How can we solve our environmental problems within a capitalist framework that encourages buying and discarding?

[Murphy101]

11 hours ago, Carol in Cal. said:

I think that there is merit in trying to do the next right thing whether or not there is a clear path to victory or success.  I think that this is always true, and always noble.  Always worthwhile.

I agree. My efforts at being a good steward aren’t wasted just because my neighbor has no concept of it.  

[Murphy101]

I also don’t think the problem is number of children. everything in my experience of having a large family suggests that’s not the issue. My family of 11 took up the exact same housing space and frankly often the food space too, of the other houses in my neighborhood. Maybe just maybe the problem isn’t 11 people on my corner.  Maybe it’s not that there isn’t enough to share.  Maybe it’s millions of individuals all wanting their own large corner and all you can eat platter at the expense of billions not getting anything.

[HS Mom in NC]

I'm from Phoenix and it's a prime example of how people doing things at an individual level compared to actual enforced regulation of industry is a joke. The water crisis (10 years normal rainfall, 20 years drought, 20 years mega drought in my life time) that has been discussed and publicized at length is about to slam into a population of tens of millions people who are still in pathological denial. Mountain run off as it an all recorded time low, yet agro is still using it on crops that require far more than than alternative crops would.  Housing is still expanding at a break neck pace, far more than the rest of the country, and people reassure themselves it's fine because they'll "just use groundwater" instead of non-existent run off. Few bother to ask themselves how long it took that groundwater to accumulate in the first place compared to how quickly it will be pumped out. There are not currently agro or housing related water restrictions.  Still!

Who is the biggest group of people moving there? Californians, who as a whole, are more environmentally conscious. Those from the area who are my age remember a time when there were more summer and winter rains, so they should know things are getting worse. If that mix of people refuses to address it when it's so painfully obvious, imagine that on a nation/world wide scale.

That said, while I'm a cold, hard realist about the futility of enough change happening at the individual level, I'm trying to be increasing environmentally conscious on principle. Here in Raleigh, I'm growing a self-sustainable food forest on my property with the option of raising chickens. One more year of homeschooling then I'll be at it full time. Right now the focus is learning to grow my own food, once that's going it will be long term food storage and high yield gardening. I cook in bulk and have a plan for every food scrap in my house, with composting being the last option for anything not consumed. Yard waste is composted.  We've started converting the lawn from grass to clover. We're probably at 40% right now.  Fingers crossed it spreads more!

We're weighing building a walipini (a sunken, off grid, green house alternative that maintains temperature year round and can include water harvesting features.) If we do, I'm insisting we get it inspected (for insurance and resale purposes) but we have water table issues to address and financial goals to consider.  Right now we're focused on being debt free in the next 2.5 years and catching up on retirement.  Do we spend the money on a walipini, and if so, when?

I also want to put in a self-sustaining, off grid, duck pond with the option of stocking it.  Again, figuring out the science and the finances for it come into play. We're currently digging a small one in our woodland garden for pollinators and other wildlife that comes in from the 11 acre protected  wetland behind the houses in half the neighborhood.

I've switched to reusables for sooooo many things, but can only do so because there isn't a water crisis here. I'm planning on setting up a clothes line soon. My wardrobe after my weight loss is classic and mix and match in a limited color palette to reduce consumption. My yard power tools are all electric. All my plastic gardening things are being reused until they're unusable. I buy laundry detergent sheets to reduce plastic waste, use dryer balls for most things, that kind of thing. I don't know how useful that is because many of the more conscious products aren't available locally and I have to buy them from Amazon or do without them. Sigh.

[Faith-manor]

On 4/30/2022 at 4:23 PM, Carol in Cal. said:

Buy from local farmers.  Plant an edible garden and use it as much as possible.   Have a few chickens for eggs.

Stop going to stores.  Stop browsing on Amazon.  

Reuse things.

Buy classic, high quality clothes that you are willing to wear for a long time.  Embrace using what you have, maybe in new ways.  

Join your local free stuff groups and divert things from landfills plus save money.

Dress warmer in the house to avoid needing as much heating.  

Figure out what you like to make, and make it.  Then trade it for stuff you don’t like to make.  In our Buy Nothing group, every once in a while someone posts a big vat of soup or chili that they made, and those who ask for portions run over and get them and eat them that night.  Saves a cooking session and also the endless leftovers problem.  I’ve gotten appliances, textiles, and recently a beautiful set of lawyer bookshelves for free there.  I offer my extra stuff all the time, and it’s nice to know that the folks who get it are very happy to have it.  We can post ‘wanted’ requests, too.  

Get used furniture instead of new.  Keep your old cars running.  Ditto appliances.  Buy Speed Queens that last forever.  Cultivate habits of conversation and self study and exercise that are satisfying without being spendy.  

Support sustainable agriculture.   Buy seasonal produce only.  

Teach your kids homesteading skills.  And their friends.  

I agree with so much of this for my own personal responsibility. I don't think in a "profit above all other considerations" system, corporations will EVER get on board despite being the big polluters, big water consumers, big emissions producers. They just won't, and we don't have the political will to do less.

I have gone back to buying used as much as possible, replacing low quality items with high quality that will last longer when we can find them. I feel like appliances are a total loss. We will eventually use Dh's GM discount to get an electric vehicle, and get a Sienna hybrid for our van camping. 

We are investing in a lot of home food production, fruits and vegetables, at the Alabama house, and have started pulling together what we need to run the house on solar. It is a prime location for solar. We will be off grid for that as there are issues in the area with connecting personal solar to the grid even though we could produce more than we need. If it were possible, we would have geothermal, but that isn't an option for a variety of geo reasons there.

Geothermal for new construction could be a huge improvement for the future if folks will get on board. The up front cost is more than forced air heat and air, however, it really pays for itself in the long run and is a big reducer of fossil fuel emissions.

Less children. Bottom line is the planet only has enough resources to support all the humans, and we humans do not equitably share resources ever. Not in the history of human kind has the species shared well. Therefore, we will have to have fewer humans. I think that ultimately, our own mismanagement of resources will result in this. How many million dead now from covid due to an animal virus jumping host and likely because of decimation of habitat putting diseased animals constantly in company with humans allowing the mutations? Ebola? You name it. More to come. Wars will take people out as everyone fights over arable land as the earth gets drier, potable water as droughts increase. At this point, we could end up with California and Colorado going at it and killing one another over water. Politicians are weak willed, money driven weasels lacking any of the moral capacity required to actually make the right, necessary, tough decisions.

Families will have to pretty much think of what they can do for their own families only because it isn't like the governments of earth are going to do a damn thing before it is far too late, and we are right on that precipice.

I look at it this way. Every tomato, every blueberry, every head of butter lettuce, or clump of basil leaves I produce is one less of each that has to be trucked here from California or Oregon or wherever. Every chicken egg I produce is one less produced in a high energy using, emission producing mega farm. If my house is using solar power, then I am not producing even more emissions from fossil fuel produced electric.  However, I am a drop in the bucket. My family alone makes exactly zero impact in the grand scheme of things. The point is that for us as things get worse, the hope is to have a haven for our adult kids and our grandsons that is stable and pleasant. It is satisfying to make the effort.

We would have to radically reduce consumption, invest in rail, invest in public transportation, invest in solar, invest in nuclear, upgrade the tranmission lines on the grid so that we don't lose 30-50% of the energy produced to inefficient transmission, have cooperation from all or most world governments but especially all the big polluters and the US and China, to name two, are never going to get on the right side of that, and equitably share food, water, arable land, sustainable farming, etc. and that is never going to happen because humans would rather see an awful lot of other humans suffer and die than change or share. This is our collective history, and as seen in the past, mother nature fights back and thins the herd when that happens. So I do think we will see another full on world war, regional water wars, regional food wars, world wide skirmishes over rare earth minerals, etc. as well as an increase in pandemics as we continue to decimate rain forest and are driven even further into animal habitat with diseases that will jump host, and we lack natural defense and medical knowledge to fight effectively. The next generation of kids might need 40 vaccines in the first year of life just to survive. If the population is reduced by 2-3 billion, the earth will heal.

And all of that sounds depressing, and it is. That said, I don't think there has been a time in history apart from maybe for white folks 1950-2000 that wasn't fairly depressing and a constant fight for survival. It has always been this way. National news and media being so readily accessible is what makes the common person so very aware of how bad it is out there.

On another note, in our remote area of Michigan, we don't have a buy nothing group. But I do have a lot of stuff to get rid of and no desire to use eBay or anything else that requires shipping. So we have decide to put our two work tables outside during good weather, and all summer long as we purge, put it out on tables in the front yard near the street with "free" sign. Hopefully local folks will find something they can use.

[Carrie12345]

1 hour ago, Murphy101 said:

I also don’t think the problem is number of children. everything in my experience of having a large family suggests that’s not the issue. My family of 11 took up the exact same housing space and frankly often the food space too, of the other houses in my neighborhood. Maybe just maybe the problem isn’t 11 people on my corner.  Maybe it’s not that there isn’t enough to share.  Maybe it’s millions of individuals all wanting their own large corner and all you can eat platter at the expense of billions not getting anything.

I ride both side of the fence when it comes to critiquing family size. I can almost guarantee my family of 7 didn’t use much more, if not less, resources than other, smaller families in total. (Individual categories, sure, maybe, but I’m talking an overall.  That said,they’re growing up and preparing to establish 5 households/families instead of 1 or 2,so…

But population shrinkage is also a problem if we don’t take steps to make up for it.

 

[Murphy101]

I agree that private level is a drop in the bucket compared to enforcement of government and corporate levels.

I think that’s why mandating what can be sold is very helpful. Mandating no plastic grocery plastic bags is far and away more helpful than telling people to reuse them. Same for disposables at campgrounds and water areas.  When people can’t get it there or use it there - the positive affect is almost immediate.

I also think people should unpackage there items at stores and leave it for the store to recycle or dispose of. There is so much waste in packaging that could be avoided. But if the store doesn’t have to deal with it the manufacture never sees a need to change either. I’d bet donuts that if stores refused to carry products that the store had to deal with packaging issues - suddenly packaging would improve.

I also think paying people to reuse is helpful. I’ve often wondered if it would be better to have milk dispensers for example. Bring your own approved container.  This could carry over to anything that can be upgraded or reused. Tax breaks for adding features to your *current* car that make it more fuel efficient or less carbon footprint.  I don’t think people should get tax breaks for throwing something away and buying new whatever.

I think companies should pay higher prices for energy use than individual homes. And they pay an additional extensive premium if they build on current greenways vs reusing already devolved land. It should not be cheaper to tear up more green spaces for corporate building on.  It wouldn’t keep billionaires from doing things but it would at least make it not the cheaper option.

No amount of my entire neighborhood reducing is going to make up for what bezos took off planet or what the neighborhood Walmart has in their dumpsters. 

[Faith-manor]

10 minutes ago, Carrie12345 said:

I ride both side of the fence when it comes to critiquing family size. I can almost guarantee my family of 7 didn’t use much more, if not less, resources than other, smaller families in total. (Individual categories, sure, maybe, but I’m talking an overall.  That said,they’re growing up and preparing to establish 5 households/families instead of 1 or 2,so…

But population shrinkage is also a problem if we don’t take steps to make up for it.

 

And of course, ya, I get it. I have four kids. I adore them, wnd didn't think about population. But regardless, people eat, and they use water. Even if no other consumptive actions occurred, people have to be fed and watered to live, and we have whole areas of the world without enough of that. Sure, we don't have that shortage totally at the moment now. However, we are beginning to see it. Wildfires and droughts, water wars in the west, 22% of the world's freshwater is in the great lakes, and other states want to drain them (Looking at Nestle as the corporate giant pushing for that as well" which will decimate the climate if we destroy them in order to irrigate deserts to create more food, continue to use water for manufacturing/coolant. It is a real problem. I do believe there's a maximum number of humans that can be sustained with present technology combined with the lack of will of world governments, the wealthy oligarchs, and corporate leadership to radically change. So the end result, unfortunately, is that population will have to decrease rapidly. Everyone who has nothing to do with this mess, with the decisions bring made, with leadership, who are powerless to stop it will be the ones to suffer the consequences. Government leaders and the rich are going to steal everything they need to survive.

The world my kids and grandsons are inheriting sucks to high heaven. I do not blame my three sons for determining that if would be immoral to have children, and that is how they feel though their natural instinct is that they would enjoy fatherhood and family life. Sigh.

[Teaching3bears]

1 hour ago, Faith-manor said:Dh's GM discount to get an electric vehicle, and get a Sienna hybrid for our van camping. 

 

 

1 hour ago, Faith-manor said:

I agree with so much of this for my own personal responsibility. I don't think in a "profit above all other considerations" system, corporations will EVER get on board despite being the big polluters, big water consumers, big emissions producers. They just won't, and we don't have the political will to do less.

I agree that the corporations will not get on board!  Unless they are forced.  If the system does not work, maybe it should be changed, or at least examined and modified.  That is my question.

And all the actions that people are taking at an individual level are inspiring but the problem is that most people are not.  It’s easier to do when people are comfortable and it is less of a priority when people are struggling with the immediacy in their lives.  

[Faith-manor]

7 minutes ago, Murphy101 said:

I agree that private level is a drop in the bucket compared to enforcement of government and corporate levels.

I think that’s why mandating what can be sold is very helpful. Mandating no plastic grocery plastic bags is far and away more helpful than telling people to reuse them. Same for disposables at campgrounds and water areas.  When people can’t get it there or use it there - the positive affect is almost immediate.

I also think people should unpackage there items at stores and leave it for the store to recycle or dispose of. There is so much waste in packaging that could be avoided. But if the store doesn’t have to deal with it the manufacture never sees a need to change either. I’d bet donuts that if stores refused to carry products that the store had to deal with packaging issues - suddenly packaging would improve.

I also think paying people to reuse is helpful. I’ve often wondered if it would be better to have milk dispensers for example. Bring your own approved container.  This could carry over to anything that can be upgraded or reused. Tax breaks for adding features to your *current* car that make it more fuel efficient or less carbon footprint.  I don’t think people should get tax breaks for throwing something away and buying new whatever.

I think companies should pay higher prices for energy use than individual homes. And they pay an additional extensive premium if they build on current greenways vs reusing already devolved land. It should not be cheaper to tear up more green spaces for corporate building on.  It wouldn’t keep billionaires from doing things but it would at least make it not the cheaper option.

No amount of my entire neighborhood reducing is going to make up for what bezos took off planet or what the neighborhood Walmart has in their dumpsters. 

I am totally on board, anti-packaging. It is UNHOLY the amount of crap generated from packaging. And seriously, all that crap that comes in a box of shoes can be re-used for the next pair of shoes. Dolls and matchbox cars really do not need to come in plastic, non-biodegradable packaging.

I would love it if we went back to the concept of the old general store. Glass and wood display cases, no items in packaging, the glass jars of buttons and sewing notions, you name it. The utter lack of packaging in a 1950's Woolworth would be so great!

I also think we simply have to have local, policy initiatives. I can't make Capitol Hill do a damn thing. But if just my local municipality would ban plastic shopping bags, plow up the three acres sitting fallow around the old elementary school that has been defunct since 1988 and allow folks to have a community garden plot or plant carbon sequestering plants like clover which also helps pollinators out, and then increase the routes of the one and only transport bus in the county, it would be huge. If they forced parents to use common bus stops instead of going to every single child's home individually, the school district could run HALF the number of buses they do now. In this rural area, we run busses with only 15-20 kids on them! No joke! Insane. Have some centralized stops, and have the parents get their kids to those stops or walk to them. A lot of our retired folks have said if kids could do more walking, they would be willing to serve as volunteer crossing guards and safety patrol. The amount of fuels saved plus just bus purchase, bus maintenance, you name it would be amazing.

[Murphy101]

12 minutes ago, Carrie12345 said:

I ride both side of the fence when it comes to critiquing family size. I can almost guarantee my family of 7 didn’t use much more, if not less, resources than other, smaller families in total. (Individual categories, sure, maybe, but I’m talking an overall.  That said,they’re growing up and preparing to establish 5 households/families instead of 1 or 2,so…

But population shrinkage is also a problem if we don’t take steps to make up for it.

 

🤷‍♀️ So what? Even my kids off to establish their own households all 6 combined aren’t using up as much resources as one Walmart.  This is especially true for my kids’ generation. Few of them plan to own a house. They just can’t picture doing that in this housing and work market. Most are living at home well into their 20s.  All of them are very minimalist aware for financial reasons if nothing else. Most of their friends are too. 

[Clarita]

3 hours ago, Murphy101 said:

I don’t believe in buy local either. Sure that’s great but trade is a good thing. I don’t know about the fear of you but I’m pretty darn happy scurry is not a winter threat every year.

I agree. There are certain areas that can do buy local year-round and other areas where that is totally not doable. I think sometimes in these conversations we fail to acknowledge that all this "evil" technology has improved the quality of life for people in really good ways. Personally, I like to be a part of moving forward where we try to continually tried to improve quality of life and be good stewards of our world.   

1 hour ago, Murphy101 said:

I also think people should unpackage there items at stores and leave it for the store to recycle or dispose of. There is so much waste in packaging that could be avoided. But if the store doesn’t have to deal with it the manufacture never sees a need to change either. I’d bet donuts that if stores refused to carry products that the store had to deal with packaging issues - suddenly packaging would improve.

I can totally get behind that. It was a perk of joining the CSA they use way less useless packaging and I can return some of the packaging to them so they can reuse it to bring me my next batch of groceries.

[regentrude]

3 hours ago, Murphy101 said:

I also don’t think the problem is number of children. everything in my experience of having a large family suggests that’s not the issue. My family of 11 took up the exact same housing space and frankly often the food space too, of the other houses in my neighborhood.

the issue with family size is not that the kids live in the parental home and eat and consume resources - but that they will go off, find partners, create households, and procreate. If each of N children chooses to bring N children into the world, we have exponential growth if N becomes significantly larger than the replacement rate of 2.
No amount of frugality and living in a cramped home in the family of origin is relevant compared to this impact.

Edited May 2, 2022 by regentrude

[regentrude]

1 hour ago, Murphy101 said:

I also think people should unpackage there items at stores and leave it for the store to recycle or dispose of. There is so much waste in packaging that could be avoided. But if the store doesn’t have to deal with it the manufacture never sees a need to change either. I’d bet donuts that if stores refused to carry products that the store had to deal with packaging issues - suddenly packaging would improve.

That is actually the law in Germany. Shoppers are entitled to leave behind all unnecessary packaging in stores, and stores have to recycle it.

[Carrie12345]

39 minutes ago, regentrude said:

the issue with family size is not that the kids live in the parental home and eat and consume resources - but that they will go off, find partners, create households, and procreate. If each of N children chooses to bring N children into the world, we have exponential growth if N becomes significantly larger than the replacement rate of 2.
No amount of frugality and living in a cramped home in the family of origin is relevant compared to this impact.

That’s exactly it.

If I could create and convince all my future descendants to stay on some dream self-sufficient commune, I’d feel perfectly fine. But i don’t have that control now, and i sure won’t when I’m dead, lol.

[HS Mom in NC]

Municipalities setting up space symbiotic relationships would help.  I needed insane amounts of brown cardboard (no gloss, no color) to use as a safe kill mulch for my grass where the food forest is.  If we had more cardboard only dumpsters behind businesses people could access at their own risk, it would help. I had to ask businesses, check for free moving boxes on FB marketplace and Craig's List,  ask neighbors on our neighborhood FB page, and I dumpster dived a bunch of new neighborhoods under construction (asked workers when they were present) to get what I needed for 2 layers over a 100X100 ft. square area.  It took a long time.  I'll still need them to put in my heavy duty shredder to make browns for my compost pile. I have sterile Russian comfrey for high nutrient greens for the compost and for the pollinators (I cut down every other one and don't cut the others until they've grown back and flowered.)

I also needed a 12 in. deep layer of woodchips over it using the Back to Eden method to build soil.  Chipdrop.com is an online resource that allows gardeners to register for wood chips that tree trimming companies have to pay to get rid of.  If you're on the list and they meet your specifications, they'll dump a mini-van sized load on your property for free, or you can sweeten the deal to get to the top of the list by paying however much you're willing to get their attention.  We do freebies or $20 depending on how much we need. It's been good, but its taken 3 years to complete the job because they're irregular. Something like that for cardboard would help. If gardeners and people making inexpensive sets and other projects could get a text that someone dropped of boxes at a central location to pick up, we could make use of them.

Just today on my lunch time brisk walk I saw a nearby house getting new gutters installed.  I asked the workers of they were just going to throw away the old gutters, I'd be glad to take them to grow more strawberry plants on the side of my fence.  (Suck it, slugs!) They agreed and dropped them off at the end of their work day and I had time to bake them some homemade chocolate chip cookies.  It really did help everyone, except the slugs.

In a Scandi country, I forget which one, they revitalized an unused indoor mall by reopening with only good quality used items.  It's the same as any mall you've been in, but nothing is new.  There's are shoe stores, women's clothing stores, children's clothing stores, furniture stores, home goods stores, and such.  I would think that could be workable if they got free used items people were done with and the money from sales went to pay workers and maintenance. I'd like to see some numbers on it for just how doable it is, but it seems like a good idea to me.

[Carol in Cal.]

I would like to highlight the Buy Nothing movement.

In our area it is truly game changing.  I understand that it’s not like that all over, but it’s worth checking into.

Concept:  Pick a geographic area and get facebook members from there.  Offer things for free, and ask for things you need.  

Level up:  Thank publicly.  Recognize publicly.  People find that encouraging and it make the group more active.

I’ve gotten rid of an astonishing variety of stuff this way.  Someone requested a 20 year old Interweave Knits magazine from my offers a few weeks ago and was thrilled to get it.  I almost recycled that instead of offering it because it seemed so lame to me, but now it’s being used gratefully by someone who appreciates it.  Many, many books, including a bunch of cookbooks and knitting books.  A cutting board, almost new.  Clothes.  Vases.  Ice cream scoops.  A juicer.  

I’ve also gotten stuff this way, including, but not limited to, two deep blue sweater tops in my exact size, a red art glass bowl that is stunning as a dining room table accent, a lawyer’s bookshelf and a knotty pine bookshelf, some Easter decor that we love, an All Clad braising pot that is perfect for artichokes, a dehydrator that I’m hoping to use for the first time this year for my apricots, and a doll sized wooden high chair.  An ice cream maker attachment for my mixer which I have not tried yet.  Plus several window AC units and a bunch of personal items for a downtown charity.
 

All of this stuff would probably have been junked if not for the group.  Much of it would have been purchased by the recipient if not gotten for free.  This is significant.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Carol in Cal.

[prairiewindmomma]

Our Buy Nothing group is really good too. ❤️
 

 

[Murphy101]

1 hour ago, regentrude said:

the issue with family size is not that the kids live in the parental home and eat and consume resources - but that they will go off, find partners, create households, and procreate. If each of N children chooses to bring N children into the world, we have exponential growth if N becomes significantly larger than the replacement rate of 2.
No amount of frugality and living in a cramped home in the family of origin is relevant compared to this impact.

Except that’s not the first or the second sources of greatest pollution.  Countries with lowest birth rates still have same or more pollution than many countries with higher birth rates.

The problem isn’t how people on <100k have babies.

The problem is how billionaires run businesses in ways that directly affect communities with little power to mitigate that from those communities. 

[Bootsie]

I am old enough to remember the days before plastic grocery bags.  There was a big push by some environmental groups to encourage the use of those bags rather than paper bags.  I also remember talk in the 70s of how people were having too many children; it was damaging the planet and in 50 years we would not have enough food.  Our Weekly Reader in elementary school had articles about the damage to the irrecoverable damage to the Great Lakes from pollution.  I am a supporter of good stewardship, but the cries that we are at a crisis point from which there is little chance of recovery are not new. 

[Carrie12345]

33 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

I am old enough to remember the days before plastic grocery bags.  There was a big push by some environmental groups to encourage the use of those bags rather than paper bags.  I also remember talk in the 70s of how people were having too many children; it was damaging the planet and in 50 years we would not have enough food.  Our Weekly Reader in elementary school had articles about the damage to the irrecoverable damage to the Great Lakes from pollution.  I am a supporter of good stewardship, but the cries that we are at a crisis point from which there is little chance of recovery are not new. 

For sure they’re not new. But we’ve continued to fail to make (or fail to keep, I’m some cases) regulations that address many issues. 

As a small, local examples, local governments are trying to change zoning to reduce preserved land and restricted land uses. As a region with (mostly) pristine water, this is scary!!! But there’s little to stop them. 

[Ting Tang]

48 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

I am old enough to remember the days before plastic grocery bags.  There was a big push by some environmental groups to encourage the use of those bags rather than paper bags.  I also remember talk in the 70s of how people were having too many children; it was damaging the planet and in 50 years we would not have enough food.  Our Weekly Reader in elementary school had articles about the damage to the irrecoverable damage to the Great Lakes from pollution.  I am a supporter of good stewardship, but the cries that we are at a crisis point from which there is little chance of recovery are not new. 

Sometimes I just have a hard time determining whether or not I should be aware, concerned, or alarmed.  You could read a lot of things online to make you feel one way or the other.  A lot of the people who sound the alarm are politicians and corporations.  But let he who is free of sin cast the first stone---many of them don't exactly live minimally.  Corporations can also be big investors in creativity and innovation, and I'd like to believe they also have solutions and can imagine ways to do things better without us losing our personal liberties to eat meat, have children, have pets, etc.  I don't think capitalism has to be the downfall.  It could be the solution.  ETA I could live without meat, and we don't buy a lot of it in the grocery store because my husband hunts and fishes.  

 

Edited May 2, 2022 by Ting Tang

[Faith-manor]

Hey Bootsie, look up Lake Erie. It had been killed TWICE by pollution to the point that the Cuyahoga River which dumps into Lake Erie burned. These events were the catalyst for forming the Ohio State EPA which became the catalyst for the federal EPA. It isn't a joke. I am so sick of people not giving a shit about the Great Lakes and proclaiming those of us in the region as "hysterics" is ignorant times a gazzillion. It took decades to recover and find signs of life in that ecosystem. You think every time it happens it will just continue to bounce back?

Rubbish.

https://phys.org/news/2011-10-dead-lake-erie.html

https://toledocitypaper.com/feature/lake-erie-dead-or-alive/

https://deadzonesjw.weebly.com/lake-erie.html

https://www.smithsonianmag.com

https://www.outsideonline.com

 

[Murphy101]

I don’t buy into hysterics bc well hysterics isn’t helpful.  For most of us on the low income scale (which is a LOT of people!) simple maths makes these decisions for us.  Which is why I think things will never really change in a wider scale until it hurts the math in the wallet of TPTB with the billions.

[DreamerGirl]

I grew up in a third world country where the water was quite abundant from our well except when the monsoon failed and I did not know what air quality was because there was not a lot of vehicles on the road. Two wheelers were the most common mode of transportation for a family, mostly the dad for work like mine. Rest was public transportation by bus or rail or bicycle. Family owned cars were not common and if so, one car rarely driven. Bicycles were common. There were vehicles for hire which people used commonly. We had different reusable bags for meat, vegetables, fish  with the meat and fish bags washable as they would not be wrapped in anything. Pulses and rice or even powders were wrapped in newspaper.

A little over 20 years and we have desalination plants for water and pretty much every single person has an app for air quality checking, especially moms. Air purifiers are a common household appliance and kids don't go out and play on certain days because the air is so bad. My generation was constantly outside, playing. The amount of vehicles a single family has exploded. A car, plus a two wheeler which is a bike or a scooter for the husband and wife. If the children are aged 15 or 16, they get a personal vehicle of their own. So a single family went from owning one vehicle to multiple.

Public transportation is generally a nightmare. Crowded, unsafe with both pickpockets and groping, not on time. So most people have a personal vehicle of their own. Those who use them will not use public transportation. It is better but still not as convenient as a personal vehicle. 

To combat that, there is a huge push for alternate energy source vehicles like electric and LPG. Be it trash collection vehicles, hire vehicles, public transportation and personal vehicles. They have goals for how many alternate source vehicles need to there on the road.

They are also banning the manufacture and sale of single use plastic. When I went back, I saw paper straws, biodegradable disposable cutlery, bags made of thin jute or cotton. Not much plastic. There were laws enacted that made ground water harvesting mandatory for both existing home owners and businesses and new construction going forward. There are fines now for certain actions that cause pollution like burning fields. But people prefer to pay fines and do things the old way so they try combat that with education and technology.

Where land is limited, people are not especially interested in gardening. To combat that, government sells a kit with grow bags, seeds and other materials to start patio/terrace gardens and it is gaining in popularity. They are researching ways to combat pollution because the elimination ship has sailed.

This is both by conservative and communist governments at both the state and national level. It is not because they care about the environment or are bleeding hearts. When the air is polluted so the cities are among the top in the world, the water table depleted, schools and offices need to be cancelled because the air is so bad there is no discourse about the effects of climate change. It is happening.

Most people will not take public transportation for the environment. But make alternate energy vehicles affordable and cheaper and even the for hire vehicles will change to LPG without a problem. 

We can only mitigate climate change effects, we cannot eliminate it and it is through large scale targeted actions at the government and corporate level. Saying individuals make a difference, well we must do the best we can but not to make a difference IMO. As we saw during COVID expecting people to do the right thing for the greater good did not go so well. People are who they are, so giving them the tools and make it easy and cheap to adapt is what will work in the long run IMO.

Edited May 3, 2022 by DreamerGirl

[Carrie12345]

12 hours ago, Murphy101 said:

Except that’s not the first or the second sources of greatest pollution.  Countries with lowest birth rates still have same or more pollution than many countries with higher birth rates.

The problem isn’t how people on <100k have babies.

The problem is how billionaires run businesses in ways that directly affect communities with little power to mitigate that from those communities. 

I didn’t think we were aiming for just 1 or 2 issues. There are more than 1 or 2 issues.

[Murphy101]

3 hours ago, Carrie12345 said:

I didn’t think we were aiming for just 1 or 2 issues. There are more than 1 or 2 issues.

There are of course. But there’s little evidence that the problem is birth rate. There just isn’t evidence for that.

And while there are more than 1-2 issues at play, it doesn’t make sense to primarily focus on things that have far lesser impact.  

[regentrude]

40 minutes ago, Murphy101 said:

But there’s little evidence that the problem is birth rate. There just isn’t evidence for that.

You are saying that there is no evidence that the fact that there are now 8 billion people on the planet has anything to do with the environmental problems?
Ok then.

[Murphy101]

3 minutes ago, regentrude said:

You are saying that there is no evidence that the fact that there are now 8 billion people on the planet has anything to do with the environmental problems?
Ok then.

8 billion people who we can feed and educate and house if we (as in the planet of people as a whole) really wanted to.

and we could do it sustainably if we really wanted to.

again. The problem isn’t 8 billion people. It’s 1 million selfish greedy people.

It’s like blaming all crime on the entire planet and saying no one should have more children because crime exists. But most of the crime problem is created by a very small portion of people.

People have been concerned (and rightly so) about pollution since at least the industrial revolution when there was approx 600 million people in the planet.

Less people doesn’t change that the small percentage doing the polluting are going to keep polluting. 

[Faith-manor]

1 hour ago, Murphy101 said:

8 billion people who we can feed and educate and house if we (as in the planet of people as a whole) really wanted to.

and we could do it sustainably if we really wanted to.

again. The problem isn’t 8 billion people. It’s 1 million selfish greedy people.

It’s like blaming all crime on the entire planet and saying no one should have more children because crime exists. But most of the crime problem is created by a very small portion of people.

People have been concerned (and rightly so) about pollution since at least the industrial revolution when there was approx 600 million people in the planet.

Less people doesn’t change that the small percentage doing the polluting are going to keep polluting. 

So what. It doesn't change the fact that the world, the million, isn't going to share resources. This would be not nearly as big of an issue if there were two billion less people on the planet. There is evidence that the planet, even with equitable sharing, is not capable of supporting 8 billion basic needs. There is only so much arable land and potable water to go around even if the million greed meister polluters did not exist.

No one wants to hear it because the religious line had been about god sustains the earth therefore it can handle all the people. There is much scientific evidence that this is not true. The answer isn't to continue to increase the population exponentially under these conditions. However, that isn't going to change anything. Thus mother nature will take care of it. More pandemics, more wars for oil, water, and food, more deaths by natural disasters due to climate change.

[Murphy101]

22 minutes ago, Faith-manor said:

So what. It doesn't change the fact that the world, the million, isn't going to share resources. This would be not nearly as big of an issue if there were two billion less people on the planet. There is evidence that the planet, even with equitable sharing, is not capable of supporting 8 billion basic needs. There is only so much arable land and potable water to go around even if the million greed meister polluters did not exist.

No one wants to hear it because the religious line had been about god sustains the earth therefore it can handle all the people. There is much scientific evidence that this is not true. The answer isn't to continue to increase the population exponentially under these conditions. However, that isn't going to change anything. Thus mother nature will take care of it. More pandemics, more wars for oil, water, and food, more deaths by natural disasters due to climate change.

Meh. Okay then. If humanity isn’t ever going to improve then the consequences will be what they will be regardless of population. It seems like your argument is that “the million” aren’t going to change and the rest of the world isn’t ever going to wrestle that power away from the million so we should just make it easier for the million to keep on doing what they are doing by sacrificing not having children?  Okay. You can have that view. I just don’t.  I am not coming at this from that religious stance.  My religion says we are called to the works of mercy and good stewardship regardless of divine providence. To do otherwise would be shirking our duty to make good use of God’s gifts and putting God to a test against our unworthy selfish egos.