Sir David Attenborough (mod note - now climate change)

[Koolau]

I remember things were even worse. Didn’t a lot of water and air get cleaned up, pollution reduced, EPA stuff when we were young adults? Rivers on fire? Huge toxic waste sites cleaned up? It would have been even worse today.

Oh, and by the way, we (that is to say, the Greatest Generation) DID win WWII! We wouldn't be having this discussion if the Axis were now in charge of the world. I think that should cut a little slack to those who came home and built cracker boxes without enough insulation and drove BIG 3 whales. We're figuring it out now. The USA is back to 1990's levels of CO2 emissions so it's not like we're doing nothing.

We could argue all day about who did what and who didn't do enough. I think it's more instructive to look ahead and see how we might improve without fundamentally changing our lives. BUT of course, that is what some propose.

Hey, how about that Sir David Attenborough guy!

 

[Rianne]

Hey, how about that Sir David Attenborough guy!

Yes please change to Sir David Attenborough. I apologize for being sloppy and in a hurry.

Lyrics from a Ten Years After song ring in my ears. I suppose those lyrics fit into this discussion:

“I’d love to change the world, but I don’t know what to do. So I’ll leave it up to you.”

 

[Koolau]

Yes please change to Sir David Attenborough. I apologize for being sloppy and in a hurry.

Lyrics from a Ten Years After song ring in my ears. I suppose those lyrics fit into this discussion:

“I’d love to change the world, but I don’t know what to do. So I’ll leave it up to you.”

Then there are these lyrics from the Beatles:

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're all doing what we can

But, YMMV.

 

[Montecfo]

If the big corporations changed from fossil fuels to sustainable fuels it will help a lot. Imagine an economy focusing on solar, wind, sustainable energy. Imagine they stopped making plastics. And people focused on a vegetarian based diet. No big farms. Imagine fertilizer and insecticide companies moving to natural rather than chemical products. What's wrong with that world? The Norwegian countries do sustainable farming and are very successful. Corporations could actually help this problem.

Sustainable energy can only supplement fossil fuels. This is very evident in California with the rolling blackouts.

We should not, in my opinion, suggest fossil fuels can currently be eliminated. Instead we should embrace far cleaner natural gas while technology for renewable energy advances.

And of course, the US cannot lower the thermostat, and that is likely not possible, so we need to adapt to a slow rise in temperatures until that trend changes.

 

[Koolau]

If the big corporations changed from fossil fuels to sustainable fuels it will help a lot. Imagine an economy focusing on solar, wind, sustainable energy. Imagine they stopped making plastics. And people focused on a vegetarian based diet. No big farms. Imagine fertilizer and insecticide companies moving to natural rather than chemical products. What's wrong with that world? The Norwegian countries do sustainable farming and are very successful. Corporations could actually help this problem.

Someone posted a TED talk showing that replacing fossil fuels with wind/solar would take (IIRC) something like 1/4 or more of our land mass. IIRC it didn't even take into account that we don't know how to store energy for when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow. Naturally, YMMV.

Anyone recall where that TED talk can be accessed?

 

[target2019]

What percentage of the Earth's mass is affected by digging, drilling, fracking, etc.? What is the future impact of those activities?

 

[Music Lover]

What percentage of the Earth's mass is affected by digging, drilling, fracking, etc.? What is the future impact of those activities?

There are costs to all of those activities but they have to be weighed against greatly increased life expectancy and a higher quality of life. There's a good reason why the average life expectancy was half of it is today just a short while ago. A lot of people like camping but only a very, very small percentage want to live like that their entire life.

The good news is that people are now aware of the flaws of those technologies and great strides are being made to minimize the impact.

 

[Koolau]

There are costs to all of those activities but they have to be weighed against greatly increased life expectancy and a higher quality of life. There's a good reason why the average life expectancy was half of it is today just a short while ago. A lot of people like camping but only a very, very small percentage want to live like that their entire life.

The good news is that people are now aware of the flaws of those technologies and great strides are being made to minimize the impact.

+1

Actually, There's a spot I occasionally drive through in the midwest that has hundreds of windmills. They stretch for as far as the eye can see in any direction. I've been around most of this country and I can't think of any area so obviously affected by fossil fuel extraction with the possible exception of the Corpus Christi area of TX. That's pretty stunning to see for the first time.

These days, laws require, for instance, strip mines to restore the land after extraction. While fracking might extend miles underground, I doubt you'd even notice a fracking installation unless you drove within a couple of miles of it. Pipelines are underground.

I'm sure there are some real eyesores with open pit mining and so forth. These places are becoming fewer and farther between. Still these "ugly" places are MUCH smaller than a "real" multi-megawatt wind farm as I described. Not saying wind farms "bad", fracking "good." Not saying that at all. Just saying that the obvious trappings of fossil fuel extraction aren't anything close to 25% of the land mass. I'd be very surprised if they were 1% but I'm not an expert and I do not know. SO YMMV.

 

[Beststash]

We seem to spend a lot of time justifying things like fracking, fossil fuels, poor farming practices instead of welcoming ways of making our planet cleaner and more sustainable based upon 21st Century solutions.

Some like to call this political - I call it common sense. What is the downside.....inevitable change?

 

[Koolau]

We seem to spend a lot of time justifying things like fracking, fossil fuels, poor farming practices instead of welcoming ways of making our planet cleaner and more sustainable based upon 21st Century solutions.

Some like to call this political - I call it common sense. What is the downside.....inevitable change?

Since you ask, I would say the downside is dramatically increased energy costs. Of course YMMV.

 

[stepford]

What is the downside.....inevitable change?

The downside is increased short term cost. If you take a free market approach to everything then increased cost decreases profit and is hence BAD and nothing else matters.

 

[Music Lover]

We seem to spend a lot of time justifying things like fracking, fossil fuels, poor farming practices instead of welcoming ways of making our planet cleaner and more sustainable based upon 21st Century solutions.

Some like to call this political - I call it common sense. What is the downside.....inevitable change?

It's not justifying to point out the benefits and all the problems that fossil fuels have eliminated. They have also made the planet cleaner. For example:

"In New York in 1900, the population of 100,000 horses produced 2.5 million pounds of horse manure per day, which all had to be swept up and disposed of."

https://fee.org/articles/the-great-horse-manure-crisis-of-1894/

 

[Aerides]

Thanks for the interesting discussion.