[backstop]

Geogann -

Welcome to the site -

Its good to see fresh respect for this quiet spacecraft we call Earth.

I hope you'll find a good many kindred spirits here.


Regards,

Backstop

PS - Care to expand on your thoughts on inter-generational equity ?

[markam]

How thoughtful of you.

I am talking about the average american who does not have the resources, education or ability to control their lives. They live where they can, they work where they can, and do whatever is necessary to survive. The health of the earth is meaningless to them.

Many other people may realize that their actions are harmful, but it is not in their financial interests to change things. You are not going to spend $100,000 to buy a house closer to the train station. You are not going to take a pay cut to get a job closer to your home. You are not going to sell a perfectly usable SUV and eat the depreciation in order to buy a new, more efficient car. All of those things will immediately and adversely impact you and/or people that depend upon you.

Thinking that people will act against their own short-term self-interest is stupid. It goes against human nature, and is a non-survival strategy. That is why nothing will happen until the short-term costs of the current lifestyle get much, much worse.

Would you ask a starving african to not kill that gorilla, because it is endangered? You might, but he will ignore you because it is not in his best interests. I might not want him to do it, and I might even think that the gorilla's life is more important than the human's life. However, I do think that he is acting perfectly appropriately in blowing the gorilla's head off.

[emersonbiggins]

I am talking about the average american who does not have the resources, education or ability to control their lives. They live where they can, they work where they can, and do whatever is necessary to survive. The health of the earth is meaningless to them.

You're absolutely correct, many of the decisions affecting the day-to-day grind of workers were made decades ago in the backs of corporate boardrooms and the halls of Congress - you know, the decisions that basically force people to drive in order to live. I understand this well.

Many other people may realize that their actions are harmful, but it is not in their financial interests to change things. You are not going to spend $100,000 to buy a house closer to the train station.

Finally, reticence and greed enters the equation. It's not so much that homes closer to train stations are more expensive per se, it's just that such homes cannot compare in size to the large waferboard boxes out in the exurbs, the ones that hold so many consumer goods and three cars and a boat in a garage. These are not necessities. Forcing your kids to live in a house half the size of one in the suburbs is not inhumane, contrary to popular belief. It's just unAmerican™. It's not your fault, though. The U.S. government pays you well to make such a decision.

You are not going to take a pay cut to get a job closer to your home. You are not going to sell a perfectly usable SUV and eat the depreciation in order to buy a new, more efficient car. All of those things will immediately and adversely impact you and/or people that depend upon you.

Thinking that people will act against their own short-term self-interest is stupid. It goes against human nature, and is a non-survival strategy. That is why nothing will happen until the short-term costs of the current lifestyle get much, much worse.

Peoples' self-interest is determined largely by the government sanctioning of an 'ideal,' and, you're right, nothing will change until it's too late. People want their cake and they want to eat it too. Most of us don't know any different.

[nth]

You have to know it is in nature to have species die off.
This is only natural that humans populate the world and cause their own extinction. According to scientists, this has happen again and again.

Now, the question becomes if you are not able to provide a living for yourself, why are you worrying about future generations?

Who dictates who should live versus who should perish?

Without oil and fossil fuel, Earth cannot support so much people, so those questions above becomes valid.

[Raxozanne]

Have you ever thought that there was probably a good reason for carbon being in all those carbon sinks? (i.e: so that it isn't in the atmosphere).

How much can we keep taking from the earth?: a limited sustainable amount that we have already surpassed (currently using: 1.2 earths, plus needing an extra 0.8 earths for China and India to modernise)

How much will we keep taking from the earth?: As much as we can get our greedy little fingers on.

However awful it sounds what Markam says is true, who wouldn't chop down the last tree to keep their children alive in the short-term however suicidal it would be in the long term?

Humans, so smart but yet still so stupid...

[Novus]

If I had to drive 20 miles to get to a job in order to feed my kids, motorized transportation is more important than the earth. Not even a contest.

That is probably what the Easter Islanders said just as they were cutting down the last trees. When it comes to cutting down this tree so my children can firewood tonight or saving it the betterment of the whole island. Not even a contest. Cut down the tree. The next thing they know the island was reduced to canniblism and both they and their children were eaten. Same thing is going to happen to us if we don't start thinking about our actions.

[rogerhb]

How much can we keep taking from the earth?

I'm sure the tonnage of rockets we send into outer-space are less than the total tonnage of meteors etc that have fallen to earth.

So we haven't really taken much from the earth, and it's more than been compensated by the stuff that has entered the earth's system.

[Kickinthegob]

georgann, are you aware of the The Gaia Hypothesis?
Perhaps the native Indians best demonstrated this in practice, perhaps they really cared for the land and future of their offspring. The problem I have with applying this theory in real life would be I have no control over 6 billion people, besides, me thinks mother nature will require no assistance in correcting the current imbalance. If science is correct, this world will continue to turn for billions of years, perhaps long long after humans have gone. I don't have kids myself but, like The Story In Your Eyes...

I’m frightened for your children
That the life that we are living is in vain
And the sunshine we’ve been waiting for
Will turn to rain

Listen to the tide slowly turning
Wash all our heartaches away
We’re part of the fire that is burning
And from the ashes we can build another day

-Moody Blues

[FireJack]

I remember seeing this amusing program on discovery, it was a theroetical picture of earth 400 million years from now when earth will have a single continent again. I missed the start but I assumed that humans and mammals had sopposedly gone extinct long long ago. Squids were set up to be the future dominant species on earth. Of all the portrails of the future that one seems most realistic (mabey not the squid part).

[Gary]

I think that the question posed is a good one.

I chose some years ago to try to begin to live in ways that really made sense to me, rather than just accepting the conventions we are handed in my particular (American, materialistic, consumerist) culture.

I ride cargo trikes and pedicabs now and do work as a "sustainable household helper." I fix stuff, clean stuff, make stuff for people. I can carry up to 700 pounds of tools on my trike if need be, but rarely have to haul that much. (Actually, pedicabbing brings more opportunity for hauling lots of weight around than my handyperson work does, so far.

My inspiration for making the change was actually the very thing alluded to by georgann. "Intergenerational equity" is how someone put it.

I kept looking at my kids and thinking that we have designed a way of living that consumes the reources needed to live, and that poisons the ecosystem with the byproducts of so much that we do.

So why not try to design a way of living that enriches the habitat we leve to our kids ? Why not -- to the extent that we are able --try to understand and live as an integral part of the larger environment?

This makes sense to me, although it is not easy to do living the infrastructure of a city as I do. Also, I am a long way from shedding some of the consumer addictions I've developed -- coffee and chocolate and diet pop, for example.

I've been thinking that resource depletion, resource war, and gtlobal climate change are the triple threat that will shape our lives for the next two or three decades. Michael Klare wrote a terrific article available at Energybulletin.net about this, but focusing on British Defense Secretary John Reid's recent speech about resource depletion and the impacts ofglobal climate change as the primary motivator for war in the near future.

So, yes. "Intergenerational equity seems like a very, very big deal to me. I can't do everything, but what I can do I will try to do. I like the idea of leaving the kids a place worth living in. And maybe their kids, and the kids after that....

[Zardoz]

I am talking about the average American who does not have the resources, education or ability to control their lives...

It can't be summed up more concisely and accurately than that. Most of us can only make do as best we can. The vast majority of the American people are at the mercy of forces they have absolutely no control over.

[coyote]

Trust me, every single person on the earth feels that way.

That is incorrect.

May I refer you to Heinlein's 'Starship Troopers' (the book, not the movie) -- the chapter in which the History and Moral Philosophy instructor discusses survival and loyalty to the tribe. There are many different levels of 'tribe': self, nuclear family, extended family, circle of friends, township, region, nation, species, sentience, life. Think of them as concentric rings, with your physical self at the center. The higher up that list you devote your thought to, and the larger the concept you associate with your own survival, the more you are into the realm of intelligent, long-term self interest (including caring for your children). You are correct that most of us remain solidly in the short-term. That is the sad part. But not all. That is the hope. And that's what the coming century is all about. Which one will win out.

[Ibon]

I am talking about the average american who does not have the resources, education or ability to control their lives. They live where they can, they work where they can, and do whatever is necessary to survive. The health of the earth is meaningless to them.

When you really have nothing left to lose anymore you may then start to embrace a social cause once again. Today the poor and unemployed are still swept under the carpet and out of the collective awareness of most americans who continue to believe in the illusions of their american dream. This fragile illusion keeps the status quo going, even those on the edge who still believe they might land that better paying job etc. If the disenfranchised start growing enormously in numbers due to radically increased energy costs causing the economic infrastructure to weaken , will we see a social movement emerge that might embrace more sustainable principles? A social movement that starts addressing the inequality of wealth. The elite in america have to be worried about the democratic effect that large scale economic hardship will have on the will of the people, say for example when republicans and democrats alike are losing their jobs in large numbers.

I agree with Markam's comment as long as the status quo is still seeing the current structure as providing a solid base, a holding of their dreams. What happens when that fails?

[markam]

may then start to embrace a social cause once again

I think the social cause they will embrace will be overthrow the people in power so that they can try to reclaim their previous life. Won't work, and their previous life cannot be reclaimed, but nobody is going to like the new life.

Only people growing up in the new reality, without a memory of the past america, will be able to really accept the changes that are coming.

[Ibon]

Only people growing up in the new reality, without a memory of the past america, will be able to really accept the changes that are coming.

This could be true for many. I wonder though at what it might awaken that has been too long dormant. You know, America has this meme, this pride of the individual, and yet we have become so utterly dependent on a system where over consumption has really stripped many of the integrity of what really defines a strong individual. Many people will not adjust. Many may find however a renaissance in this crisis. One thing I bet we can agree on is that it sure will build character! Obesity will diminish. General health may actually improve.

[Heineken]

Nothing is happening.

I see the same lines of migrating SUVs, the same hideous shopping strips a la Kunstler, the same knock-down and pave-over of forests and meadows for rows and swirls of identical oversized houses.

The same glittering seas of cars gathered at major consumption nodes.

The same endless suburbs growing more endless.

The same bottomless spew of predictable, manipulative hash from our "leaders."

The same lewd and garish "reality shows" cluttering TV---just one step away now from outright freak shows and public executions.

The same ongoing mass extinction of earth's infinitely precious endowment of plant and animal species.

In response to Peak Oil, Peak Water, Peak Health Care, deforestation, global warming, overpopulation, fiscal lunacy, runaway militarism, and a kind of creeping fascism, we are doing pretty much what we've been doing all along---NOTHING!

Nothing is happening.

[Grifter]

Road widening
Airport expansions
air conditioning unit sales...sigh.

[Don35]

The down side is the longer we go w/o change the hard the fall will be. THATS what scares me!

[kevincarter]

In response to Peak Oil, Peak Water, Peak Health Care, deforestation, global warming, overpopulation, fiscal lunacy, runaway militarism, and a kind of creeping fascism, we are doing pretty much what we've been doing all along---NOTHING.

shhhhh.... don't wake them up... thay are sleeping.

[mark]

What else would you expect at peak? Peak cluelessness!

For the rest of us, life becomes surreal.