permaculture

["J. Kolenovsky" <garden@hal-pc.org>]

Tom, your reasoning and eloquence about the whole deal is unbeatable.
Yes, the average Doe on the street is ignorant and all they can
comprehend and hold on to is "Global Warming". You should have seen the
glazed eyes over when I told the lunch table about Permaculture,
recapture of resources/energy and the 3 R's  working into our lifestyle.
I told them America is responsible for 25% of greenhouse emmissions and
CONSUMES 4X what the rest of the world consumes. I told them about green
architecture. I shot down Ethanol as a watered down sheer bandaid
covering an unsightly gangreney gash. I told them that earth has
approached and passed critical mass when the world pop passed 4 bil.
(might be 5 but most get the point). Everybody has excuses but no one
wants to take ownership of their part in it!  Well.....you know, at
least the facts are being slammed at them and maybe a poor sob will join
ranks down the road.

Ryan Power was dead on (right on Ryan) when he said  "Climate change is
an emergent quality of all of the activities of industrial civilization.
We're talking about an entirely unsustainable culture. We live in a
culture in which there is something fundamentally destructive about how
it approaches reality." Sounds like attitude and selfishness to me.
Take away their Beamers, 
I-pods, GPS, plasma screens, etc, etc, etc, ad infitum. BTW, plasma
screens use 400% more energy than LCD. O-k you self-centered brats out
there in me-me land - buy LCD's. I read where 1 aluminum can recyled
produces enough energy to power a television for 3 hours.

Quess all I can say is if things don't change, something will change.

J




Message: 1
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:28:22 -0400
From: Tom Gorman <tom@honeychrome.com>
Subject: Re: [permaculture] GLOBAL WARMING:- A different 'take' on it
To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID: <DA512805-EA75-412E-9165-8FE5DBFD24CD@honeychrome.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed

In many ways "global warming" and whatever its causes, possible  
solutions, etc. etc. is beside the point.  Whether global warming is  
happening or not, the broader (and related) issues of finite resource  
depletion and a population growth that has overshot the renewable  
carrying capacity of what is a limited system (the planet, that is)  
are to my mind far more important to have people fundamentally  
understand.  Global warming is already being used as a marketing  
'opportunity,' and though more and more people are becoming aware and  
accepting of it's reality, it is being understood as something we  
will solve through some sort of 'technology' and by simply altering  
our consumer choices to 'greener' ones.  Without understanding the  
mathematics of growth and a system of limited resources there won't  
be acceptance of the unavoidable conclusion that the solution to our  
problems is "less."  Less consumption, less economic activity, less  
people, less travel, etc.  Even if global warming wasn't an issue at  
all we'd still be coming up against all the same fundamental problems  
of overpopulation, environmental poisoning, resource depletion.   
Personally I don't see how the tools of our current global system of  
activity and interaction are possibly going to even attempt to solve  
the problems we face when the very 'toolbox' is built of the  
impossible notion of perpetual growth.

All of which is a windy way of saying global warming is a symptom,  
not the disease.


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