How to be an Environmental Steward?

[Bash]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

"Too many people" is not the central problem. It's fairly well established that as societies achieve higher quality of life, the birth-rate falls.

Which is why the population of Planet Earth is lower today than it was 200 years ago?

The problem is not the birth rate going up as much as the mortality rate going down. Not enough people dying. We just can't seem to figure out that this means that it's time to have fewer kids. Far fewer.

[dandrews]

[QUOTE="Bash;1327778"]

Which is why the population of Planet Earth is lower today than it was 200 years ago?

Hmmm am I reading this wrong? Population is lower than 200 years ago? Perhaps the death rates lower but we are over 7 billion now. In 1810 we were about 1 billion.

Don

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Bash

The problem is not the birth rate going up as much as the mortality rate going down. Not enough people dying. We just can't seem to figure out that this means that it's time to have fewer kids. Far fewer.

Yes, absolutely correct. It is lower child mortality rates that are driving up populations. But as I and others have pointed out many times, this fixation with over population -- which is a very real issue -- is at best only 1/2 the global problem. The other half is intensity of resource use here in the "developed" countries (And 1/2 is being generous. In fact our contribution is far more than 1/2).

The fundamental problem is unsustainable use of finite resources and systems. Large populations drive heavy usage, but high per-capita usage does the same (or more). We keep seeing this reference to global population, and pointing to it -- to them -- as the problem. In fact, the rates of population expansion have been declining in the developing world for some time. Global populations are predicted to peak at around 9 billion, and then decline by the end of the decade. So in some substantive ways, the population problem is being addressed.

What isn't being address in any serious way is OUR use of resources. OUR per-capita use of the globe's resources keep going up. And worse still, those following in our developmental footsteps are pursuing the same resource-intense path.

Lake-Effect is correct, we do need to carve a different path. But it's not our moral duty. It's simply enlightened self-interest.

[Lake-Effect]

This.

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

What isn't being address in any serious way is OUR use of resources. OUR per-capita use of the globe's resources keep going up. And worse still, those following in our developmental footsteps are pursuing the same resource-intense path.

Lake-Effect is correct, we do need to carve a different path. But it's not our moral duty. It's simply enlightened self-interest.

You say potAto, I say potAHto...

[Capt Rottnest]

All this talk about planet earth is well and good, but here in Australia we've managed to screw the fortunes of the young comprehensively. To keep the baby boomers happy, tons of government money has poured into stimulating and subsidising property investments.

Of course, being property, any "free dollars" gets leveraged 20:1

The result is, we have the most unaffordable housing in the world. Rents have soared too, since "property investors", despite being heavily subsidised, dont build new housing stock. So we have a shortage of homes, thus explaining the rise in homelessness.

There is a fair bit of resentment towards Baby boomers here, I'm one myself, but I dont blame them. They had the free university education and then they were handed the property market.

It happens Oz is one of only 3 countries who have this policy (negative gearing), the others being Canada & New Zealand.

Anyway, to keep it about boats, you can see all the subsidised aussie property gurus today, they are all on cats. It's why cats are so expensive over here...

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Capt Rottnest

All this talk about planet earth is well and good, but here in Australia we've managed to screw the fortunes of the young comprehensively. To keep the baby boomers happy, tons of government money has poured into stimulating and subsidising property investments.
...
It happens Oz is one of only 3 countries who have this policy (negative gearing), the others being Canada & New Zealand.

I've never heard of 'negative gearing'... must look into it.

Of course property has always been an investment vehicle ("Buy land - they're not making any more of it"), and home ownership for many people is about the total extent of their investment activity.

I used to look enviously across the border at the US, where the mortgage interest on a residence is tax-deductible, but I later came to understand how this skewed US house prices and mortgage costs, compared to Canada. It was certainly a factor in encouraging over-leveraging of household equity in the run-up to the crash of 2008.

This is all part of the stewardship thing. Pimping short-term gains at the expense of future generations isn't good stewardship.

[Capt Rottnest]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

I've never heard of 'negative gearing'... must look into it.

Of course property has always been an investment vehicle ("Buy land - they're not making any more of it"), and home ownership for many people is about the total extent of their investment activity.

I used to look enviously across the border at the US, where the mortgage interest on a residence is tax-deductible, but I later came to understand how this skewed US house prices and mortgage costs, compared to Canada. It was certainly a factor in encouraging over-leveraging of household equity in the run-up to the crash of 2008.

This is all part of the stewardship thing. Pimping short-term gains at the expense of future generations isn't good stewardship.

You're own home isnt an investment (Adam Smith said this 200 years ago). But the 2nd, 3rd, 4th.. property is. Thats when the government starts throwing big tax credits at you..
I dont know anything about Canada, maybe its called something else, but its common knowledge here that only 2 other nations in world who do this rather perverted subsidise landlord thing.

[sabray]

60,000 trash bags are used in the us every second. I put my trash in a container. Then dump that to the pick up can.no liner needed . My work place reduced the 15000 dollars annually spent for trash bags to 5000 dollars by changing the cleaning staff practices. We have non lined containers for dry trash. A few years ago every container in every office had every lined container pulled and a new liner put in place. Common practice. Bulking the waste reduced the trash bags. This is a facility with about 1000 person occupancy per day. Hope someone picks up on this best practice.
I kid you not our cleaning staff was basically throwing away trash bags. We bought the bags we bagged the bags with a few tissues and then threw them away. Paying for the trash haulers to haul away the bags we were buying.
Brilliant

[sabray]

Oops I read through the thread and realized that I was off topic . This is about grand ways that we can promote birth control or not and quibble rather then share an idea. **** Not about ideas and things we might do to be efficient cost effective and forward thinking. Except a few I will review them create a thread called ways to be good cost effective stewards.

[jongleur]

Lake-Effect said: It's fairly well established that as societies achieve higher quality of life, the birth-rate falls.

Correlation is not causation.

The number one
thing that slows the fertility rate of any
country is simply access to contraception
(by a factor of 10 to 1 over any other
thing, such as quality of life).

Simply access to contraception.

Scientific American Magazine, December 1993 page 60.

And yes, overpopulation is the central problem.
Without solving that, all other problems are
insoluble.

[sabray]

Any idea how I can reduce the world population above and beyond my common practice and investment in a major supplier of prophylactic?
Was this the intent of this thread?

[transmitterdan]

The only two things required to continue and further advance the human race is access to and the brains to harness energy. That is what allows us to have boats in the first place. It is what we use to feed ourselves. Humans cannot exist as a dominant species without access to and control of energy.

Someone asked how can we be sure there is a brighter future? If there is an answer it has to be energy. Oil has a bit over 5 giga joules of extractable energy per barrel. Einstein explained that energy within matter is E=MCC. By that equation oil is less efficient than the theoretical maximum by a factor more than a trillion times.

The solution then is energy sources more efficient than oil, coal and gas. One possibility is fusion. As things stand today we are about 100 years away from abundant fusion power. That is unless politicians continue to divert needed resources to numerous schemes thousands of times less efficient even than oil. If we really care about the continued existence and advancement of humans on earth we should consider supporting energy solutions that first work theoretically and stop wasting vast resources on those that fail simple grade school math.

If, on the other hand, we want less people on the planet and want those remaining to spend more time working harder and living shorter lives we can keep pushing wind, solar and any other idea that wastes resources on ideas way less efficient than what we have today. It's that simple.

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by sabray

Oops I read through the thread and realized that I was off topic . This is about grand ways that we can promote birth control or not and quibble rather then share an idea. **** Not about ideas and things we might do to be efficient cost effective and forward thinking. Except a few I will review them create a thread called ways to be good cost effective stewards.

Like you, I believe that change starts at the bottom with an individual effort. But I see that I've been properly chastised on this thread for believing this folly... for those that are in the BIG GOVERNMENT camp have spoken... change can only happen after my mind has been changed, and I believe what they believe.

This is why I go sailing.... to get away from people who think that way who insist on spewing their crap on the rest of us.

[DiverChick71]

Originally Posted by Don L

Well I've had enough of this, so I'm going to get in my car and drive the hour plus to the boat. I will probably stop along the way for few beers and dinner in some air conditioned place. I may not be able to eat all of my meal as it probably has enough calories for a whole day plus, but might have a salad with that has lettuce that got shipped all the way from South America.

Tomorrow I want to go south, but the wind is suppose to be out of the south, so I expert some motoring. But that is good for the envio as I will have hot water as a result instead of running the engine to just make hot water. I expert to have some food out of the frig along the way, but that has been kept cold with a solar panel that the Chinese made while polluting their lands, so that counts as green.

I probably will take my dinghy in once I get to wherever, using my outboard that drips gas all the time while running. I could probably fix the outboard, but it has been running so much better since it started dripping. I could get a new outboard, but that seems wasteful so the dripping outboard seems to be the better green choice.

The forecast says that should be able to sail back on Monday, but I've heard that lie before. But if it does workout I probably will need to use the big chemically make sail, but it is a sail so it must really be green no matter what was used to make it.

I was looking at the lawn the other day because a section needs to be reseeded. But that would involve fertilizers, so I'm going to just let the weeds continue to have it. That way I will have done something green again.

Now that I think of it there are green choices everywhere.

PS - you guys need to lighten up

Dying laughing....perfect.

[Coops]

Folks, I have deleted a few posts that violated our rules and those that responded to them. You are welcome to discuss this subject, for now, but if you cannot do it within the forum rules then it will be coming to an end.

Coops.