Slashdot Mirror
Group Warns on Consumption of Resources
gollum123 writes "Humanity's reliance on fossil fuels, the spread of cities, the destruction of natural habitats for farmland and over-exploitation of the oceans are destroying Earth's ability to sustain life, the environmental group WWF warned in a new report Thursday."
Really, now. I'm one of those "Pinko Liberal Commie Environmentalists" (if you believe the far Right's opinion of my public transit and recycling "personal virtues") and I'm sick of sensationalist claptrap.
Ok, we are using natural resources. Lots of natural resources. Yes, this is a problem. Although the usual Satan in this, the United States, is about the same as their previous report and now the new bad guys are China and India. And the US isn't even the worst, we are behind UAE's air conditioners.
So when are they planning to release a report in Hindi? What I want to know in their sensationalist press release, is what are they doing about it? If the goal is to attract donations to further their work, I'd like to hear more about it than "Ooooo! Evil Selfish People Ruin The Environment!!"
So there are huge changes since 1961, or 1972 or even the 8% increase since 1991. We know the Bad Old Days were, um, Bad. That's why many people are trying to make changes. But how have we been doing since? What are the current trends?
As oil gets used up (as people have been proclaiming would happen very soon since before WW2), the price goes up.
The only reason oil and other petrochemicals are utilized is that they cost less than the alternatives.
So as the price of oil goes up, the prices of alternatives such as grain alcohol and veggie oil for fuel, telecommuting, atomic generation of electricity, solar, wind, etc, will be exceeded and they will in turn gain market share.
The greatest danger is in trying to prevent the changes in price which reflect demand and supply. Distorting this process keeps destructive processes in place, or brings "alternative" systems into play before they are safe, cheap or clean as they would have had to be before people would have paid for them without that coercion.
Relatively small, safe and clean atomic power generators have been in place for decades, but not in the so-called "private" sector. They are used in warships. This is an important lesson in "fine for me but not for thee".
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
We're tearing down forests and paving over habitat all the time? Pardon me if I'm rather confused by that. There's a big difference between reality and Ferngully: The Last Rainforest.
:)
My maternal extended family has worked in the logging industry for more than fifty years. And strangely enough, the lumber companies are still making money and selling cheap lumber. They certainly aren't cutting everything down in their path and moving on like some strange marauders. There's only a certain amount of land they own, and they've always recognized that they have to replace what they cut down if they want to stay in business. Thus, nearly every tree cut down by Simpson Lumber or other companies was a tree they planted 50 years ago. They plant 5 trees for every one they cut down, in fact.
And then you have places like the Salt Lake Valley. It looks like a veritable forest, yet when we evil slash and burn white folks got here 150 years ago, there wasn't a tree in the valley. We planted all of them. There are a lot of reasonable estimates that there are now more trees and forest in the United States than there were when the pilgrims set foot in Plymouth.
What's really distressing is that, when you get into the higher echelons of these environmentalist groups, they don't give one hoot about the environment. Go do an internship for one of them in Washington. It'll be a real eye opener, from what I've heard.
Did you notice that the population factor was conspicuously missing from TFA? The scary thing is, we HAVEN'T broken the cycle of nature and evolution at all - we just dodged the consequences while we ramped up our population. The crash at the end, which is inevitable unless we control our population, still awaits us.
Cut our global population by somewhere between 50 and 90 percent, though, and it's all good. Plenty of resources to go around. No political will to do anything about it, though, and even talking about it is well-nigh taboo.
Go, humans, go.
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.