[Eco] (no subject)

[Daniel Brashler]

I realize the stream has moved on a bit, but had to respond.

On Jan 31, 2007, at 11:37 AM, Jonathan Grabert wrote:

1. I think people's love of recycling does grow out of environmental  
movement of the 70's and 80's...I think that that mindset is precious  
all by itself.
The mindset may be precious to you, but is it worth the cost of  
recycling? Local, state, and federal governments, as well as private  
business, spend a lot of money, labor, time, and energy to recycle  
when the benefits of it are debatable at best and nonexistant or even  
detrimental at worst.  This is what P&T described as recycling  
"feeling good" to people.  And while good feelings are nice, they  
shouldn't be taxpayer funded.

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

2. While we may not be running out of landfill space, land itself is  
still a fundamentally limited resource.
But even here, you're exaggerating the size of the landfills that we  
need.

3. The oil too is going away -- it's a finite resource as well.
Again, we are in absolutely no danger of running out of oil for  
thousands of years.  Even if that weren't the case, there *will* be a  
better fuel source developed well before we'd run out.  (Solar, anyone?)

Both of these are questions of scope -- how far out do you want to  
look?  There are some folks who deeply believe that the world's going  
to end within the next couple of hundred years, and so saving  
resources for any longer than that is a moot point.  For views longer  
than that, one gets into the vagaries of prediction.  How much oil is  
down there, really?  I've heard estimates ranging from 200 to 2000  
years' worth.  And how much land is really fillable?  How much of it  
will be there down the road?  What is it that makes you so sure of  
those predictions?  The vaunted flying cars aren't here yet. . .

Prediction is hard enough with good information, and we can't even  
agree on statistics.  With that in mind, I'm trying to avoid the  
predictions and make a comparison in principle with whatever  
absolutes I can get a hold of:  we aren't making any more oil, or  
planets;  and despite the Mr. Rogers tour that P&T gave us, I'm still  
not convinced that landfills are cool and we should run out making as  
many trash holes as we can.  Just because we're not at a crisis point  
doesn't mean we can't decide what's best in a fundamental way, and  
therefore, what we should be working toward.  An understanding of  
goals is basic.  If your goal is comfort for the next couple hundred  
years, that's one thing; if your goal is sustainability for the long  
term, that's different.  With any 'how-much-have-we-got' way of  
looking at things, you're either saying 'I don't care what happens  
when we run out' or you're going on faith that some magic bullet will  
come along to save us from the problems at some point.   Neither of  
them really solves the problem, they're just ways of rationalizing  
not doing so.  Not all of us are content to simply set the date for  
the crisis farther away -- we'd like to find a way not to have one.

4. Ultimately, all our efforts at recycling are tiny in comparison to  
the one on-going juggernaut event that is the growth of human  
civilization.
The population problems aren't in the developed world.

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

Anway, I think we can agree that it's important that the real data  
gets compiled, presented and analyzed for and by the public a lot  
better than it has.

The next question then is: what's this magic technology that's going  
to save us all?  I'm a science geek myself, and am as interested in  
anyone to find out what works to reduce the impact of people on the  
environment or at the very least, the adverse impact of people on  
each other.

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


Dan Brashler
dannob at brashler.net


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