>
>To what degree is it okay to harm the environment for the personal
>convenience of owning a computer? Could we not communicate via pen and
>paper just as well?
>
I've been waiting for this one for a long time - here are we simplifying
our lives over the internet. And I can't think of a justification for doing
it. Except that it is an easy source of information that means that we
don't need to go down to the library on our bikes as often (or in the car
in my case) and gives access to information most of us would never get to
hear any other way. But I did something pretty naughty not so long back,
strung someone along quite a while before I told them how to build a
passive solar drier, and let them get worried about UV sterilisation of the
clothes it dries, before I explained (well it was the beginning of April).
When I was a kid, back in the dark ages, MCS was pretty much unheard of -
if it existed it wasn't diagnosed because it hadn't been spotted. And
Rachel Carson hadn't written Silent Spring and pushed awareness of where
the world was going out into the mass arena. Most of us could, if we
wished, and on this side of the atlantic, live in houses where there was
very little chemical pollution - lead, sulphur, chlorine about the strength
of it and we knew what those were in and what the dangers were. But we
don't live in that simple world, and however much we try to pretend in the
building of our ecopaths, it won't come again unless global catastrophy
triggers it. You can't get back into Eden once you eat the apple.
So we have to look at the pros and cons of computers and styro foam. And if
styrofoam keeps some people alive and maybe hastens the death of others
than its up to the individuals involved to decide whether they use it, and
how, and how much, and to lobby for better alternatives. it sure ain't up
to us to pass judgement. Part of being human is fighting to stay alive. And
if we think that computers are part of the way we want society to go then
we use them but try to use those that leave the smallest footprint on the
earth.
But for the sake of all the gods, goddesses, and anything else we believe
in - we are the good guys here folks - we are all doing it differently but
we are all doing the best we can
love and kisses
kathryn
