How Many Feet in a Carbon Footprint?

[Sciguy]

I wrote my own paper, called The Death of Recycling, taking off on some of the ideas in The Death of Environmentalism. It was published last year by the Rachel Newsletter and achieved worldwide circulation. You can read it at https://www.precaution.org/lib/07/ht...h_of_Recycling

Thanks for your thoughtful comments in this thread.

Paul Palmer

[phooph]

Paul,

I enjoyed your article. It got me thinking about an article I read on the green architect, William McDonough, in a recent Vanity Fair. McDonough proposed that automobiles should be built with a planned life of five years, which seems contrary to the end of planned obsolesence we so wish for in our manufactuing sector. His thinking is that technological improvments happen so quickly that more efficient automobiles would be built if the older models were retired more quickly. He also proposed that they be returned to the manufacturer for disassembly and reuse. So here we have an example of planned obsolesence combined with zero waste.

Ruth Harris

I wrote my own paper, called The Death of Recycling, taking off on some of the ideas in The Death of Environmentalism. It was published last year by the Rachel Newsletter and achieved worldwide circulation. You can read it at https://www.precaution.org/lib/07/ht...h_of_Recycling

Thanks for your thoughtful comments in this thread.

Paul Palmer

[Sciguy]

Zeno Swijtink wrote:
Thoughtful post. Sorry I don't have the time right now to do justice to it. And sorry for the ad hominem. I must have felt personally attacked, being active in the Sierra Club, and a member of some of these other organizations Paul mentioned!

To Zeno from Paul:

In 1974-9, the Sierra Club had only one corporate member (Really! They assured me many times). That was my company, Zero Waste Systems Inc. We were on the same page. But things have changed. Nowadays I correspond with SC board and committee members begging them to stop sticking their noses into garbage issues. Their approach is the most basic and uninformed you can find. I urge them to go back to saving trees and parks, which they do admirably. In waste issues, all they know how to do is to urge recycling and better garbage management, thus prolonging waste and discard as far into the future as can be seen. Their approach is obsolete. It may have seemed modern forty years ago but no more.

By the way, the Sierra Club works with industry: Look at the Apollo Alliance website and the groups that form part of the alliance.

I read the mission statment of the Apollo Alliance. It's so mother and apple pie that you can be sure that no applecarts will be turned over by them. Of course everyone can agree that industry and society should join hands and march boldly into the future. So what?

See also the measured response of the Sierra Club about Ford and GM technological innovations at

https://www.sierraclub.org/globalwarm...ort/energy.asp

Same thing! The article you point to is a disquisition on the wastefulness of SUV's. Do we really need the SC to let us know that the automakers are committed to the waste of fuel sources? Maybe fifteen or twenty years ago this might have been a progressive view. Today it's a yawn. Unfortunately the SC is on this level thoughout its environmental work (except trees and parks etc. of course where they shine).

So what would I prefer, you may ask. Instead of one more tired indictment of the automotive industry I would like to see some political action that would dump the automakers from their high holy position as keepers of the CAFE standards and divert some of their surplus profits into research into automotive design carried out by researchers who are actually committed to environmentally positive solutions. Let the SC call for a windfall profits tax on oil and auto companies that would be used directly to sponsor research in universities directed - targeted - at increasing fuel efficiency whether industry likes it or not. Why should be all be held hostage by these money grubbers who know how to make personal profit by despoiling the planet? The SC is plowing ground that was exhausted decades ago.

This discussion reflects one going on in the environmental community that was initiated by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger. See their book Breakthrough. From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility.

Zeno, thanks for pointing out that Nordhaus and Shellenberger have updated their previous paper (see below). I went to the website for the book and was struck by this NY Times review quote: "To win, Nordhaus and Shellenberger persuasively argue, environmentalists must stop congratulating themselves for their own willingness to confront inconvenient truths and must focus on building a politics of shared hope rather than relying on a politics of fear." While I would say that it all depends on what kind of shared hope you have, still, my opposition to a politics of fear is what you called hysterical earlier. Is it okay when they say it at a distant remove but too scary when it come home to Wacco?

Shared hope! What does it mean? In the waste field, so long as you cleave to the obsolete notions of recycling you can share your hopes until it snows in hell but all you will do is delight the garbage industry. They love recycling so much that they took it over, bought it out, adopted it in every way and do everything they can to pull the wool over the public's eyes to think that if they are recycling they are good environmentalists. As I have pointed out ad nauseum, you cannot build a resource conserving policy around throwing everything away, destroying all its high level value and then scrambling when it is too late to try to find a use here or there for some little scrap of degenerated metal or glass. That is recycling. The only way to save our planet is to abandon recycling and instead redesign products, processes and social policies so that everything is designed right up front for perpetual reuse. It's a funny thing. When I describe this concept to any intelligent observer, they grok it instantly. What could be simpler and more obvious? It is only recyclers who cannot get it no matter how it is explained to them.

The Death of Environmentalism was an earlier paper of theirs that created quite a stir. You would enjoy it since it probably hits the right tone for you and covers similar ideas in great detail.

I wrote my own paper, called The Death of Recycling, taking off on some of the ideas in The Death of Environmentalism. It was published last year by the Rachel Newsletter and achieved worldwide circulation. You can read it at https://www.precaution.org/lib/07/ht0...h_of_Recycling
I pointed out that fear-mongering goes nowhere and that recycling is an obsolete concept.

Thanks Zeno for your thoughtful comments in this thread.

Paul Palmer

[Reportanddeport]

Whyyyyyy is it that Libs are against overpopulation, but they LOVE itwhen America is being overpopulated by anchor babies??? How big is your carbon footprint when you're driving a junky old car that barely runs?

I'm one of those people who takes climate change seriously and who quietly does a lot of not-driving, and not-consuming, in order to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases I'm putting into the sky. I don't keep mathematical track of my use and impacts, I just refrain a lot.

By far the biggest thing I've done to lessen my impact on our planet home was back in 1971 when I decided that, given the mushrooming human population of the world, and seeing the corresponding increase in resource consumption and pollution, I decided, at the ripe age of 17, not to have offspring, kids of my own. And so it has been.

When we talk about a person's carbon footprint, shouldn't that include all future impacts by that person's offspring (and their offspring's offspring, etc.)? If we don't include offspring in the footprint measurement, then even if per capita greenhouse gas emissions decrease, total greenhouse gas emissions are likely to continue to rise. In plain English and because you have a choice about it, if you're still making and having babies, objectively-speaking you can't be very green, regardless of what else you may be doing or not doing. Reducing the size of the human population by not contributing to its continuing expansion, is, by contrast, very very green. Not having a baby makes a large and immediate difference compared to having one. It's conscious choice.
Neil

[alanora]

The over population issue does not stay within boundaries. It is planetary, global...not nationalistic. Whether the masses reside in angola or mexico or chicago, they are still on the planet and anchored to the same source. If one is without non-polluting transportation, then minimizing trips is in order and an openness to alternatives such as going into town with the neighbors. mindy

Whyyyyyy is it that Libs are against overpopulation, but they LOVE itwhen America is being overpopulated by anchor babies??? How big is your carbon footprint when you're driving a junky old car that barely runs?