part of the problem. Be part of the solution. Be a Geek and make a scientifically based decision.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
"Go forth and multiply and use the land until it cannot yield any more so develop dependancy on fertilizing chemicals to sterilize the land for 50 years but leave the poisoned, salted land behind and eat high-fat low-nutrition food and become a potato and spend your evenings sprawled in front of the TV."
Breathing air you don't have to see and cut and chew (I grew up in smoggy L.A.) is hardly a mystical issue!
... or are AI. :)
And that's just the selfish dimension of environmentalism -- which I hope you share? (Hey, I dunno -- maybe you supply your own O2
I do know a lot of tech people who love to spend time outdoors. And in the Silicon Valley to S.F. area, and Seattle, too, there are plenty of level-headed "tree huggers."
This may be a devil's advocate troll, but what the heck:
:)
Check out what the greens really believe in: http://www.davehitt.com/dec00/green1.html Don't vote for a party if you think just by the name they are pro-environment.
Er, OK, don't vote for as party just by its name. Gotcha. Can I choose by color?
And remember, the BIGGEST polluter in the world is the US government, and the worst one in this country is the all the federal and state governments. Private and coroporate pollution is almost nil by comparison.
First of all that's utter nonsense; second, it is irrelevant unless you're saying the gov't should clean up its act along with everyone else. Remember, America consumes about 25% of the world's energy, any improvement will make a difference.
And the greens want MORE government, not less.
No, many would trim the fat from the military or farm subsidies, for 2 of 1000 examples.
A company wrongs you, you can sue them. When the government does it, you have no recourse.
That's wrong, people sue the gov't all the time. I don't know why so many people have this 12th century view of sovereign immunity. Before you argue with me that I don't know anything about suing the gov't, (1) I'm a lawyer, and (2) I used to work for a federal appeals courts, and wrote up dozen cases where the gov't was a defendant. Not just civil rights, either.
Best solution for the environment is privatization of land and a rational court system to sue for damages. You pollute my drinking water, I sue you. EVen if you are the government.
We have that now. It's not enough. Unless if by "You pollute my drinking water, I sue you" you mean a strict approach of suing over any pollution -- now, that would cripple both the courts and industry. Good job.
Also, a wait-to-sue approach means we'd have to wait for the nuclear reactor down the street to melt down before we could regulate it. If we were still alive.
And, while we're at it, how many jobs would exist if all the large and small companies in the country were destroyed? Where would the tax money come from?
How many jobs would exist if everyone died? Where would the tax money come from? Equally compelling and difficult to answer questions.
If you don't understand economics, and want to help the environment, you vote green, and your vote is an endorsement for wholesale environmental destruction. If you DO understand economics, and you want to protect the environment, you vote libertarian.
Uh, proof? Your say-so? Besides, you just told us not to vote for a party by its name alone.
Most geeks are actually libertarians, though the geeks on slashdot seem to be mostly socialists-- I suspect this is because most geeks don't hang out on slashdot, and mostly the slashdot is the LAN admin, Server Admin crowd (rather than computer, electrical and software engineers.)
Your insights are fascinating. And unsupported by any evidence.
I know, a bunch of socialists are going to scream their empty heads off about this post- but please, don't waste my time. Show how market economics supports your position. (And if you think market economics are irrelevant, then you fit the definition of "not knowing anything about economics."
You haven't even defined "market economics" -- an incredibly vague term -- and I doubt you could anyway. If you do so, please include whose analysis of market economics you adhere to and why. Also unequivocal proof that this analysis is correct and not susceptible to market failures without government regulation.
This country is heading towards tyranny and socialism, and will go the way of the USSR (with a similar 58 million klilled) if we don't reign in the out of control federal government.)
Tyranny and socialism? Well, I suppose we're halfway there. And the word is "rein."
Economics are a science. A Geek, should take science into account- rather than following a religion. You wouldn't look to the church to decide your OS, would you? So why look to the church (or the agnostic mysticism of socialism) to determine your economic policy?
Economics is a dismal science. Even economists will tell you that. Despite all the mathematics there is still a fair amount of art involved, and if you really think economics is a monolithic institution, get two economists into a room and watch the fur fly. It's not pretty. Don't get be wrong, I have friends who are economists, and I like them. The good ones don't claim to be omniscient.
Don't be part of the problem. Be part of the solution. Be a Geek and make a scientifically based decision.
Hey, we finally agree on something. You to add, "Please disregard the preceding rant."
Beneath my insouciant abuse is a salient point: nothing is as simple as signing on with the right political club, green or libertarian. You must think for yourself, and if you're like most people you'll be hard pressed to find a party you agree with 100% of the time. Also, beware people who throw out arguments without facts to back them up.
I could provide detailed rebuttals, but you haven't made any concrete statements of fact or opinion taht would support reasoned debate. That's not a put-down, it's a fact. And certainly you would agree we should decide things on the facts?
BTW, I'm not a socialist, though I probably appear one to you.
P.S. Offtopic and Troll police -- IMHO this has been a fairly mild-mannered effort to address the points raised in the parent's post. I really don't think i could be much more charitable, but hope this is informative. Or interesting. Or insightful.
Being a scientist (or a geek) means you're always trying to learn new things. For that, you must consider the possibility that you don't know everything, or that you may be wrong about anything.
You think you know it all. You think you are smarter and better than everyone else. But anyone with real knowledge of the matters you rattle on about can see you know very little. You are not a geek, and much less a scientist. You're not even intelligent enough to realise how stupid you are, and how little you know. And that means you'll never improve.
Two months ago you wrote a message saying how stupid Slashdot's editors and moderators were and how they never gave you "proper credit" for you contributions. You said you were leaving Slashdot forever. As with most things you say, that turned out to be false, too.
Unlike our libertarian friend here the greens have a stated set of ideal not the writings of some anti-green crackpot. Aussie Greens First on the list from Google.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I've found that most computer and science people are pro-technology and anti-mysticism and so have little interest in "issues" such as environmentalism.
;-)
Since when is environmentalism mystic? Seems like common sense that one would prefer drinkable water, rivers that don't burn and air that makes the sky look blue instead of brown.
Unless your claim is that technology will be sufficiently strong to counter the negative health benefits of those things...
PhysicsGenius is a TROLL. look at his past posts. mod him down. it is riduculous that people still mod his crap up.
I don't see any indication that the submitter was asking whether geeks were primarily supporters of the Green Party, let alone parts of their platform other than those relating to the environment, or that he meant anything more than friendly towards environmental activism or supportive of stronger measures to protect the environment. On top of that, the above post just seems to be flamebait.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
Sustainable growth, of course, is a meaningless PC phrase which nobody is willing to define.
Have you asked?
Sustainable growth is a pattern of resource use that provides a reasonable degree of certainty that future generations will be able to employ the same pattern of resource use. Think "rotating crops" here.
Next!
I write in my journal
I am an anti-environmentalist, and I'm the only one I know. I don't believe there is any value to this planet beyond its ability to serve us. I don't think it's economically worth while to try to save the planet. By the time we notice the long-term benefits of environmentalist action, we'll have developed technology that will make us much less dependant on the environment. The oceans will be black, the rainforests will be gone, and most of the people living in indoor cities or in space stations won't care. My two cents.
The only reason I don't hike is because I'm a lazy fatass, but the gorgeous sunsets on the mountains I'v seen when I'v hiked up them are more than worth the time and effort of not only hiking the mountain, but also keeping that forest preserve open.
But frankly, it really saddens me when my car gets splattered by a squirrel becuase some jackass in a SUV decided that going down a 20mph 1.5 lane street at 30mph was a good idea, and didn't have time to stop or dodge (which they could've too). It's not so much the fact that they ran over the squirrel, that saddens me right their. But it's the fact they can be so inconsiderate to not only the squirrel but also to their neighbors. Accidents happen becuase people are dumb, this is an understood fact, but when you just turn off your brain like that...it angers and saddens me at the same time. These jackasses get to have all the power they want but they don't know how to use it in a mutually beneficial way.
So, frankly, wiether I like it or not, I'm pretty much powerless to stop these cooks from tearing down the rainforests and polluting the air with CO2. Although, if I could stop them I would. We already have tons of power and all sorts of new energy sources; it's really the fault of monopolies that pretty much destory anyone who has a new, innovated idea. Essentailly, we all suffer in the end.
If we can keep the assholes and idiots out of places of power, then we'll be doing good. It's beginning to get really bad with so many of them. The scary fact is that a predicion I made a few years back of "we'll probably go into civil war within 50 years" may come true...
Mabye it's come time to move to canada? I hear they are nice people, and me and them share a mututal ideal: we don't like fighting...
Candy-Coated Knowledge
I remember reading an article a few years back where a guy had done the research for his company to consider purchasing recycled paper. His conclusion was that the process of recycling paper caused more damage to the enviroment than the creation of virgin paper.
I think the article was in Inc. Magazine.
Does anyone here know anything about that?
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Because there is no need for environmentalism because the environment really isn't in a bad shape. Come on. How can you really believe that with this many molecules of air on earth and how large the atmosphere is and such, that the pollution that we put out really effects it? Besides, too much environmentalism really hurts free trade and can cause more monopolies (MS, ...).
There are so many libertarian and liberal (Adam Smith liberal) web pages that make environmentalism out to be bunk.
When you can program a computer like we can, which means everything else including politics is childs play. What can't a OSS programmer do?
I think he refering to the mother goddess ort gaia-is-real stuff.
Yep, thanks for proving it.
Its a meaningless phrase that nobody can define without resorting to:
"Sustainable growth is a pattern of growth that is sustainable".
A circular definition proves there is no real one.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Sure, the Greens are rather extreme, but ultimately I find their extremeness the least harmful of the possible choices.
The democrats want to take away our guns. That would lead to horrible results, as it would take away the true power from the hands of the people and into the hands of the government. They want to keep draconian drug laws. Not only are these laws unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause, they affect directly what I can and cannot do. They will appoint Supreme Court justices who tend to take away state rights. They generally stand for the death penalty. The anti-terrorism bills they pass take away basic freedoms of Americans.
The republicans are no better in some areas, like terrorism and drug laws, and are worse in some others. They want to implement school vouchers, which will destroy the public schools which both of my parents teach in, by taking away the smarter and more wealthy kids and leaving all the poor dumb ones. They are generally lenient towards monopolies, unless those monopolies happen to be labor unions. They tend to be less aware of economic bads like pollution which need to be mitigated through taxes. They tend to favor making the income tax system even more regressive than it already is. They want to make unconstitutional abortion laws which fly in the face of the Commerce Clause.
The libertarians are probably the most dangerous of them all. They want to keep government regulation of the monetary system while removing all checks on economic bads and monopolies. They want a free for all with regard to drugs such that it will no longer be possible to determine what is safe and effective. They want personal possession of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. Needless to say for most, they would destroy our country.
The greens have their own crazy ideas, but I don't think any of them would destroy our country. They want tough discrimination laws. While I disagree on principle, because I think anyone who wants to be a racist should be free to do so, I personally am not a racist, and stopping discrimination isn't exactly a bad thing. They want to limit or eliminate the use of nuclear power plants. While I feel that as long as the power plant pays taxes which pay to dispose of the economic bads they create they should be allowed to stay, I don't think it would be that big of a deal if the price of energy went up a little bit. Yeah, we'd probably see some inflation, but inflation isn't such a bad thing unless you have a lot of cash, and I don't. They want a high minimum wage. Again, I disagree on principle, but I don't think it's going to hurt society if we pay our burger flippers a little more. And if a higher minimum wage actually does cause higher unemployment (I doubt it would, but would just cause higher burger prices), then that would be quickly repealed, and no real harm would be done (since there would be unemployment available in the mean time).
So basically while I disagree with the Greens on a lot of issues, I don't think they're significant enough to override the places where I strongly agree with them. Drug laws, tax justice, political reform, state power, free speech, environmental importance (though not their precise handling of it, I favor economic stimulation rather than legislative), national debt, trade, anti-trust enforcement, etc.
Actually my biggest fear about the greens is their tendency to be overly pacifist with regard to foreign diplomacy. And that's the single reason why even though I did vote for Nader I really didn't want him to actually win. But in reality, if he had won, I'm sure that he would have chosen a strong cabinet which would have made up for most of his weaknesses in this regard.
The greatest irony is that you oppose "Monopolies" like microsoft, while endorsing a far worse one.
But if you hate microsoft, you can boycott them. You can refused to do business with them, work for them, or buy their shares. You have that choice.
But for the government, you have no choice. Tehy take your tax money, your social security money, and they provide no services-- the social security fund is bankrupt (By definition- they owe more than they have) the police are sketchy at best, and they caused 9/11 and still haven't prosecuted the murderers for Waco.
Yet you don't have a choice- you can't even refuse these services-- you have to pay, or they force you to. You have to submit to their "Service" or they put you in jail.
The worse monopoly of all is the government-- they force their customers to pay at gunpoint and they give them no choice in the quality of services.
You can't even go to an outside vendor and pay them instead if you want police protection or a private first class mail service (There was a couple of these before the government created a monopoly for themselves.)
Microsoft may be assholes, and I may refuse to use their product, but when I have bought products from tehm they actually delivered. The government forcibly extracts %50 of my income every year (in total taxes) and delivers maybe 1/30th the value of what I pay. And I don't have choice to go to another supplier for the service-- and the service sucks.
Hell, the social security scam is an outright fraud many orders of magnitude bigger than enron, yet enron is shut down and it continues to worsen.
Yeah, you oppose monopolies- except for one. the one that has a monopoly on whether we get to have human rights or not.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Guess the question has been answered. Most slashdot posters are anti-environmentalists.
You're just being silly.
Sustainable is a perfectly reasonable English word. So is growth. People put adjectives and nouns together all the time. The reason why there's nothing more to the definition is not that it's meaningless, but rather because there's nothing much more to it than what the words themselves together mean in the normal English way.
Let me spell it out though, 'cauuse clearly you're not putting any effort into trying to understand:
- There are resources that will (to a degree) grow of their own accord, or which we are unable to dent significantly.
- There are resources that are limited or slow to recover.
- If an organisation grows (economically, or otherwise), it can use up limited resources, or use effectively unlimited resources, or it can use resources at a rate which is equal to or less than the recovery rate.
- If an organisation grows without using up limited resources, then the resources are there for future growth by the same organization, or others. Hence, such growth is sustainable.
Now that really isn't too hard to understand as a concept, is it? Practicalities are another matter.I live here and I spend as much time as I can climbing mountains, snowboarding and motorbiking around. I love technology for the most part, but I don't think we can sustain the current rate of production without impairing the environment. I'm not a hard-core environmentalist, but I do want our little planet preserved, at the very least as long as I'm around; some day it will not be my problem any more, but I wouldn't mind having some children and maybe they'll find it nice to breathe clean air too.
Actually, Mr.-I'm-going-to-post-ignorantly-and-repetitively, sustainable growth as a term and a practice is not meaningless. Have you ever been on an actual tree farm -- you know, the farms that grow almost all the material needed to supply us with stuff like looseleaf and toilet paper? I've been on them. My neck of the woods (literally) is full of them. It's called sustainable growth because the foresters know how to balance what they cut with what they grow. There's no circular definition. It's a practice that has actually been used for decades. But I know that doesn't matter -- today is your day to post as often as you can, to piss me the fuck off.
Stupid mungy troll.
Don't put salt in your eyes.
I'm an environmentalist. But not one of the crazy, chain-yourself-to-a-tree types-- I just make an effort to reduce my impact, without sacrificing huge things from my life. Here's my short list of things you can do that will make a big difference without upsetting your lifestyle terribly or requiring you to cover your property in solar panels.
1. Replace your lightbulbs with compact fluorescents. Yeah, some of them suck, but not all of them. Several brands are indistinguishable from incandescents. They are available dimmable, 3-way, R30 and R45 reflectors, etc... and they use around 1/5 the power of incandescents of the same brightness.
2. Turn off your PC when you're not there. Yeah, it's gonna kill your d.net stats, but every bit helps. Leave your server box up, but do you really need all five of those desktops on?
3. Lower your thermostat 1 degree from where it sits now in winter, and raise it 1 degree in the summer.
4. Insulate your house and water heater well.
For extra credit:
5. Consider a reasonably efficient car as your next purchase. I have a Civic HX-- gets about 40mpg. Other options: Civic (also available as a hybrid), Jetta TDI, Toyota Prius, Ford Escape HEV, etc... Your car uses as much power as your house. This is a good place to cut down. But you don't even have to go this far-- if everybody picked a vehicle that got 1 or 2mpg better than their last, we'd all be better off. So step up to a cleaner car, but there's no need to go straight for a 1-person go-kart powered by your sense of self-satisfaction.
6. Look for more efficient refrigerators, water heaters, AC, heaters, washing machines, dryers, and so forth. When yours wear out, consider a cleaner model.
Now that really isn't too hard to understand as a concept, is it? Practicalities are another matter
Ha! That says it all there.
REally "sustainable growth" is just a code phrase for "We want to make driving an SUV punishable by death."
Its all about control and thus, is fascist.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
bears outside?
-G
I believe the gentleman above was referring to this post, where you say, and I quote:
Slashdot has outlived its usefulness. I think I will keep reading the headlines, but I will stop participating in the forums. The system is broken, and the level of discourse is not high enough often enough to make it worth my while. This latter bit being BECAUSE the moderation system is a popularity contest.
Since you have rated this post (And other long detailed technical posts I've made) at zero because you didn't like what they said-- and not been caught in metamoderation-- then there is no reason whatsoever not to post as an AC.
And thus, I leave slashdot.
This was written by you, on 2002-10-17. Since then you have posted approximately 500 messages (that's 13 posts each day), most of which in the same pedantic tone of someone who's too stupid to even consider the possibility that he doesn't know everything. Even very stupid people are usually intelligent enough to keep their mouth shut, instead of parading their stupidity in front of everyone else like you do.
So if Slashdot is such a piece of crap, and "not worth your precious time", why did you come back almost immediately after leaving? Why do you post compulsively, instead of getting a real life? Tried to live in the real world for a while and discovered you couldn't make it there, either? Or was that post, like most of your other ones, just a turd that fell out of your mouth without you even noticing?
As is likely with the paper in your recycling bin, the answer is mixed. I can provide a thumbnail but urge you to look around online for some dispassionate source better informed. Things may also have changed in recent years.
... it's important to consider the end use. Our insistence of snow-white paper for all out copying and printing needs requires a lot more processing than off-white. Producing new paper has a significant environmental impact. Make sure the playing field is level -- are new and recycling plants held to similar standards and costs? And on and on.
... a lot of people paint environmentalists, or activists of lots of other stripes, as stupid extremists bent on a suicide pact. The smart ones, which includes most people, understand the need for balance, and always criticize the stupidity of recycling that harms the environment. But such counterproductivity occurs in any industry. Recycling is largely amenable to the same analysis of economic efficiency as any industry -- how do the pros weigh against the cons. I think a lot more harm is done by failures to consider the environment that by misguided efforts to save it.
Recycling paper, especially mixed (non-white) paper is a dirty business. The paper has to be broken down into pulp, polluting water, and worst must be deinked with bleaches, which produces nasty stuff like dioxin. Mixed paper and newspaper is much dirtier than office paper. Recycled paper can't quite replace virgin paper because recycling breaks down fibers (this is why shopping bags are always made from virgin wood -- strength) and the very nicest office papers are at least partially cotton (hold a sheet up to the light to look for a watermark).
But
A funny thing happened while I was growing up. When I was a kid, junk newspaper was worth money. When I was a grownup, you had to pay to have it removed and recycled (although in many places this costs a lot less than outright disposal). Supply and demand. But how quick are we to say the problem is pointless recycling, rather than to question why we have so much newspaper? When I was a kid we were taught to recycle (then it sounded novel, but Americans were GREAT recyclers during the material shortages of WWII). Now kids are taught reduce, reuse, recycle. This applies to office paper -- it is many times better not to use a piece of paper than to recycle it. What happened to that paperless office? Why do so many people print out all of their email? Anyway, recycling is the last line of defense, not the first.
Last note
Here in Virginia we have very good curbside recycling, and everything else goes to a waste-to-energy incinerator. Now, I'm not willing to take it on faith this is the perfect arrangement, and would like to see a study assessing what a sheet of paper does for us Virginians going to recycling rather than incineration. Assume nothing -- there are private and political scams in recycling as much as anywhere else.
The real issue is property rights. Do land owners have the right to do whatever they want with their land? Of course not. But do they have the right to harvest their trees? Do they have the right to do what they want with those trees, and to sell them to whomever they like for whatever price they wish? If you want to preserve the trees, go buy the land.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Hmm, I wonder how much energy we'd save if we disconnected slashdot, and all the client and host computers at once? OK, I'm talking crazy.
BTW, the Philips Earthlight series are the best CFL's I've tried so far. Remember CFL's and very different from conventional humming/flickering/cold-sensitive fluorescents. Also, the CFL's only really make sense in applications where they are on a LOT, if you hope to recoup their purchased price and the greater environmental impact of their manufacture and disposal.
*
I would like to know, whoever is listening, what real people set their real thermostats to, summer and winter? Where do you live? Do you use a setback thermometer bill? What's your worst summer electric (A/C) bill and winter gas/oil/coal (heat) bill? If you have electric heat, well, how scary is your winter electric bill?
I live in N.VA (across from DC), with relatively mild summers and winters. Electricity is cheap (~4/kwh), I think natural gas about average. Thermostat is a setback, 82F summer, 67F winter (you get used to it, really!). Furnace is 78% efficient gas, A/C is new SEER 10 IIRC.
Electric bill topped out around $80 this summer's record-breaking heat wave; and gas is normally $100-200, worst ever was near $300 during the gas price spike. Our house is being renovated by me, and the state of insulation is atrocious, yet our bill tends to be lower than other people's -- so I'm wondering if I'm cruel to my family setting the thermostat. They only turn blue occasionally.
Well, that's probably too much info -- but discuss amongst yourselves....
The old boy is hard to read, but he did do his research and most of his analysis is still in use today. Most of modern accounting theory (cost accounting theory) is based on his work. The terminaology has changed over the years, but there has been only small advancedment since his work. True, he made a piss-poor social theorist, but he was the most outstanding economist ever to come around.
Okay. Science sez:
Free-market economic theory sez: These costs of economic activity are not bourne by the primary actor, who reaps the benefits, but by everybody. Thus, the rational actor in a free market acts in destructive ways because he can get the full benefits of the activity and bear only a tiny fraction of the cost.
Any one actor causes only slight environmental damage, it is only in the aggregate that it becomes readily apparent and harmful, so there is no point of focus, no one actor for the market to punish.
Of course, above I have only listed those activities where the damage is done to resources held in common. The free market can correct for practices that damage specific areas, or come from specific sources in a short time frame-- but only after the damage has been done. And in cases where the damage does not become apparent until years or decades later, what recourse does the market have?
I expect you have some weasel words to make this argument sound irrelevant or misguided. But the fact of the matter is that people get cancer, lung diseases, suffer from birth defects or retardation, and other health problems all over the U.S. and the world as a result of environmentally-unfriendly economic practices. Sometimes the market can correct for what harmed them, sometimes it can't. Never-the-less, the harm is done. No amount of weasel words can change that fact.
BitGeek is the communist, and WE are all capitalists!!!
Damn, you're trolling it up big time. Please remind me to knock you down five points the next time my mod points respawn.
The ultimate accessory for any motor-vehicle-needing Green Geek is a Toyota Prius.
The Prius is a SULEV (super-ultra low emission vehicle), which puts out about 90% less pollutants such as carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and hydrocarbons compared with a similarly-sized car, while using about 50% of the fuel and producing about 50% of the carbon dioxide.
These savings come from the use of a drivetrain incorporating an internal combustion engine, electric motor-generators and regenerative braking. You never plug in your Prius, and it has a range of 500 to 600 miles per tank. Needless to say, all of this technology is controlled by a number of computers, and there's a group dedicated to hacks and mods for the Prius.
For more information on this ideal Green Geek car, see this eight page PDF from the U.S. Department of Energy, or this site, which includes more information on the Prius than you probably want.
Eventually the Earth will be totally clear cut and paved. After that we will move into the universee and clear cut and pave any planet that we can.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
I think the environmentalists that protest cutting down forests are great....they go protest, then go home to their house made out of wood. Idiots.
Two economists are out walking, and one says, "There's a dollar bill on the sidewalk!" The other, not bothering to look, says, "No, there's not." "But yes there is," says the first. The second sighs and explains, "If there were a dollar bill there, someone would have picked it up."
:)
You have to be a bit of nerd to understand that one.
Oh, yeah, I've been on a tree farm. I know what tree farmers mean when they say it.
But that's nothing like what the human hating fascist green freaks mean when they say it.
They want to limit the population, and if they get their way, they'll probably practice genocide to get there, but who knows, maybe they won't go that far.
Either way, its worth calling them on it when they use meaningless bullshit terms.
I notice you didn't provide a definition either.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
gawd, what an asshole.
I was initially interested in this fellow's posting and website but he seems impervious to even admit the validity of others' seemingly (to me) reasoned viewpoints. I think he's wrong about Greens and Libertarians alike. (Also Democrats, Republicans, and Economics, I'd wager.) But I'd prefer to stick to nasty ad-hominem attacks then really try to convince anyone of anything at this point.
Thanks to everyone else here for the great insights.
-M
("green", voted for Nader, votes Democratic for the moment. Software engineer. Virginia, USA)
[[[ The biggest political force in America today is the nonvoters. What are they thinking? Do they think everything is okay? ]]]
burnt sig
I just hope we find ways to grow independant of it before we beat the last bit of life out of it, because we still need it. ^^:
I challange you to go out and try to find anyone (except maybe a crank contrarian or two) who is in favor of undrinkable water, rivers that burn, and brown skies.
You and your 'movment' traffic in caricatures.
Just try to get real once in awhile. The cigar chomping capitalist is just a picture on the cards in the Monopoly game.
howz it hangin, dawg??
Come on, if you're going to lie, at least lie convincingly. Everyone could tell you were making that story up when you said "my friend".
I see you can't think of a reply. Or are you still trying to come up with a smart reply? Don't bother; it would only clash with all your other messages.
Come on, you can do better! Think of all the budding trolls and trollettes who look to you for guidance!
And now I shall ... mock you, and such. Yeah.