[Eco] Recycling and P&T's Bullshit

[Luisa]

Jonathan, can you back up your arguments with current data? 
Where are you getting your information?

--On 1/31/07 10:37 AM -0600 Jonathan Grabert 
<jonathang at austin.rr.com> wrote:

> Some quick responses to your points (which I did cut down
> to make reading easier):
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Daniel Brashler"
> <dannob at brashler.net>
> To: <eco at lists.looneylabs.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 6:42 PM
> Subject: [Eco] Recycling and P&T's Bullshit
>
> > 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.
>

       I think this argument might have been correct 10 years 
ago, but not anymore. I keep giving the list the official web 
site of energy of the United States. I am sure we can find 
similar information on the German energy official site. If 
you have current data that supports your arguments, please 
include it in the  conversation.



> > 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. Yes, that land that's used by
> landfills is devalued.  Earth is in absolutely no danger of
> being covered by landfills, and landfills themselves are
> very safe and well managed.  You can build on top of them
> once they reach capacity, and once they are packed in,
> there is no decomposition.  But none of that really
> matters, because it takes a suprisingly small amount of
> land to put trash in.
>
        Someone pointed out earlier that land space might not 
be an issue in the US, and Australia, but it is in Europe and 
many parts of Asia.


> > 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?)  There is no oil crisis due
> to the earth's supply.


      Wow! Care to back your argument up with some data 
please?

>
> > 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.  In
> these countries, the population rate has leveled and in
> many cases gone down.

      yes, the *rate* of growth has gone down, but the 
population keeps increasing.


 Now, in the developing world, you've
> got another issue.  But unless you want to start regulating
> the number of babies people have, your best bet with them
> is to work to get them more modern.  That means bringing
> them out of the hands of dictators, theocrats, and
> warlords, allowing them to develop a real economy, and
> getting the population educated.  But with advances in
> technology (even with current technology), the earth can
> support a much larger population than we currently have, so
> I'm not willing to classify this as any sort of crisis.

Again, care to back up your argument. from what i have read, 
if we are all to have a similar standard of living as in the 
us now. with the current world population, we would need 3 
more planets to harvest what we need and process our wastes.

Costanza et al. An introduction to Ecological Ecomonics.

Daly and Townsend. Valuing the Earth.

Rich. Mortgaging the earth.

Sachs. Planet Dialectics

Luisa


>
> J/
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