Stewart Brand on 'Environmental Heresies' 762
FleaPlus writes "The MIT Technology Review has an article predicting where the mainstream of the environmental movement may likely reverse its collective stance in the next ten years. The four areas discussed are population growth, urbanization, genetically-engineered organisms, and nuclear power. The article is written by Stewart Brand, known for creating the Whole Earth Catalog, the WELL online community, and the Long Now Foundation. Brand also has some interesting comments regarding the sometimes-conflicting interaction between romantics and scientists in the environmental movement. There's an online debate between Brand and former DOE official Joseph Romm on TR Blogs." Frankly, unless humanity decides to undergo a massive collective personality change of not being consumption-focused, I don't see much other way around these particular issues. What we all need is an Arthur to keep us depressed and sleeping in darkened rooms to lower energy consumption.
Reversing? I doubt it (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Population growth: Humans are the problem. Despite the shrinking birth rate, this does not bode badly for Nature which will theoretically revive itself once we are not sucking nutrients out of the ground and burning it into the sky and water.
2) Urbanization: Cities are the largest contributors to localized pollution. Air quality, sewage overflows, and general griminess ooze from cities. I don't see how environmentalists could come around to see how cities are beneficial to the environment.
3) Genetically-engineered organisms: Knee jerk reactions defines the environmental movement. If they haven't listened to real science thus far, what will convince them otherwise?
4) Nuclear power: Ethical scientists have already converged on this as a plausible renewable energy source. Too bad the environmentalists haven't.
These are issues that are bugs so far up the asses of environmentalists that it is hard to believe that they could change their minds about them. I find it more likely that this one guy came to his senses and sees conservation as a constant management of the environment rather than as political capital. The problem is that the anomie of distancing himself from his old friends is too powerful and he finds himself trying to continue associating himself and his ideas with theirs.
Urbanization (Score:3, Insightful)
The environmentalist aesthetic is to love villages and despise cities.
as part of his observation that urbanization is slowing population growth (which he contends is slowing growth).
Actually, my observation is exactly the opposite. I seem to hear more sympathy for packing everyone together than for spreading them out in the modern environmentalist rhetoric. That's why "sprawl" has become a cuss-word among this bunch.
For another example, look at the current opinion of Walmart. Just today I heard an NPR story [npr.org] about Walmart that criticized them for their environmental impact (pollution and rainwater runoff from their parking lots, plus the extra air pollution from people driving there, I guess).
I guess my point is that the "environmental movement" is a little conflicted; they apparently either like or dislike centralization and efficiencies of scale, depending on the context.
Re:Nuclear Energy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bah, why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
Animal life came out of the oceans some 500 million years ago. For over half that time the land was dominated by dinosaurs. For perhaps 100,000 years the land has been dominated by humanity.
Yeah, we've done well.
Re:Is Hemos drunk? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear Energy (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure the same could apply to uranium. What isn't viable today to process, could well be quite viable in 20 years if we approached the problem head on.
GM crops (Score:5, Insightful)
GM crops have the potential, hell, they're *necessary* for a great number of third world countries to be able to grow enough food to feed their people. And these guys are trying to stop that for the sake of nonsensical political motivations.
Then they go about using scare tactics, calling it "frankenfoods" and whatnot, as if there's something horrific about it. Excuse me, but we've been genetically modifying our crops for millenia. We've just gotten more sophisticated about it.
Re:Pragmatism (Score:2, Insightful)
Or, if we distributed the food we already have more fairly, we wouldn't even need genetically modified plants.
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, eating muesli and selling organically grown tat (what's that?) doesn't disqualify someone from being an expert on these things, so quit the ad hominems.
What are YOUR qualifications by the way? Good Slashdot karma?
Environmental package deal (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll trust an environmentalist over industry (Score:4, Insightful)
Certainly, some environmentalists have financial motives but the majority do not. When scientists are concerned about global climate change, they are publishing these warnings in the hope of drawing attention to what they genuinely perceive as a serious problem. Ditto for polution concerns, supplies of natural resources, biological diversity and ecosystem damage. These are FACTS.
In contrast, the news releases from industry which make their way across television and newspaper spread absolute lies. Examples:
- there is no global climate change (flies in the face of 90%+ of scientific opinion)
- business can continue as usual without worrying about environmental factors (a hope, for short term business as usual)
- the economy can survive $100 oil
- nuclear is the solution to our energy needs
Here's the important point: a lot of scientists work for industry. So they have a distinct bias. In many cases they are providing reports for their employer. So next time you run into a scientific report, check the source... not all scientists are funded equally.Re:Urbanization (Score:4, Insightful)
That could have something to do with the fact that such things are positive in some contexts and negative in others.
Re:Nuclear Energy (Score:3, Insightful)
Alright, since I don't know the current figures on Uranium deposits/Uranium consumption
I'll accept that that might be true. However even if all Nuclear power gave us was another
two decades woundn't that buy us time to transition from an oil infrastucture to an
infrastucture based on some kind of alternative energy?
Re:I'll trust an environmentalist over industry (Score:0, Insightful)
Still , it doesn't make them right.
A lot of hard-core religious types have no financial motives but are driven by an internal set of beliefs, which they consider to be beyond realm of argument.
Does this fact mean that we should be listening to their nonsense ?
Re:Pragmatism (Score:1, Insightful)
Flying in the face of reason ?
What problems do GM plants solve ? There already is a worldwide surplus of food.
Food is no problem whatsoever in industrialized nations - and in the third world the problem is distribution and greed not a lack of GM crops, which DO cost a premium to get hold of in the first place.
So tell me please - which problem das GM solve ? The problem of having nothing to worry about ? The problem of having no unproven and potentialy dangerous technology about ?
Radical conservation (Score:5, Insightful)
He says this like it's an insignificant thing. It's not. We literally throw away approximately 60% of the energy used to produce electricity as "waste heat". And this is at the power station itself (including nuclear)!
We then go on to use most of the 40% of the energy we have actually transmitted to produce more heat. It's not what could be classed as clever.
Changing this single inefficiency in our energy generation sector would do the job. It's not even particularly radical, the solution is a couple of hundred years old, it's just that until very recently it's been cheaper to just pump in more oil, gas or coal.
Re:Urbanization (Score:2, Insightful)
Note I said half. There are quite a few intelligent people in the enviromental movement. People who go 'Hey, recycling paper doesn't actually seem to accomplish anything' (Penn and Teller did a great story on recycling on Bullshit!.) and 'You know, nuclear power seems like the best form of power as long as we make it safe, like the French have. And unlike the French, we have huge open spaces in this country we're not using.'.
These people, sadly, are completely ignored, in favor of morons protesting nuclear plant instead of coal mines, and the completely absurd PETA.
Environmental orthodoxy (Score:4, Insightful)
On population, he points out that global population is close to leveling off and is declining precipitously in many countries. Why? Mostly it is the unprecedented worldwide migration from rural villages to cities, where having lots of children is less of an advantage. If those concerned with sustainability get out ahead of this trend and help guide it, it could be an environmental blessing. Cities put people close together, reducing their collective energy use. They free up rural areas for wildlife and wilderness (if protections are put in place).
Regarding biotech: There's truth to this, though it's slightly facile. It does, after all, matter that GM has been developed by giant corporations and has been used primarily for their benefit. But the idea that the technology itself is intrinsically bad ... that doesn't make much sense to me. As Brand says, the proper reaction for greens ought to be to appropriate the technology and use it for their ends, particularly since, embrace or no embrace, it's gonna spread. Open-source biotech seems like a promising way for GM to do some environmental good. Brand offers some scenarios.
Ultimately, I suspect that urbanization, GM crops, and nuclear power are inevitable. If all we do is stand on the sidelines shouting "no, no, no!" the process will proceed without us, guided by the worst actors. The smartest thing that those of us concerned about the health of humanity and the planet can do is get involved and try to steer toward an outcome that is equitable and sustainable.
Re:Urbanization (Score:5, Insightful)
There are good things and bad things about packing people together. There are good ways and bad ways to do it. The city sprawl that most environmentalists would be talking about is where everyone lives in their huge house in the suburbs with their chemical fertilized lawns and their SUV's driving downtown to work every day. This is very wasteful way to 'pack people together'. Small city in Canada called Calgary has more land mass than most larger cities, with fewer people. Lots of crop land was destroyed to sprawl people out in the city. Now all this land is lawn or highway instead of farm. This increases the per-person ecological footprint.
The kind of packing people together that is better is where most people live in Apartment Buildings/Condos near to where they work, they don't have lawns or SUVs and they are able to walk to work and to the grocery store. This reduces the per-person ecological footprint.
Re:GM crops (Score:3, Insightful)
They are specifically engineerd so that you can only use them once. So if you plant a patch of GM corn, you cannot use the seeds of the plants to grow new corn. They just don't grow. So now you have to buy the corn from the company every year, thereafter. And, worse, if the GM corn cross-polinate a field next-door, half that crop cannot reproduce anymore either.
So the American companies are not in it to save millions of people from starvation, but to build a nice little business to keep third word countires impoverished forever.
Americans are not concerned about starvation. I'll illustrate:
On Sept. 11 2001 about 3500 people died in New York. On that same day 44000 children died in Africa of hunger. Is there a war on hunger? NO.
Re:Pragmatism (Score:3, Insightful)
With increased government levvies, and education on future impacts of piggish consumption, overall demand can actually decrease. But such is not good for business at all, so it is violently opposed (including government lobbies)
Re:I'll trust an environmentalist over industry (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pragmatism (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, let's see: GM food--an attempt to take our food supply, which is already dangerously genetically uniform, and make it even more genetically uniform--which, if science is our guide, makes it more vulnerable to pandemic. Yes, short term yields should be great. However, food supplies should be STABLE, not boom-and-bust.
Then there's nuclear (fission) power. Yes, it's clean and safe, relative to, say, coal. But there's the waste disposal issue. It hasn't been solved. Yes, I agree, nuclear is the only way to meet our increasing energy needs in the short term. Yet decreasing our energy consumption seems to be not only a workable solution, but even cleaner than nuclear. Science tells us to choose the cleaner option--use less energy.
Not that I think what you're suggesting isn't where the world is HEADING (there's a lot of money to be made in "sucking it up", perhaps coincidentally), but I think it'll result in a planet that is supporting an unsustainable population with an extremely fragile food supply and an ever-increasing amount of radioactive waste needing to be stored in the few remaining unpopulated areas.
As opposed to a sustainable population with a stable food supply and some relatively minor waste disposal problems, which is a solution only a "romantic" could embrace.
Re:Urbanization (Score:2, Insightful)
That's because environmentalism, as a political movement, is based on anti-corporatism, not on pro-environmentalism. They'll embrace whatever particular idea they have to at the moment to blast the Very Big Corporation of America.
Your rank-and-file environmentalist is typically hostile to big corporations (so am I), but the movement as a political force is based on a pseudosocialist backlash against the evils and irresponsibility of big business. They have a point, too, but it's wrapped up in hiking boots and granola bars and sold as a platform meant to save humanity from itself.
I can live with the spin, but the problem is that legitimate environmental issues (and legitimate solutions) are being ignored in favor of trumped-up nonsense and hand-wringing in the media to keep people afraid and nervous.
My other beef with the politico-environmentalists is that they dramatically overstate the danger of various health-shattered aspects of life in our society, and dramatically exaggerate how bad off the planet is. To listen to their press releases, you'd think we live on a gigantic ball of oil and grease surrounded by a black haze of car exhaust and soot. Far from it. A lot of progress has been made, and there's a lot more to come.
I don't think that politico-environmentalists are interested in saving the environment or humanity as much as they are interested in screwing a corporate interests. I don't see them embracing solutions that, while not ideal, are steps in the right direction, simply on the grounds that these solutions end up generating revenue for somebody, and therefor they must be bad. There's this antithetical interaction that they see, where the Good of Nature/Humanity is pitteded against the Evils of Consumption, Wealth, and Technology.
It might sucker in naive college kids but it just convinces me that, even if they're right about a number of the issues they've taken up, I have trouble taking anything they say seriously. When the Bush administration engages in the same kind of doomsday fearmongering, we get our shorts in a bunch over paralyzing people with fear and coercing them into voting Republican to save us from gay marriage and terrorism. The apolcalyptic prophecies politico-environmentalism get dumped into a similar category for me.
Re:Soooooo (Score:2, Insightful)
Insightful? What complete bollocks! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's war, corruption, disease and import tariffs which decimate the farming populations of third world countries. What they need is good stable government and fair trade with the developed world, not GM crops.
Hopefully Nuclear Power (Score:5, Insightful)
It's high time the top brass of the environmental movement admit that stopping Nuclear power was a mistake that has lead to greater devastation of the environment by coal plants [climateark.org].
Even the nuclear waste issue pales in comparison to the the ecological damage coal plants have caused and will keep causing until we replace them (finally) with much cleaner nuclear technologies like Pebble Bed. [mit.edu] Coal of course has it's own waste issues. [energyjustice.net]
The anti-nuclear power movement has been one of the best examples of the law of unintended consequences in our times.
Re:Pragmatism (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem of dumping gallons of fertilizer and pesticide on each square foot of land?
The ideal purpose of GM (ie, when its not some company using it to sell farmers their "special" chemicals like the roundup-ready series) is not to create more food per acre, its to use less resources doing it.
Additionally in regions where there is a distribution problem, imagine being able to grow food in town, despite the poor land quality.
Cognitive dissonance,anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Their answer is "Not much," because they know from their own work how robust wild ecologies are in defending against new genes, no matter how exotic"
"The second greatest cause of extinctions is coming from invasive species, where no solution is in sight. Kudzu takes over the American South, brown tree snakes take over Guam . . ."
So why is kudzu a problem if wild ecologies are so good at defending against new genes?
Re:Pragmatism (Score:2, Insightful)
The limiting factor for population will not be food, but water supply, which is all ready scarce in many areas of the world.
Even if we were to solve this particular issue, however, this is not a good argument for limitless population growth and endless invention to deal with the inevitable consequences that accrue from there being billions of hairless apes walking around this planet, sucking up resources, squeezing out other species, which we actually depend on in this interdependent world, and shitting out various forms of waste and toxins in our desire for a way of life that is at best out of kilter and insensitive to the natural world, and at worst deeply hostile to it (generally for reasons of pure selfishness).
How about we deal with the pressing situation by limiting and managing our populations, our impact on the world, our drain and demand on the limited resources that exist and living in harmony with all the other countless billions of other species (which we depend on directly or indirectly to one extent or another)?
How's that for an "imperfect solution"?
Or is it merely inconventient?
Re:It seems to me that (Score:3, Insightful)
CapeWind [capewind.org] is one of the local (to me) organizations dedicated to providing actual information about the benefits, rather than the info that the people with more money than sense will give you.
-Jesse
Re:Radical conservation (Score:1, Insightful)
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kagan/phy367/P
Re:I'll trust an environmentalist over industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I don't think anyone doubts that there is global climate change. What differs scientist to scientist are the causes of said change.
business can continue as usual without worrying about environmental factors (a hope, for short term business as usual)
This is true, but if you talk to responsible businessmen, they understand this. The problem is that people expect returns on their investments uberquickly, sometimes in short amount of time than is required to make ecologically sound expansions in production.
the economy can survive $100 oil
Why, in principle, can't the economy survive $100 oil? Perhaps not in its current form, but there's no universal law that says barrels of oil must be below $100.
nuclear is the solution to our energy needs
How is this a lie?
Unfortunately, what trickles down to us, non-experts, is some journalist's interpretation of highly complex work. We often get only half the story, and the half we get is usually incorrect.
You also can't blithely ascribe bias to pure monetary gain. Scientists differ on causes and solutions. Science isn't always a clean field and there are periods of time where no one really knows what the fuck the correct answer is. Call it scientific evolution; the debate and refinement of theories until the correct ones remain. What matters at the end of the day is how well other scientists are able to replicate results and if the theories stand the test of time. Those that don't, will be forgotten, or relegate to crack-pot conspiracy theorists. If a scientist sells his objectivity to the highest bidder, then they will eventually be discovered and his theories and work discredited.
The key point is that neither you (I'm assuming) nor I have the expertise required to make that call. We have to wait for what those in the field finally decide, if they ever come to a consensus.
Re:I'll trust an environmentalist over industry (Score:2, Insightful)
Nobody says this. The global climate has always changed and will always continue to change. This provides challenges and opportunities to current residents to any ecosystem. And I suspect these changes are a driving force in evolution. The legitimate questions involve humanities contribution to these changes and whether reducing carbon emissions will do a damn thing about it.
business can continue as usual without worrying about environmental factors (a hope, for short term business as usual)
Business can continue, but at reduced levels of profit/efficiency. Those that prepare now will be those that survive future scarcities batter.
the economy can survive $100 oil
Yes it can! If you want more alternatives to fossil fuels, $100 a barrel oil creates the BEST economic incentives to get there.
nuclear is the solution to our energy needs
NO energy technology will be the solution to our needs. And there is no reason nuclear shouldn't be in the mix. If we can survive coal burning, will can make nuclear work. Nuclear is NOT inherently evil.
Here's the important point: a lot of scientists work for industry. So they have a distinct bias. In many cases they are providing reports for their employer. So next time you run into a scientific report, check the source... not all scientists are funded equally.
Anyone that doesn't agree with me is wrong.
Re:Reversing? I doubt it (Score:2, Insightful)
So... the solution to overpopulation is the end to the human race? We will always be "sucking nutrients out of the ground" as long as we continue to eat and/or live on Earth, which is basically as long as there are people. I'm not going to get into the actual feasibility of colonizing the rest of the solar system.
2) Urbanization: Cities are the largest contributors to localized pollution. Air quality, sewage overflows, and general griminess ooze from cities. I don't see how environmentalists could come around to see how cities are beneficial to the environment.
Not all environmentalists are civilization-hating Luddites who want to return to our hunter-gatherer roots. There are many who believe that it is possible to develop in a environmentally sustainable way. There are environmentalists who don't mind admitting that they value human life more than field mice.
3) Genetically-engineered organisms: Knee jerk reactions defines the environmental movement. If they haven't listened to real science thus far, what will convince them otherwise?
Show me the "real science" that proves all GMOs are safe. Yes, there may be no cause for alarm. Still, I think the burden of proof should be creators of these products and the governments that support them to prove that they are safe before they are widely used.
4) Nuclear power: Ethical scientists have already converged on this as a plausible renewable energy source. Too bad the environmentalists haven't.
Nuclear power may be a good addition to our range of power options. From what I have read, it is not ready to be a total replacement for other sources of energy. Also, it has been billed as safe before, before Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Things rarely work out as well in practice as they do in theory.
It sounds like you believe that there is a single, unified environmental movement, and that it has only one set of beliefs. Furthermore, you seem to believe that the most extreme views represent the views of everyone. Sounds like you should try looking into what environmentalists are actually saying - not just reading news reports and jumping to conclusions.
The ideal purpose of GM (ie, when its not some com (Score:3, Insightful)
The "real world" purpose for GM is to increase the profitability of those companies in that market.
That's the marketplace in action, and unfortunately reducing resources has little to do with it, unless the resources reduced are procured from a competitor. I suspect similar reasoning is why medical cannabis is has been an issue between the DEA and alternative medicine anecdotes. IMHO, it should be in FDA studies, but there's just *no profit* in it compared to synthetic drugs.
Re:Pragmatism (Score:2, Insightful)
And that is the problem with the environmental movement. I don't see the millions of environmentalists giving up electricity or their homes in the suburbs or the country.
All that we hear is some bleating about how we need to "stop consuming" or look for "solutions" to population growth.
Re:Pragmatism (Score:5, Insightful)
Has the waste disposal issue been solved for coal power plants? As far as I'm concerned, pumping that stuff into the atmosphere does not constitute safe disposal...
Re:Reversing? I doubt it (Score:2, Insightful)
2)Cities are far more efficient places for people to live than suburbia. If there were no cities, land use and pollution would skyrocket as each person took his 40 acres and a SUV. Look at LA. That's what the entire east coast would be like w/o cities.
3)Genetically engineered food is better than no food...
4) Nuclear power is a no brainer to anyone except NIMBY types.
"Environmentalists" are politicians. Most of their organizations are basically just law firms. I equate them with oil execs. We really need more publically funded independent research in vertical solutions to improving the environment.
bp
Gee (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:GM crops (Score:2, Insightful)
GM crops won't help third world countries a bit.
People in third world countries don't starve because of a lack food on the market, they starve because they cannot afford the food. The US and the EU massively subsidize farming products to be able to sell them on the world market, yet people are starving at this very moment.
Wars, dramatic poverty, totalitarian governments etc cause famine.
GM crops won't solve any of those problems, so stop believing the propaganda of the pharma industry.
Re:GM crops (Score:3, Insightful)
Currently, GM crops are predominatly crops made resistant to a particular potent and extremely nasty chemical which can then be sprayed all over the countryside as the farmers know their crops won't die.
The fact that everything else dies, and the land is made totally uninhabitable to any non-GM'ed plant or animal, sometimes for many years, is ignored in pursuit of that tiny extra percentage of output.
The fears over GM food maybe unknown but the enviromental damage caused by GM crops is detailed in many independant studies on the issue. This is what has lead to the banning of (or lack of licensing of) GM food in many countries.
So far, it is only the GM companies own studies which show that GM food does not seriously damage the enviroment (as is pretty much always the case with such 'research').
Re:I'll trust an environmentalist over industry (Score:3, Insightful)
And your post is an example of why I *won't* trust environmentalists.
Your first point is an issue of trusting scientists, not environmentalists -- a policy you reject in your final paragraph. Which is it? Only trust them when they come to pre-approved conclusions? And your second is more slogan than argument.
The last two, however, are more objectionable. What is your argument that the economy cannot survive $100/bbl oil? It's now four times higher than just a few years ago -- why does the next doubling spell doom? Increasing oil prices are increasingly difficult, but also cause adaptations. Linear extrapolation is almost always deceptive but your argument doesn't even state why, if we accept a non-adaptive system for the purpose of argument, your magic number is significant.
Worst is the bald statement that "nuclear is the solution to our energy needs" is a "lie". How is it a lie? It's this kind of hand-waving that makes dealing with the environmental movement so frustrating, even if one broadly agrees with their goals.
Broad assertions and capitalizing FACTS don't make a case more convincing, but less so. Fortunately, nobody is forced to trust either camp. The best solution, as with almost any issue is to ignore argument from authority and weigh and measure the problems and possible solutions on your own, and come to a reasonable conclusion.
Umm, US oil peaked in the early '70's (Score:3, Insightful)
Strongly disagree about population growth (Score:5, Insightful)
Haven't people heard the story about passenger pigeons:
"It was Alvin Jones who told us about the Pigeon Roost Prairie which was near the Jones homestead. He said so many pigeons stopped to roost in the pines in this are that they broke the limbs off the trees and the trees died, so there was a prairie there. There wasn't a living tree for 150 acres, and it was called Pigeon Roost Prairie. That was virgin pine timber they killed. The pigeons were almost as big as a chicken, not the homing pigeon; they were two or three times larger, about the size of a pheasant. Not thousands of pigeons but millions of pigeons! I tried to learn all I could about this pigeon migration. I was interested in it. It was something to think about. There would be so, many they would darken the sun for three days, all going north."
http://www.ulala.org/P_Pigeon/Texas.html
Aren't people curious about how primitive cultures were able to feed themselves with sharpened sticks? I suspect it was because going down to the brook to spear a carp was only somewhat more inconvenient than going down to the freezer to find something to thaw.
Like boiling frogs, the human lifespan is only 70+ years. Perhaps it is too short for people to actually experience ecological change and ingrain any feeling for the issue. As long as there is soylent green, some people will call it a balanced ecology. Others think more diversity is valuable.
The point is that the planet was already damaged by population and industry before anyone on Slashdot was born. We should be discussing whether we are at the planetary coup de grace stage, not congratulating ourselves on how population isn't a problem.
(AND, if we didn't have so many people, there would be one less argument for both GMO and nuclear.)
Bogus argument (Score:3, Insightful)
That is a very trite response. It is a common tactic in a debate to immediately jump to an extreme position. People aren't being told to give up electricity, just use less and be more efficient. This should be a laudible goal by anyone's standards. To say "but you use it!" is an asinine response. We have to function in the society we are born in, that includes having to use a car and electricity. It doesn't mean we can't push for change.
I predict a more unified left (Score:4, Insightful)
Who cares!
The four subjects he raises are fringe distractions from the major policy questions which have the largest impact on our environment, which are merely a symptom of wider deficits in our nation's democratic culture.
Population growth is becoming a non-issue.
I favor nuclear power as long as the details are right - if the public is going to take all the risks, we shouldn't allow some private entity to reap the profits off of it.
I favor genetically modified organisms which are designed in a way that benefits farmers and/or the environment, rather than maximizing the profits of entrenched power.
Likewise, urbanization is fine if it leads to prosperity, but as a result of people being driven off of the land by thugs (e.g. Columbia) it is a bad thing.
The devil is in the details, as has always been the case. In ten years time the details may have changed enough that the present situation becomes unrecognizable; so I think trying to predict what we will be trying to do ten years from now is futile and silly.
This isn't to bash futurism generally - we can't know what to work towards now if we don't have some concept of what the future will be like. But trying to predict the future of activism? Waste of time.
Re:Pragmatism (Score:5, Insightful)
No, just because you don't do it, doesn't mean other people don't.
Re:Pragmatism (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case, our best bet for saving the planet is decreasing the population. I don't know what a sustainable number might be but it's got to be a lot closer to 1G than 6G
Re:GM crops (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Urbanization (Score:3, Insightful)
That is because suburban sprawl is not the same as the supposed environmental aesthetic of "loving villages." Far from it. Suburban sprawl is "spreading out" in all the wrong ways. It consumes land inefficiently and expands the footprint of existing urban areas indefinitly such that it becomes very difficult for people to enjoy nature when they want. I think the "ideal" situation would be many more, smaller, compact cities versus a few large, sprawling metro areas like LA or Chicago. Europe is much closer to this ideal than the US. (call me a Euro-loving anti-American if you want, I don't really care. This is my observation having lived in the US and traveled Europe extensively)
For another example, look at the current opinion of Walmart. Just today I heard an NPR story about Walmart that criticized them for their environmental impact (pollution and rainwater runoff from their parking lots, plus the extra air pollution from people driving there, I guess).
A good example of spreading out in all the wrong ways. Although I don't know that I would place the blame on Walmart. Americans in general seem to like being forced to drive several miles and park in huge lots every time they want to leave their home and do something such as shop.
I guess my point is that the "environmental movement" is a little conflicted; they apparently either like or dislike centralization and efficiencies of scale, depending on the context.
Of course. Context is extremely important. Would you prefer blanket generalizations?
-matthew
Re:Pragmatism (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting tired of low fertility scare tactics (Score:5, Insightful)
There are some scientific facts on population that are rarely disputed:
1] The earth has a finite carrying capacity
Actual numbers will vary anywhere from 1 to 10 billion people, but it's obvious that constraints on food, water, energy, pollution sinks do constrain the number of us. My opinion is that the number is less than we are now, but we are getting by (some of us anyway) because of unsustainable oil and water use. Perhaps we could get by on renewable energy with around 2 billion people.
2] Large numbers of humans cannot leave the earth
There is no way we could move even 1/1000th the world population off the earth even if there was someplace to go. The resources/pollution needed to do this make it a non-starter for addressing population growth.
3] Adjustments need to be made to run an economy with a declining population growth
Not impossible, but obviously it is harder to operate a system that is shrinking instead of growing. Tricks like using lots of workers to support fewer retirees won't work. Any pyramid scheme seems great when you are on the growth side, but I'd prefer not to have the human race crash like a big pyramid scheme.
4] Fertility rates can be adjusted by government action
Coercive measures while espoused by some as necessary have been avoided in very successful transitions to lower fertility (e.g. Iran). We have less experience with going the other way, but some countries (e.g. Singapore) are trying incentives to raise the fertility rate. I see no reason that these rates can't be successfully adjusted if for some reason, 50 years from now, the world wide fertility rate dips down well below 2 and stays there so long that our population goes below 2 billion.
Now, back to the article:
In each country listed: Japan, Germany, Spain, Russia (I think) and Italy, they could stand to lose 30% of their population anyway. I think the U.S. is too crowded and Europe has much higher densities (and Japan is worse) in terms of population per arable land unit.
"It turns out that population decrease accelerates downward just as fiercely as population increase accelerated upward, for the same reason."
What does this mean? If you measure the increase or decrease of an exponential function (what he's talking abut here) as a percentage, then of course they have the same fierceness, but there is no concept of acceleration (percentage growth is constant). If you measure the amount in absolute numbers, then exponential increase is accelerating, but exponential decrease is always decelerating.
As far as fertility going down everywhere, we in the U.S. are now at 2.08 and this is going up (albeit slowly). We were closer to 2 about 5 years ago I think. If you look at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rank
Dara
Re:Nuclear Energy (Score:1, Insightful)
Problem solved decades ago. [wikipedia.org]
Drop your emotional dogma and the human race can get somewhere.
Re:Pragmatism (Score:3, Insightful)
Dwarf Wheat (Score:3, Insightful)
GM is little more than deliberately engineered advantageous mutation.
Re: GM and Corn (Score:4, Insightful)
Changing it at the genetic level through fancy techniques is not incredibly different than isolating a strain for its characteristics and cross pollinating it.
Corn isn't anywhere near what its original form is, being modified for years and years to be the tall vegetable we're accustomed to.
Re:Pragmatism (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps you need to look closer. Those dorks riding scooters and bikes to work might actually be environmentalists. Live downtown? Same thing. Work from home? Entirely possible. You don't have to live off the grid in a house made of recycled tires (although I know someone who does) to be an environmentalist. It's not an all-or-nothing proposition, and not dedicating your entire life to being environmentally friendly does not make you a hypocrite. You don't have to have front-row seats to every single game/concert/whatever to be considered a fan of a sport/a band/whatever, but I see that logic applied to environmentalists, vegetarians, and plenty of other things all the time. It doesn't seem particularly fair to me.
Re:GM crops (Score:4, Insightful)
That is a huge problem. I'd advise subsistance farmers to stay away from store-bought seeds.
They just don't grow.
You'd better hope they don't grow, because if they do grow, you have even worse problems. Just ask the Canadian [savethepinebush.org] farmers [i-sis.org.uk] sued [non-gm-farmers.com] by Monsanto [organicconsumers.org].
On Sept. 11 2001 about 3500 people died in New York. On that same day 44000 children died in Africa of hunger. Is there a war on hunger? NO.
If you folks would like us to invade, overthrow your dictators for you, colonize and Americanise you, just say the word and we'll put you on our list. The whole process might take 100 years or more, and if you don't whole-heartedly embrace the Americanisation part, it just won't work (e.g., the Phillipines). Be aware that the list is already very long, and there is just no way that you're going to get ahead of Iran and North Korea, who have already signed up for the ``get civilized or get dead'' package.
It might be quicker and easier for you to get rid of your Mugabes [66.102.7.104] yourself.
Re:GM crops (Score:1, Insightful)
If the wild type organisms are so well adapted to their particular niches, what do they have to fear from GMOs? You said GMOs could invade like the cane toad, but you say that wild type organisms are perfectly adapted to their environment. Which is it?
Actually, you're right. It's extremely more likely that the wild type organisms are more suited to the particular environment, and will outcompete the GMOs.
And your understanding of the mechanism of evolution is flawed, as it is with most people. Evolution isn't progressive
I'd like to hear specifically what is the problem with engineering a higher quality protein content, drought tolerant corn for African farmers.
Re:Why nuclear? (Score:3, Insightful)
Tidal generators and wind power require huge amount of dispersed equipment. The environmental damage they cause will be spread over a wide area. We already know that wind power actively kills flying animals. I suspect that tidal generators will also be damaging to sea life.
Another example is hydroelectric. Dams are now causing more greenhouse warming due to their emmissions of methane than they save in reduced CO2 emmissions.
Nuclear power is, of course, a dangerous thing if not done carefully. But most non-dense sources of energy are, by their non-dense nature, inherently environmentally damaging.
You are correct that we can feed all the people on the earth if given the will - it is a matter of universal acceptance of capitalism. Hundreds of millions of people have now been brought out of absolute poverty in China and India because of free market reforms since the 1980's.
Re:Pragmatism (Score:4, Insightful)
Your unsupported assumptions that "natural" is somehow ideal and that humanity should be limited suggest that you are basing your opinions on some mysticism, superstition or religion, rather on scientific skepticism.
Re:Pragmatism (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, ideally, you'd have a breeder reactor that burns the Pu as it makes it. I'm a big fan of lead-bismuth designs - if something goes wrong, the very worst case is that your nuclear material gets encased a dozen or two feet inside a giant block of lead
Urbanization may be good for environmentalism (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Pragmatism (Score:3, Insightful)
Or you could be a middle aged, Bush-voting, ex-military, pickup truck owning redstater, basically your uber anti-hippie, and still ride a bicycle to work.
How, you ask? Because I like to ride my bike to work.
no, taste issues more harvest/transport related (Score:5, Insightful)
This is driven mostly by the demand from less well educated (in culinary terms) shoppers wanting to see/feel crisp-looking produce of every variety on the shelf through every season, or with their unwillingness to pay what it costs for the more immediate transportation of those same items if they were left to ripen on the vine/tree, etc. Spend a little more on the same varieties at a higher-end store, and you'll get your flavor back. But you'll also be burning more fuel, because the produce was probably flown to you (unless it's grown locally).
Re:The ideal purpose of GM (ie, when its not some (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know who modded you up, but you don't deserve it, as your logic is fundamentally flawed.
They're not going to dump herbicides with "wreckless abandon" because doing so takes time and money. Farmers, like most people, don't want to spend either unproductively.
A/C and other thoughts (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Insightful? What complete bollocks! (Score:2, Insightful)
God, where to start...
1. "Food aid" does not equate to "airlift". Airlifts are used in emergency situations because they are expensive and deliver a low payload for the effort. Also, airstrips aren't just scattered in every village. You still need local transport, controlled by...wait for it...locals. Or do you mean "airdrop"? Even better - tons of sacks of corn raining down on the locals heads, bursting open on impact.
2. What "unmanned aircraft?" The ones that can barely lift a camera package? I can see it now - millions of drones delivering brown bag lunches delivered by little parachutes. There ARE no unmanned cargo aircraft.
3 The "Army" has little to do with food aid, except in emergency situations. Most local militaries, as well as our liberal friends, would have a fit at military involvement in food distribution. It is mainly handled by NGO's and the UN, who believe they must deal with he local thugs "for the children."
The reason we still give food aid to the thugs that call themselves governments is that it is easier to waste cheap food than explain to the Bono's and "We Are The World" types that, gee, this stuff is kinda complicated.
[mumble]...unmanned cargo aircraft...Lord help me...[/mumble]
Re:GMO rice that increases herbicide sales (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear Energy (Score:3, Insightful)
So is a wind turbine. You still have to amortize it.
A PBMR is more economical no matter how you build it
No. PBMRs are small reactors - in fact, a PBMR will cost you a little over a hundred million instead of the several billion that you'd pay for, say, a CANDU. The lack of a containment structure is *how* they make it economical. They instead use a "confinement structure", which is not positive-pressure.
serious heat
PBMRs operate about 4 times as hot as PWRs
serious pressure
Pressures are roughly equivalent to PWRs
radiation
It is just as radioactive, mass for mass.
shock issues
Shock is bad in any reactor.
Of course, containment structures aren't related to any of the above. They're related to *containment* in the event of an accident; which is what must be discussed here.
There are many PBMR designs
They all use graphite as a moderator and call for air to be used as an emergency coolant, as I said above. I'm not cherry-picking - that's part of what a PBMR is. The other parts of what a PBMR is include helium as primary coolant, a mix of microspheres of fuel and graphite, a pellet recycling method that monitors decay, and a few other basic features. The technical details vary - many designs even include a secondary water cooling loop, which is just asking for problems.
Decent PBMRs don't present these issues
They sure as heck present a number of accident risks. The very testbed for PBMRs in Germany led to a minor leak of radioactive material and a huge economic setback when the pellet feeder jammed, and it took weeks to restore it. This is one of the most minor accident scenarios, however. The most major accident scenarios are on plants that use water secondary cooling and use water for hydrogen generation; water reacts explosively with hot graphite via hydrogen generation, so any water/steam penetration of the core is an immediate, serious accident situation. As for oxygen in the core loop, while fresh nuclear grade graphite is considered incombustable (this is debated), even proponents admit 1-2% erosion at the temperatures PBMRs operate before it cools, and since the graphite will not be fresh (but will have been bombarded for long periods by high intensity radiation and eroded by decay products), the risk is much higher of flammability/erosion. Worse, however, is that unlike the graphite that spread radioactive waste from Chernobyl, this graphite will be in direct contact with the fuel. The contamination of the eroding graphite will be quite severe as a consequence.
While radical environmentalists will try and convince you that every nuclear power plant is a Chernobyl waiting to happen, the converse can be said about nuclear proponents. It's not a ticking time bomb, but it's not some benign power source. Containment structures have prevented about at least a dozen nuclear accidents in the US alone which had the potential to be significant region contaminators. There's no reason to trust a graphite-moderated reactor with such a risk just because it has a negative void coefficient and inert primary coolant.
Re:ermm...herbicides and resistance (Score:1, Insightful)
The farmer *can* soak as much or more pre-emerge herbicide into the ground, as is the current practice, than he adds roundup due to GMO crops. "Barring economical or social (or environmental) issues" (I'm sure you realize that this qualification to the argument immediately removes all relevancy therefrom) there is no hard limit to either practice short of physical saturation of the ground. Of course, doing so with either herbicide would destroy your entire crop due to toxic overdose, over-irrigation (depending on the method of delivery), side-effects of the surfactant (in the case of roundup), or a combination of these and various other reasons. It would be illegal (but that is a social issue), render the land unfarmable--uninhabitable for most organisms for quite some distance around, even--but that is an environmental issue, and cost obscene amounts of money and destroy your product, but, that being an economic issue, is simply another that we are conveniently ignoring for now. Even in this made-up world where we ignore such things, the limit to the amount of herbicide used--the physical volume of herbicide that the ground can absorb--does not change in either situation.
So we see with this ridiculous thought experiment that neither makes possible the use of more herbicide than the other in the absolute sense. When we add those constraints which are present in reality, the scales are tilted heavily in favor of roundup-ready crops for reasons that many other posters have already elaborated.
Your argument that roundup-ready crops will eventually lead to roundup-resistant weeds requiring heavier dosages to kill has some valid ground to stand on (is inevitable, in fact), and has been voiced numerous times before, but cannot be extended as a solid premise for the argument that roundup-ready crops will necessarily lead to greater herbicide use than previous methods, as there are economic limits--namely the previous methods themselves. If it becomes more economical to do so, farmers will simply revert to the old pre-emerge/cultivation practice for weed control. Round-up is expensive. Roundup-ready seed is very expensive--and comes with onerous licensing terms (e.g., allowing Monsanto the right to inspect your crops--possibly destructively--at any time of their choosing, etc.), and even restrictions on the sale of the product to boot. To make a long story short, should the farmer be required to use ridiculous amounts of herbicide to maintain the roundup-ready method of weed control, he won't, simply because he cannot afford it.
I don't rely at all on 'confidence about the inherent wisdom of american farmers' in supporting my position. In fact, I know a few of my neighbors (also commercial farmers) who appear to lack any shred of it. They do, however, understand the bottom line. If they did not, they would not be farming--they'd be bankrupt.
I'll concede that there are bound to be instances where excessive amounts of roundup are used, as there are idiots everywhere who will run any type of business you care to name into the ground. However, the cause of this, the existence of idiots, is not unique to weed control, the business of agriculture general, or any particular segment of humanity (aside from the case in which you group humanity into the sets of idiots and non-idiots).
This is not relevant to your argument, but let me rant on a bit, since I've warmed up to the subject