[Eco] Recycling and P&T's Bullshit

[Jonathan Grabert]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Luisa" <Luisa at looneylabs.com>
To: "Eco Foundation Discussion List" <eco at lists.looneylabs.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 12:29 PM
Subject: Re: [Eco] Recycling and P&T's Bullshit


> Jonathan, can you back up your arguments with current data? Where are you 
> getting your information?
>
>> ----- 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.
Well, you gave the homepage, not a link to any specific information, so I 
can't refute it.  If you can give me the link with the exact data on it, I'd 
be glad to look it over.  (But this is just a thing I'm doing between tasks 
at work, so don't expect a thesis paper or anything.)  However, unless the 
analysis also took into account the energy, costs, labor, and pollution from 
culling all the recyclables before making it raw material again (this would 
come in the form of the trucks to pick it up, the sorting, etc), then I'm 
not sure that it's valid.  Keep in mind that you have double the amount of 
garbage truck pollution when you add in recycling programs, and that's a 
significant amount of more pollution.

>> > 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.
Asia?  Asia should have less of an issue than we do.  But when you see the 
small amount of area it takes to hold the garbage, even a densly populated 
country has room for landfills.  I'd give you the exact dimensions, but I 
don't have my references here.  But I guarantee that it's smaller than you 
think.

>> > 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?
Sure, as I pointed out, look at the price of oil and gas.  It's not behaving 
as though there were a shortage.  We've been hearing about oil shortages for 
over 30 years, and it just hasn't happened.  We develop new ways to drill, 
more efficient ways to drill, more sources of oil, and so forth.

>> > 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.
The global population does, but in the developed world, population (not the 
growth rate) has steadied out, or is decreasing.

> 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.
Not what I've read.  The earth has a vast capacity for resources, especially 
with new technologies in agriculture and refining.

Give The Skeptical Environment at try.  It's good.

J/