Keith Addison wrote:
(that's not what I was thinking)
I didn't think it was, hence the "maybe", but it's often where that
line of thinking leads, and thence to apathy/hopelessness, which is
not the only realistic option so many seem to think it is. "Abandon
hope all ye who enter here" - but that comes later eh? Maybe. :-)
I am anything but apathetic! This is another illustration of how
much meaning is communicated nonverbally.
(a tribute to the robust nature of the human body)
You could say just the same for the biosphere, extraordinarily
resilient. But as Todd says, nothing's broken until it breaks (or
something like that). It certainly is breaking, you can see the
cracks spreading everywhere now, as you so cheerily note. But you
could see the beginnings of it clearly enough 30 years ago, if you
cared to look (as many did care to do).
Oh yes. I've been talking about environmental degradation for most
of my life, with a zeal bordering on the religious, to anyone who would
listen. The impact of widespread pollution on human health is a serious
issue, but fortunately for us, we have mechanisms built into our
cellular replicating processes that militate against a lot of the damage
to our tissues that might otherwise become permanent.
But we really should STOP dumping toxins into our environment before
our systems hit overload.
(Living as long as my grandparents)
I see you still haven't read Weston Price. I do wish you'd rid
yourself of the obnoxious slander your medico friend told you about
him, that he preaches eugenics. I'm still shocked by that. :-(
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price
http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library.html#price
Full text online.
As you point out in the next message, I DID read Weston Price and
found most of it interesting. Last year my sweetheart went to a dental
convention in Las Vegas, and ironically, at least one of the presenters
gave a lecture about falling dental arches and the health-related
implications this degenerative condition causes in people. There's a
ratio of the distance across the upper jaw and the height of the upper
teeth to the bottom of the jawbone that indicates whether or not such
degeneration has occurred. The specialist listed a number of health
problems that stem from falling dental arches, including sleep apnea,
that may lead to diminished cognitive function and an overall feeling of
"unwellness" manifest in many additional symptoms.
Now, my grandparents might have eaten a very basic diet, but that
didn't stop them from developing cancers, high blood pressure and heart
disease. None of them touched alcohol, and none of them smoked. My
paternal grandparents died of cancer and a brain embolism--my
grandmother in her mid forties, and my grandfather in his early
seventies. On the other side of the family, we have two heart attacks.
Neither grandparent made seventy. My mother, however, is already older
than both of her parents when they died. My father died younger than I
am now, from renal failure related to alcoholism and diabetes. (This is
often what happens in a deeply religious family that maintains strong
prohibitions on ANY type of alcohol consumption.)
As a child, I lived on brown rice, beans and vegetables. (I CHOSE
to become vegetarian when I was in 2nd grade, but gave that up this
year. I was the only one in my family who didn't eat meat.) We didn't
eat a lot of fast food because we couldn't afford it, and in addition,
it was hard for me to find anything I COULD eat in many restaurants,
anyways!
My sweetheart measured my jaw arch, and my measurements came out
"normal." (Dr. Price may have put his finger on something vital, but my
grandparents are all dead now, despite their good diets!) In my wife's
family, however, a long series of long-lived people traces its roots
back to rural Germany and Russia. It's likely, I'd say, that these
people experienced fewer of the environmental insults common to people
in my family tree. Her immediate relatives, who are now all in their
70's, remain vigorous. My father-in-law battled polio in the 1950's and
still deals with chronic leg pain, but other than this, he's still
healthy and strong.
If I outlive my in-laws, I'll be doing very well!
(The Precautionary Principle)
I'm aware of that. I understand why your instinct is to shy away, and
not only from this, and you have my respect and esteem for not doing
so. But I should add that my own background is about as blighted and
benighted as they come, though in a different way. Not exactly
open-minded. The influence of our upbringing is not made of concrete,
we do have choices.
But the momentum of our upbringing is VERY hard to overcome,
especially those issues that "work" for us. I've been riding the horse
of skepticism for so long, I may have forgotten how to walk! I try to
keep my mind open, but when people begin making claims for the
deleterious impact of this or that on my health, the baggage of
extremism I carry from my youth becomes a very heavy burden. What is
especially hard for me is determining what is, and what is not,
trustworthy. I simply can't verify everything myself, but I don't want
to walk around with a foil hat on, either!
(I've already abandoned vegetarianism)
<>
Did you? I didn't know that.
Yep. I did that early last summer, to howls of protest from my
mother-in-law. The first few times I ate chicken I felt ill
afterwards. It's not like that anymore, and I had turkey at
Thanksgiving for the first time last fall. I still can't wrap my mind
around eating mammals, and I refuse to touch bottom feeders, but eating
birds was a HUGE change for me.
"Wholesome" is an interesting word eh? Health can't be separated from
the environmental context within which we live. In other words it's
an ecological matter and subject to the only law of ecology, that
everything is connected to everything else.
Hence, my commentary concerning environmental insult.
That works both ways. If you consider it a little it puts a nice
positive sheen on the realisation that no solutions are going to come
from our governments, institutions, organisations, corporations,
which are the cause of the dis-integration we're witnessing, and that
the changes needed are up to us, as individuals, communities, global
villages.
And the whole purpose of this list involves local solutions to local
problems. I get that. But as I'm watching the trees fall and listening
to the hillsides get blasted away for more and more houses, as local
pleas for restraint on growth fall on deaf ears in this municipality; as
I grimace to see large property owners burning their tree trimmings and
brush, polluting the air the rest of us have to breathe; when I follow
someone's big, heavy pickup truck with a bumper sticker that reads:
"Fuel mileage doesn't matter," I realize that environmental awareness is
a RARE commodity.
We've had a WILD winter this year, and last year we broke several
records in every season. Very few people seem aware that anything is wrong.
I try to do my part. I work from home now, having taken a HUGE cut
in salary to do so. I drive less. We bought a hybrid Camry last summer
to replace our derelict Cavalier. I keep trying to fix my truck, rather
than buying a new one. I grow things in the garden. I've learned to
appreciate wasps . . . Small steps, maybe, but if I can't set an
example for my neighbors, who will?
(Eliminating resource extraction, etc.)
That's where you're wrong, IMHO, and I think that's just what the
folks (?) who'd rather hundreds of people got roasted to death in
Ford Pintos than spend 10 bucks fixing it, who'd rather 20,000 people
got gassed to death at Bhopal than spend $35 a day keeping the safety
equipment switched on, who'd rather our biosphere died than risk
their bottom-line, would like you to think.
The scale of the thing is the problem, Keith. We can't extract the
world's mineral and tilth dowry at the rate in which we're doing so.
Why do you assume that doing it properly isn't an option? Do you
think we're not capable of developing good, effective, safe
technology which doesn't have to externalise all this shit onto the
rest of us? And that it couldn't be run at a profit? Why not? It's
also a baseless myth that technology requires huge centralised
corporations and a cast of millions, in fact the little guys do it
best, like everything else, they always have, always will. Little
guys are capable of caring about things.
I agree with you here, but this is where your optimism really
shines. Where you see hope for change, I see little willingness on the
part of people to select a different path. You've pointed out in
another thread that our choices are "manufactured" for us, and the
people responsible for creating that kind of blind consent are wealthy,
politically influential and hence, powerful people. The glittering lie
that they dangle in front of us keeps most of us in pursuit of a bliss
we simply cannot buy.
In my view, the problem is a spiritual one, relating directly to a
tendency toward selfishness that we as individuals habitually engage
in. You have written many times about cooperation vs. competition, yet
in a world with finite resources, the greed that leads to SUVs and
monster houses, to obesity and waste, excludes most of our
contemporaries from the same lifestyle. What of our grandchildren, and
their children? Will we be around long enough for them to have anything?
My eldest sister, who is a stockbroker, frequently points out that
commodities prices in "real dollars" (whatever THOSE are) have actually
fallen over the past thirty years. She says this indicates that we can
extract forever, at progressively less cost, and that this benefits
everyone on earth. But those cost externalizations to which you refer
don't get calculated in her maths, and she ignores any evidence of an
erupting problem with the biosphere, dismissing the impact of pollution
and the growing corporate control over society as non-issues. There are
MILLIONS of people just like her, locked in a desperate pursuit for more
of something ill-defined--and therefore, unobtainable--and she and her
ilk simply don't (or won't) see the world any other way.
So how are we going to get people like my wealthy, stockbroker
sister on board with this change you're espousing? Do you think she'll
willingly give up her habit of throwing away a pint of whipped cream
because her guests didn't eat all of it with the Easter Sunday meal?
Will you convince her that washing clothes and wearing the same outfit
more than once is a better thing to do than shopping for new clothes all
the time? What's in it for her? She LIKES wearing new things every day!
Meanwhile, back in Indonesia, or down in Guatemala, some teenaged
girl is practically chained to a sewing machine to support my sister's
wardrobe habits, and for that, my sister says the other girl should be
grateful. After all, she has a job, doesn't she?
Ugh!
(wrapping my mind around the Precautionary Principle)
Well please do Robert, it's not difficult and it really won't hurt
(much), and you're in just the right place for it, there's excellent
material on the Precautionary Principle in the list archives. It's
pretty much the basic principle of the list after all, and of Journey
to Forever, and of the future of Planet Earth. I'd say you're getting
depressed and hopeless for no good reason, you're making baseless
assumptions, studying the matter more fully will lay it all to rest
and allow for a more optimistic outlook.
There you go again!
: - )
(where DOES it stop, Keith?)
We stop it, and do it properly this time, at last. Not exactly an
easy task, but there's no other option, and we'll manage.
Personally, I think it ends in mushroom clouds, poisoned skies and
black rain.
(Microwaves)
Why should an oven that's as quick and convenient as a microwave but
doesn't twist the food all out of shape be beyond our capabilities? I
don't believe it is.
Maybe there's a future for you as an inventor. I printed the Swiss
study for my sweetheart to read. I made my tea with the kettle today .
. . Progress?
More later. It's late!!!
robert luis rabello
"The Edge of Justice"
"The Long Journey"
New Adventure for Your Mind
http://www.newadventure.ca
Ranger Supercharger Project Page
http://www.members.shaw.ca/rabello/
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