Showing posts with label environmental. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environmental. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Monday, April 30, 2007
“Bizarro World”
When I was a boy reading “Superman” comics I ran into an alternative universe, Bizarro World”. Quite a few times in my adult life I have felt that I’ve entered that alternative world. I’m having those feelings now.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel have been wearing themselves out by trying to get the message out about global climate change, and that message is being received by the United States as the crazy uncle that you were told to ignore as a kid. We have until 2020 to reduce carbon emissions by eighty percent. That’s less than fifteen years!
By 2050 around a billion people will face food and fresh water shortages. Sea levels will rise, and major populations around the world will be relocated inland. New Orleans was a testing ground for things to come. Anyone who thinks that the government’s reaction to Katrina was about incompetence should realize that they realized that there was no point in salvaging or rebuilding the city. It’s just going to be worse next time and then the next time. So why invest in rebuilding what could be considered the United States version of Atlantis.
The president has finally or kind’a admitted that global climate change might, well, maybe, be caused by humans. What a giant step for the oil man! Now, of course, he’s all for regulations and trying to counter attack the emissions issue, but only as long as it doesn’t have an effect on the economy.
Well I don’t see how it can’t have an effect on the economy. It might be a good move for the economy by developing new technologies as new markets that will replace the old. Though I don’t think things are moving fast enough to create this new economy. We aren’t going to make it because consumerism is so embedded into everyone’s brain.
This leads me back to Bizarro World. We are going to have to start thinking in terms of the Bizarro World where everything is the opposite. Used is good, new is bad. There was a movement during the Great Depression and into World War II where people were involved in saving scrap or recycling clothes and other items, bartering with others, neighborhood gardens, and on and on. We can learn a lot from that generation and time. The attitude has to adjust that old things are coveted, and buying new is wasteful or only okay when necessary.
People are going to have to change:
“I don’t have an air conditioner.”
“Wow! That’s impressive.” They responded.
“I figure it helps prevent black outs and allows people that need the air conditioning to use it.”
Or:
“I’ve been biking to the grocery store. I have to make two trips, but it’s good exercise!”
“Me too. I used to drive my car to the fitness center, but I realized that it lacked some
common sense on my part.”
See what I mean? Write me with a scenario of your own.
Oh yeah and anything plastic should be shunned! Jake Drew
Come join US at http://www.livinginlethargy.com/
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel have been wearing themselves out by trying to get the message out about global climate change, and that message is being received by the United States as the crazy uncle that you were told to ignore as a kid. We have until 2020 to reduce carbon emissions by eighty percent. That’s less than fifteen years!
By 2050 around a billion people will face food and fresh water shortages. Sea levels will rise, and major populations around the world will be relocated inland. New Orleans was a testing ground for things to come. Anyone who thinks that the government’s reaction to Katrina was about incompetence should realize that they realized that there was no point in salvaging or rebuilding the city. It’s just going to be worse next time and then the next time. So why invest in rebuilding what could be considered the United States version of Atlantis.
The president has finally or kind’a admitted that global climate change might, well, maybe, be caused by humans. What a giant step for the oil man! Now, of course, he’s all for regulations and trying to counter attack the emissions issue, but only as long as it doesn’t have an effect on the economy.
Well I don’t see how it can’t have an effect on the economy. It might be a good move for the economy by developing new technologies as new markets that will replace the old. Though I don’t think things are moving fast enough to create this new economy. We aren’t going to make it because consumerism is so embedded into everyone’s brain.
This leads me back to Bizarro World. We are going to have to start thinking in terms of the Bizarro World where everything is the opposite. Used is good, new is bad. There was a movement during the Great Depression and into World War II where people were involved in saving scrap or recycling clothes and other items, bartering with others, neighborhood gardens, and on and on. We can learn a lot from that generation and time. The attitude has to adjust that old things are coveted, and buying new is wasteful or only okay when necessary.
People are going to have to change:
“I don’t have an air conditioner.”
“Wow! That’s impressive.” They responded.
“I figure it helps prevent black outs and allows people that need the air conditioning to use it.”
Or:
“I’ve been biking to the grocery store. I have to make two trips, but it’s good exercise!”
“Me too. I used to drive my car to the fitness center, but I realized that it lacked some
common sense on my part.”
See what I mean? Write me with a scenario of your own.
Oh yeah and anything plastic should be shunned! Jake Drew
Come join US at http://www.livinginlethargy.com/
Monday, April 9, 2007
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Monday, March 12, 2007
Friday, March 2, 2007
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Oil & Cigarettes
Exxon Mobil Corporation announced that 2006 was the most profitable year in their history. Actually in any corporations history! Exxon recorded 39.5 billion dollars in profit for 2006. Within days of this acknowledgement Exxon Mobil was trying to get a federal appeals court to have another look at the $2.5 billion compensation to Alaskans for the 1989 Valdez tanker oil disaster. Originally an Anchorage court ordered the oil corporation to pay $5 billion, but that amount was cut in half.
It made me think about the tobacco company settlement in 1998. Forty-six states took a settlement of 206 billion dollars from the cigarette manufacturers to cover health costs of sick smokers. It took 85 years from the time that the tobacco industry introduced cigarettes to soldiers during World War I to the $206 billion settlement.
1914 was a turning point in the tobacco industry because this hooked a lot of men into smoking cigarettes. It was a boom from that time on. It was 1950 when the first medical report came out that linked lung cancer to cigarette smoking, and in 1965 due to pressure from the U.S. Surgeon General cigarette packages had to carry a warning about cancer and smoking.
No one ever talks about the health risks of inhaling automobile exhaust. Maybe there isn’t any, but I highly doubt it. There is that whole global warming issue – oh, but that’s still debatable at least in the United States.
Automobile production probably hit it’s stride in 1950 after World War II. Americans moved to the suburbs, and by 1956 the street car systems in almost every city had been replaced my bus systems.
So I figure on a comparison time line I’d say that the oil industry can enjoy ample profits until around 2035. That’s about twenty-eight more years before they have to own up to the disasters they have caused to the planet. I don’t know if we can wait that long. I’m not even sure we can wait another ten years!
There is no excuse right now as to why we don’t have affordable, humanitarian friendly, non-gas guzzling transportation or vehicles. If you want to protect your health, write a congressperson about this concern. There is no reason why the oil industry is making humongous profits at the cost of human lives. We tax the heck out of the tobacco industry, so why does the oil industry get by?
- Jake Drew
Come visit us at http://www.LivinginLethargy.com
It made me think about the tobacco company settlement in 1998. Forty-six states took a settlement of 206 billion dollars from the cigarette manufacturers to cover health costs of sick smokers. It took 85 years from the time that the tobacco industry introduced cigarettes to soldiers during World War I to the $206 billion settlement.
1914 was a turning point in the tobacco industry because this hooked a lot of men into smoking cigarettes. It was a boom from that time on. It was 1950 when the first medical report came out that linked lung cancer to cigarette smoking, and in 1965 due to pressure from the U.S. Surgeon General cigarette packages had to carry a warning about cancer and smoking.
No one ever talks about the health risks of inhaling automobile exhaust. Maybe there isn’t any, but I highly doubt it. There is that whole global warming issue – oh, but that’s still debatable at least in the United States.
Automobile production probably hit it’s stride in 1950 after World War II. Americans moved to the suburbs, and by 1956 the street car systems in almost every city had been replaced my bus systems.
So I figure on a comparison time line I’d say that the oil industry can enjoy ample profits until around 2035. That’s about twenty-eight more years before they have to own up to the disasters they have caused to the planet. I don’t know if we can wait that long. I’m not even sure we can wait another ten years!
There is no excuse right now as to why we don’t have affordable, humanitarian friendly, non-gas guzzling transportation or vehicles. If you want to protect your health, write a congressperson about this concern. There is no reason why the oil industry is making humongous profits at the cost of human lives. We tax the heck out of the tobacco industry, so why does the oil industry get by?
- Jake Drew
Come visit us at http://www.LivinginLethargy.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
