> You ignored my general call for less planned > obsolesence and picked on only one example, that of > home decor.
Did you expect me to discuss every area of consumption in detail? I picked an example where fashion just gave one example. Debbie, I try to get to specific when I discuss things. I don't always have the time to find hard numbers, and they are not always available, but I find little growth in understanding resulting from the trading of generalities.....unless of course they are well verified and precise generalities like the theory of gravity. :-) When I think of fashion, I first think of clothes...and then think of furnishing/décor trends. My understanding of the difference between lower middle class fashion and upper class fashion is not that upper class men and women have just a lot more stuff (although they do have more stuff), but that the main difference is that the upper class people have better stuff. Lower middle class people buy shirts at Wall-Mart for $10...rich people buy shirts from designer boutiques at $200. I'll agree that someone in an upper class household is more likely to have 100 dresses in the closet than someone from a lower middle class household. But, even upper class people don't buy dresses and throw them away the next year. They are cheap enough to give them to a consignment shop or let Goodwill pick them up. My Zambian daughter, Neli, picked up a nice woman's business suit for $80 from Goodwill when she needed something nice. Planned obsolescence was, in my day, usually a reference to cars and appliances that are made to fall apart, so you have to buy another one. But, if you look at cars, for example, you see that they last longer than they did 40 years ago. Only our diesel Rabbit died before 100k miles...and that was almost 25 years ago. Now, there are a number of people who do buy a new car every year. But, they don't throw their old cars away...they sell them. As long as someone uses the cars, it's not wasted. What people often refer to now, when they speak of planned obsolescence, is the tendency to throw something away when it breaks, instead of getting it fixed. But, that's a different phenomenon. Many items, such as TVs, are so cheap and reliable now that it doesn't pay to have a trained person spend hours trying to find and replace the bad component. >I will have to find sites on the growth > of Home Depots etc., and the logging of rare hardwoods > to supply furniture, decking and so forth -- If you look at the trends, you will find a lot more use of treated pine instead of rare hardwoods at Home Depot, etc. I didn't find numbers on redwood harvesting, yet, but I know that the average picnic table, 4x4, etc. when I was a kid was made of redwood, while it is now made of treated pine. >forests > in Indonesia and the Amazon basin are being illegally > and unsustainably logged so that somebody can have a > mahogony table with matching sideboard and chairs etc. Mahogony tables and sideboards are not usually bought one year and thrown in the dump five years later because they are out of fashion. Plastic chairs that are cheap and easily break are thrown out. I'm not arguing that there aren't examples, such as rare wood harvesting, where consumption will have to be cut down significantly because we are running out. I'm arguing that this is not a general trend, as people 30 years ago were arguing. Commodity prices, on the whole, have gone down in real dollars during that time. > Cows do indeed produce quantities of methane, as do > all ruminants (well, actually it's the bacteria in > their guts that produce methane and hydrogen sulfide > gases etc.); reducing meat consumption, in addition to > being healthier for the individual person, would > definitely be healthier for the planet. Using > range-fed instead of feedlot cows wouldn't use up > perfectly good people-grade grain either. But, range feeding is a sensible use of land only for marginal land that cannot grow crops....or if there is so much land we don't need to worry. I don't think we need to worry about using people-grade grain for cows, when we have, in the span of a few years, increased our use of corn for fuel from a small fraction of the crop to half the crop....with only a minor impact on food prices. > If gas goes to $8/gal, I will have to significantly > increase my fees - which many of my clients couldn't > then afford, as riding lessons are already cancelled > for financial reasons (just this Monday past, in fact, > one single mom apologized that she can't continue > because she's had to take on a second job -- of course > I told her that I understood times were difficult and > I hoped things got better for her) - or get an office > job, which would probably precipitate a return of > major depression, with nasty consequences for me. And...$8/gal gas will just be a modest start if we really want to have no increase in the production of greenhouse gasses. The US's share would be to cut greenhouse gasses by a factor of 5. I'd guess that, if $5.00/gal gas tax were implemented as part of a comprehensive program, we'd probably see that program get us in the ball park of Kyoto.....but still way off what we would have to do to cap greenhouse gasses...let alone stop global warming. I realize that measures to reduce fossil fuel consumption, such as raising the gas tax by $5.00 gal, will cause hardship for millions of people, such as you. Thus, I do not advocate it lightly. But, if we were really to get the US down to 20% of the present greenhouse gas emissions, the cost would be far greater. It's not just a matter of other people repenting from their sinful ways of consumerism...it would be a real, large drop in world GDP. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
