Environment

Yes, because I''m living on it.

The environment is very important to me, but the fanaticism with which it is treated by so-called environmentalists, particularly the student variety, is repulsive in the extreme. We live in a commercial society, and as such attempts at improving/instituting environmentally friendly manufacture/industrial processing must factor that in. The valid options to promote change I can think of include legislative lobbying and "solution substitution". See, I can''t stand it when some fool(s) decide to tie themselves to trees or something similar to stop industrial process, yet offer no alternative suggestions as to how to solve the problem.

Take the Greenpeace nuclear waste a year or two ago in Germany, where members tied themselves to the tracks of the train transporting the waste from Germany to France or so for disposal. Nice. Now where do you want them to dispose of the waste? The problems they should be addressing are evaluating the need for nuclear power (and thus the generation of nuclear waste) and cleaner methods of waste disposal. If they could suggest alternatives - even slightly more expensive methods - that supplies roughly equivalent power, generates less waste and is cleaner then they could work on pushing that. In short, I hate reactive environmentalism as opposed to proactive.

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

No, it''s not important at all.

If the environment got bad we''d all be affected, and that''s fine for me, it would be fair.

I will not accept that the future genrations will have better lives than me though. I''ll fight, I''ll blow things up. I''ll do anything to prevent people from having better lives than me.

The environment is important to all of us. We should keep ourselves and our lives in perspective and take good care of it, for ourselves and the future.
What I have a problem with are people who want to think they can talk smack about the environment and be just as messed as the rest of us. These are the people who sneer at me when I have a cigarette, groceries in a plastic bag and a big fat hamburger, because its easy to bitch about things like that, but they crawl into the SUV their daddy bought them, because to live the preaching just wouldnt be comfortable enough for them.

Oluseyi, i couldn't agree with you more...
Some environmental research leads to good improvements in the way we do things... but sometimes when im in this class i get the feeling that environmentalists just wont be happy until we all kill ourselves... the other day we were talking about hydroelectric dams and how they are a creative alternative to nuclear and fossil fuel power... but then my professor goes on to say "well the problem with these is that they create flooding and they fragment the river ecosystem and blah de blah" and i was thinking to myself... ok so what do you suggest we use for energy if every single way of getting energy is either inefficient or immoral?

edit-> thanks to all responding these are good answers

[edited by - TempusElf on April 16, 2002 2:38:41 PM]

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Original post by Oluseyi
In short, I hate reactive environmentalism as opposed to proactive.

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Concur.

It doesn''t help that many people are bitching about things and are basing their views on incorrect premises and/or purely emotional reactions. That''s the problem with a pure democracy - the stupid and the uneducated get the same say as the wise and knowledgeable.



Dave Mark
President and Lead Designer
Intrinsic Algorithm Development
"Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

quote:

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Original post by Oluseyi
In short, I hate reactive environmentalism as opposed to proactive.

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You can''t have one without the other. It''s only in reaction to pollution that we come to know the need for proactive proposals. I think it would be great if companies that new beforehand that their manufacturing process emitted poision took the necessary precautions to contain those poisons - but far too often they don''t unless they are forced to by reaction. In other cases, perhaps they didn''t know that their products would be harmful - but not any more - at least today the question is asked - that wasn''t the case 50 years ago. And that wouldn''t be the state of things if people had not reacted.

Sure democracy affords the ignorant the same right of participation as the knowledgeable - but that cuts across the spectrum of views in both ways.

Dams really do cause a huge amount of destruction to the environment. Something like 10,000 Anasazi sites (among otherthings) were destroyed when Glen Canyon and Lake Powell were created.

I generally agree with Oluseyi. Alternative sources, often those promoted by tree hugger types are just as damaging as conventional methods.

Let''s look at some clean solutions: Electric cars, considered a clean solution, require electricity, which would currently be derived from coal burning plants, hydroelectric power, etc. Hydroelectric dams destroy hundreds of square miles of ecosystem. Wind power blights the land with ugly windmills, and produces little energy for the amount of land area required. Solar power is ugly as well, but might be a good solution. Nuclear fusion is one of the best, if we could just get it to work.

I guess I''m one of those crazy tree-huggers then.

I kinda put the Enviroment above the Economy. The only things I rate higher are Health Care and Education.

Heh. I believe that we should be way more carefull with nature. Not only because of "balance" and such, but also because nature itself is beautifull. If I could chose, I''d rather live in a sparse populated area, or a more-or-less scattered city with lots of nature in and around, then in a booming metropolis. I just... like nature ^_^

Even though nature doesn''t like me...

*scans the room to find that damn mozzy*
*fails*
*knows he will be eater this night, ''cause he is alergic to mozzies*

-Maarten Leeuwrik

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Follower of the NLS
(New Lounge Standards)

Hmm, I really don''t want to start a flamewar, so I won''t say much more than that I oppose almost to 100% Olyseyi''s points. And I''m definitely not a ''tree-hugger''.

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Electric cars, considered a clean solution, require electricity, which would currently be derived from coal burning plants, hydroelectric power, etc

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Combustion cells. It is still in research of course, but it seems to be a very effective technology, and we could replace poisoneous and ineffective batteries. Hydrogen can be obtained via electrolysis, and while this process requires electricity, we come to point 2:

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Wind power blights the land with ugly windmills, and produces little energy for the amount of land area required

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It is true, that the effectiveness of wind generators is still far away from being optimal, but huge progress has been made in that domain recently. Esp. using microprocessor controlled, dynamically adjustable rotors, flow sensors, etc. Example is this 2 MW generator. And while it is true, that the amount of land area required is important, we see a growing tendency here in Europe, going to offshore systems, featuring hundreds of generators. Esp. Danmark is a pioneer in that area.

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Solar power is ugly as well, but might be a good solution.

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Wrong (about the ugliness). Did you ever saw new multilayer amorpheous silicon solar cells ? They look black, with some (nice) dark blue reflections. They are coated by composite materials, on ceramic base, making them extremely resistent. They can be directly used to cover eg. a roof of a house, the only difference to a ''normal'' roof is the required wiring (and the price of course). The effectiveness (although still very low, but will change with time, research is always going on) is already not bad. If you cover your entire roof using them, you can already get around 60% of your local consumption covered in winter, and going over 150% in summer (means that you can reinject 50% of your generated power into the public network, and you even get paid for that).

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Nuclear fusion is one of the best, if we could just get it to work.

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Agreed. But fusion research needs a *lot* more financial support, than it currently gets.

We already have the technology to cover 100% of our energy consumption (at least in Europe) by using regenerative energy sources. Problem are the costs. And of course the oil industry, they are highly interested in maintaining the price of those energy forms at a high level. Unfortunately most people from the US seem to ignore (esp. since environmental protection isn''t a big issue at all in the US, industrial profit is a lot more important, see Oluseyi) the simple fact, that we can *effectively* protect the environment and it will *not* affect the living standards of individual people.

I have an interesting article here, unfortunately it is in german, and I don''t know what an automatic translator will do of it... It is an analysis about the future energy development in Germany, taking into account the fact, that nuclear energy is in progress of being abolished there. So there has been lots of research in the domain of usable wind and solar energy. The figures are intriguing, to say the least.

/ Yann

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Original post by Ronin_54
... or a more-or-less scattered city with lots of nature in and around...

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I like the suburban model for living, but I wouldn''t mind living in a sparsely populated area as well. However, the "more-or-less scattered city with lots of nature in and around" isn''t really environmentally friendly. If the entire populace adopted such a style, all of nature would be overrun with human occupation, essentially destroying any wilderness sites.

The Alps in Europe are a classic example of this. They have the infrastructure of human habitation throughout, essentially destroying the pure wilderness experience. There are trams, small villages, huts, and all of the associated infrastructure which goes along with it. I could be wrong about that, but I can only relate what I have witnessed or read. The U.S. has officially designated areas as being true wilderness, and these areas are protected from any sort of human infrastructure. That is why areas like the High Sierra are truly an evocative and powerful experience.

bishop_pass:

Your are not totally off with this. In fact you are right, most of central Europe is exactly that: lots of nature around, but scattered with little villages, small towns, and occasionally a big city. Distances between those vary depending on the area, can be sometimes 20, 30 miles between them, but you rarely get this 200x200 miles ''total wilderness'' feeling you have in some parts of the US. The problem is a somewhat historical one, most of those towns and villages have been there for some hundered years, when centralization in cities was far from today''s extend.

The infrastructure isn''t that destructive. A few small roads, and electricity/water supply. Freeways are very destructive, but they are sparsely in most rural areas (I have to drive around 100 miles to get on the nearest freeway). For someone like me, who hates living in/near a city, this is rather OK

If you go up to the north (eg. Scandinavia), then you got more of those ''total'' wilderness places, large parts of the (cold) north are not populated at all.

I lived north of the 60th parallel for almost half my life to date in the NWT, and for another 7 years or so in northern Manitoba a good 2 and a half hours away from the nearest "city" of 15 thousand people. You''d think the environment is great up there, but there are serious water contamination issues from logging and mining industries, and in many places the forest has been completely clear-cut, despite the fact that the trees are only a foot wide, max.

What''s my point? Yes, I''m concerned about the environment.

BTW, has anyone read "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjorn Lomborg? It always seems to be out from the library . For those who haven''t heard about it, he argues that the environment isn''t in as poor condition as we have been led to believe by the media/environmental lobby groups. However, I''ve also read articles and reviews (possibly in Harper''s magazine, but I can''t remember) saying that he misrepresented reports and very selectively used data.

scott