Donate Bitcoin

Donate Paypal


PeakOil is You

PeakOil is You

Tourists are Killing the Planet

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby Plantagenet » Wed 09 May 2018, 12:01:28

GHung wrote:why are you bringing up military and business consumption?


Because it never gets talked about. This is about the fourth thread here bashing tourists for "killing the planet" but no one seems in the least concerned about impacts of the military or business travel.

And how about unnecessary government travel? Every time I hear about a gaggle of federal bureaucrats in some agency in Washington DC deciding to have their meeting in Vegas or in Hawaii, or Obama bringing huge entourages including just about the entire White House along on his trips to Africa or India or wherever, it reminds me of when I worked for the government and we'd have a meeting somewhere exotic just so we could travel there.

Gosh those were fun days. :)

Cheers!
Never underestimate the ability of Joe Biden to f#@% things up---Barack Obama
-----------------------------------------------------------
Keep running between the raindrops.
User avatar
Plantagenet
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 26616
Joined: Mon 09 Apr 2007, 03:00:00
Location: Alaska (its much bigger than Texas).

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Wed 09 May 2018, 13:45:26

Plant, I am thoroughly familiar with Dick Proenneke, and have seen "Alone in the Wilderness" many times, as the local PBS affiliate plays it between pledge appeals every year.

My own Alaskan experiences were further North along the Arctic Circle, about 80 miles from Nome, on a long peninsula that thrusts out towards Diomede island. I was a USCG LORAN-C technician, a radio navigation system that preceded GPS, and was used by aircraft and even submerged submarines. This was in the early 1970s. The place was called Port Clarence, the station was abandonned and the transmitting tower destroyed with explosives years back when the system was shut down in 2012.

And YES, an ant has a carbon footprint. The planet would be a ball of ice if that were not true.
KaiserJeep 2.0, Neural Subnode 0010 0000 0001 0110 - 1001 0011 0011, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 0000 0000 0001

Resistance is Futile, YOU will be Assimilated.

Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0
KaiserJeep
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 6094
Joined: Tue 06 Aug 2013, 17:16:32
Location: Wisconsin's Dreamland

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby Plantagenet » Wed 09 May 2018, 16:17:26

KaiserJeep wrote:Plant, I am thoroughly familiar with Dick Proenneke, and have seen "Alone in the Wilderness" many times, as the local PBS affiliate plays it between pledge appeals every year.


Its a pretty amazing story. His cabin was way up in the mountains on the Alaska Peninsula, far from the coast or any settlement. I got into his cabin by floatplane but he moved everything and built everything by shear muscle power. The man had to carry nails, saw, etc by canoe and on his back into the heart of the mountains, and then he built the cabin and then he had to live there for decades alone. Curiously, they've never shown the movie here on PBS, but I do know about the movie.

KaiserJeep wrote:My own Alaskan experiences were further North along the Arctic Circle, about 80 miles from Nome, on a long peninsula that thrusts out towards Diomede island. I was a USCG LORAN-C technician, a radio navigation system that preceded GPS, and was used by aircraft and even submerged submarines. This was in the early 1970s. The place was called Port Clarence, the station was abandonned and the transmitting tower destroyed with explosives years back when the system was shut down in 2012.


I've been to Nome quite a few times, and I've been everywhere you can get on the local road network there, but I don't think the road goes down to Port Clarance. In the 1970s that must have been an incredibly isolated spot for you to be stationed at. Did you ever get into Name and spend a night the Board of Trade? I had a wild drunken nite there once, complete with a very friendly but drunk Aleut woman---but thats another story.

KaiserJeep wrote:And YES, an ant has a carbon footprint. The planet would be a ball of ice if that were not true.


Exactly right. And I'm sure there are even ants boasting that they never go anywhere in order to reduce their carbon footprint.
User avatar
Plantagenet
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 26616
Joined: Mon 09 Apr 2007, 03:00:00
Location: Alaska (its much bigger than Texas).

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby dohboi » Wed 09 May 2018, 16:29:37

Ibon wrote: "...You have to take a moment and allow yourself to internalize the scale of which every day, day in and day out, thousands upon thousands of airplanes are relentlessly lifting off the surface of the planet moving yearly hundreds of millions of people. That their motive is virtuous (cultural and nature tourism) or mundane (gambling in Las Vegas) or aggressive (military empires) or logistical (business) makes no difference. You cannot defend tourism as somehow being exempt from these cumulative impacts."

Nicely put.
User avatar
dohboi
Harmless Drudge
Harmless Drudge
 
Posts: 19990
Joined: Mon 05 Dec 2005, 04:00:00

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby Plantagenet » Wed 09 May 2018, 17:18:21

dohboi wrote:Ibon wrote: ".... You cannot defend tourism as somehow being exempt from these cumulative impacts."

Nicely put.


Thats a straw man argument. No one is trying to defend tourism from being exempt from having cumulative impacts. Of course tourism has cumulative impacts.

The point I'm making is a bit more sophisticated than that straw man. I'm pointing out that everything has cumulative impacts and everyone is producing or has produced them during their lives.

For instance, consider The millions of loving mommies carefully driving their kids to school? Thats millions of trips in the old car twice a day, every week day. Total it up and you've got cumulative impacts.

Millions of teens going out for burgers in their parent's car and stopping in the park for a quick schnog after the friday football game? cumulative impact.

Tens of millions of of people heating their homes? Cumulative impacts.

Farmers growing their crops and driving tractors and using fertilizers? Cumulative impacts.

Ferryboats steaming back and forth across the bays in Seattle, New York, Boston, etc? Cumulative impacts

Buy buying bicycles with rubber tires made from Indonesian rubber and gears made in Japan and tubes made in China and pedals made in Italy, all imported the US on big diesel boats and trucked the store in CO2 spewing trucks? There are cumulative impacts.

Tens of millions of people in Egypt growing cotton and harvesting cotton and shipping it to China where tens of millions of chinese are sewing jeans and clothes and shipping them to the US and Europe and trucking to stores and heating the stores to sell the clothes to tens of millions of people who drive to the stores. Well, each step of the clothing biz has a cumulative impact.

On and on and on it goes. And even worse, consider that its not just what one is doing now--- everything a person has done through their entire life has cumulative impacts. Some CO2 from travel and every other kind of activity done 10 or 30 or 50 years ago is still in atmosphere.

Alas, we have all fallen short of perfection.

Cheers!
Never underestimate the ability of Joe Biden to f#@% things up---Barack Obama
-----------------------------------------------------------
Keep running between the raindrops.
User avatar
Plantagenet
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 26616
Joined: Mon 09 Apr 2007, 03:00:00
Location: Alaska (its much bigger than Texas).

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Wed 09 May 2018, 22:17:37

It's a silly discussion anyway. Animals including human beings and all their food animals expire carbon dioxide as they breathe. It is no different from that of FF combustion.
Image
Vehicle fuels are all people ever seem to consider, they are 14%, power plants another 21%, that's only a third of the total. The rest is still real and not subject to reduction by any methods used so far.
KaiserJeep 2.0, Neural Subnode 0010 0000 0001 0110 - 1001 0011 0011, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 0000 0000 0001

Resistance is Futile, YOU will be Assimilated.

Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0
KaiserJeep
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 6094
Joined: Tue 06 Aug 2013, 17:16:32
Location: Wisconsin's Dreamland

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby dohboi » Wed 09 May 2018, 22:38:41

Care to provide a source and year for that pie chart, KJ. Looks like it's probably from about 2000. Things have changed a good bit since then.

For the US, at least, where most of us seem to reside, transportation overtook power plants as the #1 source of GHG emissions about two years ago now: https://www.vox.com/2016/6/13/11911798/ ... sportation


Edit To Add:

Ah, I see that it was exactly from 2000:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... Sector.png

These values are intended to provide a snapshot of global annual greenhouse gas emissions in the year 2000


KJ, a little friendly advice: You seem to be really, really bad at trying to come up with lies about the current state of climate change. You might try another occupation. There are others who are much better at it than you are. :)

...

In any case, it doesn't really matter what percentage of the total of GW air transport contributes right now, because first of all you have to look at the growth rate of emissions from this sector, which is very rapid. Second, even if it is a small part of the current total, it may still be a huge part of an individuals contribution to/culpability in planetary annihilation. If you decide to burn old tires in your back yard, the fumes from that acrid smoke may be a relatively small percentage of the total air pollution in your city, but you as an individual are still contributing much more than most of your fellow citizens.

(But if you are Plant, you will shout and scream that your little tire burning fetish is nothing compared to the guys barbecuing in their back yard down the street, so tire burning is clearly no big thing. If there's someone else anywhere ever doing anything that is polluting, for P, that apparently completely and utterly lets him off the hook forever...totally lily-white innocence smelling like roses... :lol: :lol: :lol: )

Edit to add again...thanks to all for engaging in the conversation on this and other related topics! I may sound harsh, but you all know that I love you guys to death...yes...to...death!!! :lol: :lol: :lol: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: 8O 8O 8O :shock: :shock: :shock: :-D :-D :-D
User avatar
dohboi
Harmless Drudge
Harmless Drudge
 
Posts: 19990
Joined: Mon 05 Dec 2005, 04:00:00

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby Plantagenet » Thu 10 May 2018, 00:23:13

dohboi wrote: If there's someone else anywhere ever doing anything that is polluting, for P, that apparently completely and utterly lets him off the hook forever...


I can't tell if your reading comprehension has suddenly become so poor you don't understand what you read or if you've got yourself so wee-wee'd up on this particular topic that you are have some kind of tribal fantasy and making things up about what you see as the other "tribe" rather then reading what people are actually posting.

Either way, you aren't making any sense. Your post with the fantasy about your "tire burning fetish" was positively bizarre.

My point on this is simple and clear. I'm pointing out that (1) virtually everyone is emitting some amount of CO2 through the use of fossil fuels directly through their use of fossil fuels, and/or through participating in the global economy that uses fossil fuels.

Do you understand that fact ?

If so, then lets go on to point (2).

The fact that everyone has contributed to CO2 emissions doesn't let "anyone off the hook forever" as you wrongly believe. It means everyone is somewhat responsible for anthropogenic greenhouse warming we are experiencing because of our CO2 emissions.

Get it now?

Cheers! :)
Never underestimate the ability of Joe Biden to f#@% things up---Barack Obama
-----------------------------------------------------------
Keep running between the raindrops.
User avatar
Plantagenet
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 26616
Joined: Mon 09 Apr 2007, 03:00:00
Location: Alaska (its much bigger than Texas).

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby dohboi » Thu 10 May 2018, 07:25:27

Why keep harping on the obvious fact that nearly everyone has some responsibility then?

The poorest half of humanity made essentially no net money last year, so contributed very little, while the global top 1% (which includes pretty much all of us...anyone making over $32 thousand or so) made 82% of all money so are responsible for nearly all of the pollution.

It's like a big family where one kid always gets nearly all of the cake, but when that's pointed out to him, he starts hollering (through his cake-stuffed mouth! :) ),

"But I saw little Jimmy and Julie pick up a couple crumbs that fell on the floor, so that means everyone is somewhat responsible for the cake being gone!"
User avatar
dohboi
Harmless Drudge
Harmless Drudge
 
Posts: 19990
Joined: Mon 05 Dec 2005, 04:00:00

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 10 May 2018, 08:26:52

dohboi, you are the same little sniveler you have always been, ready to blame others but not ever willing to do anything about your own carbon emissions.

Do you still own a vehicle with a fuel tank, that you thoughtlessly fill with petroleum fuels? I eliminated over 90% of my direct gasoline consumption, via lifestyle changes.

Do you still have an attachment to the power grid? I generate more solar electricity than my entire household consumes.

Do you still shop at a grocery store, buying food transported by petroleum fuels and packaged in petroleum-sourced plastic packaging? Try the Farmer's Market and reusable bags as do I.

Not to mention, if those "poor" people you keep harping about had the means, they would also thoughtlessly consume embodied petroleum energy in multiple forms, as are you. I doubt that they would feel the same guilt and sense of responsibility that you feel, knowing that you are consciously living a Western lifestyle.

The simple truth being, those with the most access to energy and technology are the best prepared to survive the hardships to come, and those with the least will perish first. Even though you can't stand the thought of that, your caring extends only as far as typing words of complaint into a thread in this Forum, and not enough to actually change your own energy-rich lifestyle.

The rest of us will simply assume that everything I said about you is completely true, unless you can provide other explanations.
KaiserJeep 2.0, Neural Subnode 0010 0000 0001 0110 - 1001 0011 0011, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 0000 0000 0001

Resistance is Futile, YOU will be Assimilated.

Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0
KaiserJeep
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 6094
Joined: Tue 06 Aug 2013, 17:16:32
Location: Wisconsin's Dreamland

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby dohboi » Thu 10 May 2018, 09:27:13

I never said I was guilt free.

But I haven't flown in 15 years, eat mostly a vegan, local diet, don't own a car, and get my electricity from wind, if you really want to know.

Thanks for the ad homs, though :-D :-D :-D
User avatar
dohboi
Harmless Drudge
Harmless Drudge
 
Posts: 19990
Joined: Mon 05 Dec 2005, 04:00:00

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby Ibon » Thu 10 May 2018, 09:39:54

KaiserJeep wrote:
Not to mention, if those "poor" people you keep harping about had the means, they would also thoughtlessly consume embodied petroleum energy in multiple forms



Dohboi, this is the weakness of your argument blaming the 1% for emitting the majority of green house gasses. The 1% are like big fat larvae consuming leaves. The poor are the eggs the butterfly just laid.

The only blameless are the aborted fetuses.
Patiently awaiting the pathogens. Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Ape
blog: http://blog.mounttotumas.com/
website: http://www.mounttotumas.com
User avatar
Ibon
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 9568
Joined: Fri 03 Dec 2004, 04:00:00
Location: Volcan, Panama

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby dohboi » Thu 10 May 2018, 09:49:29

Soooo, I should ignore the fact that the 1% are doing almost all of the harm because the poorest half are doing very little of the harm...but someday it is possible that they might?

Sorry, I just don't find that to be a particularly compelling form of logic. It's sometimes called 'what-about-ism,' basically a red herring distraction technique, trying to point at something or someone or anything at all else other than the painful facts in front of you to avoid blame.

But usually such what-about-ism claims at least do point to someone who is or was actually participating in some significant level of harm. But this current form can't even manage that, but instead says, "Well, these other people may at some point in the future do harm too!"

It is of course really a kind of projection, apparently.

It's okay, according to you folks, going back to my earlier analogy, for fat Johnny to be eating nearly the whole cake by himself, because Johnny claims that, given the chance, his siblings crawling now crawling on the ground to get a crumb or two, will be just as greedy as he is.

I'm sure you smart folks can come up with a better form of rationalization than that if you give it a bit of effort. :)
User avatar
dohboi
Harmless Drudge
Harmless Drudge
 
Posts: 19990
Joined: Mon 05 Dec 2005, 04:00:00

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby Ibon » Thu 10 May 2018, 10:19:05

dohboi wrote:Soooo, I should ignore the fact that the 1% are doing almost all of the harm because the poorest half are doing very little of the harm...but someday it is possible that they might?


Dohboi, remember when you mentioned upstream that the issue with tourism is the growth projection. You are right. Now apply this to the poor. The problem is the growth aspirations of the poor. The poor are not poor because they have chosen an ascetic low consumption lifestyle. They are poor because they have not gotten a seat on the gravy train. But you damn well know as well as anyone else here that they very very much want to be on that gravy train. That is the reason you cannot blame the 1%. Because every poor person is a tiny egg wanting to hatch into a rapacious larvae. The poor are also the 1% wanna bees.

Now we can discuss inequities and social justice and all that. But we are not discussing that. We are discussing human overshoot.

Get it?
Patiently awaiting the pathogens. Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Ape
blog: http://blog.mounttotumas.com/
website: http://www.mounttotumas.com
User avatar
Ibon
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 9568
Joined: Fri 03 Dec 2004, 04:00:00
Location: Volcan, Panama

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby onlooker » Thu 10 May 2018, 10:37:21

Ibon, makes a consistently good point about the poor and rich. What needs to be stamped out is the greed mindset. And of course 7 plus billion people inevitably are burdening the planet in their numbers alone
"We are mortal beings doomed to die
User avatar
onlooker
Fission
Fission
 
Posts: 10957
Joined: Sun 10 Nov 2013, 13:49:04
Location: NY, USA

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby Ibon » Thu 10 May 2018, 10:42:06

Another aspect to consider. Take KJ's conscious low energy lifestyle. And Dohboi's. And Ghungs. And Revi's. And all the others I could mention. Consider the embodied energy that it took to bring these folks through the whole cycle of high consumption and education for them to have arrived at this ascetic choice of willfully consuming less. Now imagine what amount of energy it would take to bring billions of poor people through this same cycle for them to arrive at the willful place of consuming less?

Between where they are today, consuming little because they are denied economic opportunities and consuming little because of willful ascetic choice like KJ and Dohboi, between these two positions the planet's poor humans have a vast hunger for consumption.
Patiently awaiting the pathogens. Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Ape
blog: http://blog.mounttotumas.com/
website: http://www.mounttotumas.com
User avatar
Ibon
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 9568
Joined: Fri 03 Dec 2004, 04:00:00
Location: Volcan, Panama

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby onlooker » Thu 10 May 2018, 11:36:01

And then another point to consider is that decision makers ie. corporations and Govts have intentionally setup this vast Globalization landscape to facilitate and enhance consumerism. So that China and India have immersed fully into the Capitalistic/Consumer matrix. These two countries contain 2 billion plus people. Thus, it is a bit limited the treatise, tourists are killing the planet. Humans are. But before they can kill the planet, they will be severely weakened in their impact.As ultimately the parasite depends on its host.
"We are mortal beings doomed to die
User avatar
onlooker
Fission
Fission
 
Posts: 10957
Joined: Sun 10 Nov 2013, 13:49:04
Location: NY, USA

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 10 May 2018, 12:02:57

I do not believe that dohboi really even cares a whole lot about AGW and CC. What he is would be best termed "social justice warrior". It is what remains when a rabid Marxist reaches middle age.

In dohboi's defense, I believe that he was fed the Marxist party line from the cradle until young adulthood, he never had a chance to formulate his own philosophy of life. But he will also never accept the concept that people deserve what they work and earn, either. He is wishing for equal results, no matter what anybody wants, what they earn, or what they started with.

These values are all artificial constructs, of course. That Nature is the most unfair and unequal of environments, and that random chance exists, do not enter into his thinking.

Now can we talk about Tourism? I'm in Wisconsin again, the grandkids are a month away from being 3 years of age, and they are startlingly intense about everything they do. It's all that two people in their mid-60's can do to ride herd on them, and give their parents a break.

I have looked at a couple of houses that would work just fine. The wife has backed down from the "Lake Michigan beach" to "something nice next to the kids" which means Madison, WI. Expensive and with high taxes, especially something on a lakeshore.

It's Spring here, and the countryside is a riot of soft greens and blossoms. And pollen, sadly.
KaiserJeep 2.0, Neural Subnode 0010 0000 0001 0110 - 1001 0011 0011, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 0000 0000 0001

Resistance is Futile, YOU will be Assimilated.

Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0
KaiserJeep
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 6094
Joined: Tue 06 Aug 2013, 17:16:32
Location: Wisconsin's Dreamland

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby Revi » Thu 10 May 2018, 13:47:29

I have a friend who is very intense about the number of people flying. It's a big problem, since it's one of those things that makes our era unique, so it's hard to keep people from indulging in it. I am conflicted. I haven't flown in over 15 years, but I can see how it's irresistible. It seems like we should figure out ways of doing tourism closer to home and with other ways of getting to it. Here in Maine there is a plan to have Amtrak make it to Rockland. From there you can take ferries to two different islands. You can take a bus to Acadia and ride the free shuttle busses around. It's a potentially low carbon vacation. Unfortunately most people take their car, or even their motor homes! We could change the way we do tourism. Tourism has been going on in New England at least since Thoreau, so maybe we can figure out another way to do it. Here's a pic of the nat gas fueled shuttle busses on Acadia:

Image
Deep in the mud and slime of things, even there, something sings.
User avatar
Revi
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 7417
Joined: Mon 25 Apr 2005, 03:00:00
Location: Maine

Re: Tourists are Killing the Planet

Unread postby Revi » Thu 10 May 2018, 14:31:39

Here's a plan for ecotourism on the Maine Coast written by a friend of ours. I don't think it takes into consideration all the flying that happens to get here, but it has some great ideas. I used to be a sea kayaking guide and it was a really fun way to make a part time living! That's the thing about this ecotourism concept. It employs the locals and it's really fun!

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.e ... ontext=mpr
Deep in the mud and slime of things, even there, something sings.
User avatar
Revi
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 7417
Joined: Mon 25 Apr 2005, 03:00:00
Location: Maine

PreviousNext

Return to Environment, Weather & Climate

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 78 guests