Screwdriver wrote: ↑Sun Jul 02, 2023 11:54 pm
Again it's not my fault or yours but greedy global businesses and corporation who all KNOW their products are generating massive pollution before being shipped half way round the world> It's greed, profit and turn a blind eye. These are political problems, not technology or consumer based problems. We can't throw technology at the problem, nor can we pass the blame onto the consumer or somehow expect us to solve the issue at this end of the chain.
The problem is with the corporations and businesses who will do anytime to chase profit, drive excess consumerism and increase throughput. The even bigger problem is, they are also the ones who get to decide how to address the problem. Naturally their solution is to simply make us give them more money...
So just what, exactly, is driving all this pollution and enabling global warming (or heating as it's now called)? It's consumer demand. The consumer (i.e. you and me) cannot be let off the hook and all the blame passed over to 'greedy global businesses and corporations'. All the business are doing is to satisfy our apparently insatiable demand for a vast range of products, most of them overpriced tat.
There has to be an acceptance that all this economic activity is consumer-driven. All the 'greedy global businesses and corporations' have done is transfer production to lower-cost regions and in doing so transfer the majority of the pollution and drivers of global warming to a poorer part of the world, where it's no longer our problem.
We (everyone in the civilised world) needs to accept that the constant growth, ever increasing standard of living model is unsustainable. I cannot, and will not survive in the long term.
We have a choice, stop now and develop a sustainable model, or carry on until the model collapses. A few people want to do the long term thing, the overwhelming majority say "Sod that, I'm all right Jack". Nothing the minority can do except sit back, ready to say "I told you so".
Cousin Jack wrote: ↑Mon Jul 03, 2023 11:26 am
We (everyone in the civilised world) needs to accept that the constant growth, ever increasing standard of living model is unsustainable. I cannot, and will not survive in the long term.
We have a choice, stop now and develop a sustainable model, or carry on until the model collapses. A few people want to do the long term thing, the overwhelming majority say "Sod that, I'm all right Jack". Nothing the minority can do except sit back, ready to say "I told you so".
Let's start by banning air travel for leisure and non essential business travel, just in the UK.
One crisp winter morning in Sweden, a little girl named Greta woke up to a perfect world, one where there were no petroleum products ruining the earth. She tossed aside her cotton sheet and wool blanket and stepped out onto a dirt floor covered with willow bark that had been pulverized with rocks.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Pulverized willow bark,” replied her fairy godmother.
“What happened to the carpet?” she asked.
“The carpet was nylon, which is made from butadiene and hydrogen cyanide, both made from petroleum,” came the response.
Greta smiled, acknowledging that adjustments are necessary to save the planet, and moved to the sink to brush her teeth where instead of a toothbrush, she found a willow, mangled on one end to expose wood fibre bristles.
“Your old toothbrush?” noted her godmother, “Also nylon.”
“Where’s the water?” asked Greta.
“Down the road in the canal,” replied her godmother, ‘Just make sure you avoid water with cholera in it”
“Why’s there no running water?”
Greta asked, becoming a little peevish.
“Well,” said her godmother, who happened to teach engineering at MIT, “Where do we begin?” There followed a long monologue about how sink valves need elastomer seats and how copper pipes contain copper, which has to be mined and how it’s impossible to make all-electric earth-moving equipment with no gear lubrication or tires and how ore has to be smelted to a make metal, and that’s tough to do with only electricity as a source of heat, and even if you use only electricity, the wires need insulation, which is petroleum-based, and though most of Sweden’s energy is produced in an environmentally friendly way because of hydro and nuclear, if you do a mass and energy balance around the whole system, you still need lots of petroleum products like lubricants and nylon and rubber for tires and asphalt for filling potholes and wax and iPhone plastic and elastic to hold your underwear up while operating a copper smelting furnace and . . .
“What’s for breakfast?” interjected Greta, whose head was hurting.
"Fresh, range-fed chicken eggs,” replied her godmother. “Raw.”
“How so, raw?” inquired Greta.
“Well, . . .”
And once again, Greta was told about the need for petroleum products like transformer oil and scores of petroleum products essential for producing metals for frying pans and in the end was educated about how you can’t have a petroleum-free world and then cook eggs. Unless you rip your front fence up and start a fire and carefully cook your egg in an orange peel like you do in Boy Scouts. Not that you can find oranges in Sweden anymore.
“But I want poached eggs like my Aunt Tilda makes,” lamented Greta.
“Tilda died this morning,” the godmother explained. “Bacterial pneumonia.”
“What?!” interjected Greta. “No one dies of bacterial pneumonia! We have penicillin.”
“Not anymore,” explained godmother “The production of penicillin requires chemical extraction using isobutyl acetate, which, if you know your organic chemistry, is petroleum-based. Lots of people are dying, which is problematic because there’s not any easy way of disposing of the bodies since backhoes need hydraulic oil and crematoriums can’t really burn many bodies using as fuel Swedish fences and furniture, which are rapidly disappearing - being used on the black market for roasting eggs and staying warm.”
This represents only a fraction of Greta’s day, a day without microphones to exclaim into and a day without much food, and a day without carbon-fibre boats to sail in, but a day that will save the planet.
Tune in tomorrow when Greta needs a root canal and learns how Novocain is synthesized.
We need oil to keep the over privileged indecisive protesting prat’s in the life they are accustomed but they can’t see it for themselves.
Cousin Jack wrote: ↑Mon Jul 03, 2023 11:26 am
We (everyone in the civilised world) needs to accept that the constant growth, ever increasing standard of living model is unsustainable. I cannot, and will not survive in the long term.
We have a choice, stop now and develop a sustainable model, or carry on until the model collapses. A few people want to do the long term thing, the overwhelming majority say "Sod that, I'm all right Jack". Nothing the minority can do except sit back, ready to say "I told you so".
Let's start by banning air travel for leisure and non essential business travel, just in the UK.
Pointless, saving <1% of the polution from air travel will achieve nothing, except inconvenience a few people
Cousin Jack wrote: ↑Mon Jul 03, 2023 11:26 am
We (everyone in the civilised world) needs to accept that the constant growth, ever increasing standard of living model is unsustainable. I cannot, and will not survive in the long term.
We have a choice, stop now and develop a sustainable model, or carry on until the model collapses. A few people want to do the long term thing, the overwhelming majority say "Sod that, I'm all right Jack". Nothing the minority can do except sit back, ready to say "I told you so".
Let's start by banning air travel for leisure and non essential business travel, just in the UK.
Pointless, saving <1% of the polution from air travel will achieve nothing, except inconvenience a few people
Maybe that's the best way to start, score everything on it's value to society. Plenty of people will claim it's a human right for their mental health but give them the choice between that and their car they may change their mind.
Allocate everyone a number of tons of CO2 every year and everything they buy will have the supply CO2 taken off the ration, people with money will suddenly find lots of ways to help save the planet.
Mussels wrote: ↑Mon Jul 03, 2023 12:28 pm
Allocate everyone a number of tons of CO2 every year and everything they buy will have the supply CO2 taken off the ration, people with money will suddenly find lots of ways to help save the planet.
That might work, but it needs to cover everyone, worldwide. I am not going to be happy giving up my air travel if POTUS can fly in several very large planes just to go to a meeting in Europe that is mainly a photo op.
Cousin Jack wrote: ↑Mon Jul 03, 2023 11:26 am
We (everyone in the civilised world) needs to accept that the constant growth, ever increasing standard of living model is unsustainable. I cannot, and will not survive in the long term.
We have a choice, stop now and develop a sustainable model, or carry on until the model collapses. A few people want to do the long term thing, the overwhelming majority say "Sod that, I'm all right Jack". Nothing the minority can do except sit back, ready to say "I told you so".
Let's start by banning air travel for leisure and non essential business travel, just in the UK.
Pointless, saving <1% of the polution from air travel will achieve nothing, except inconvenience a few people
Got to start somewhere, but if you think a few people being inconvenienced is more important than saving the world then it's not worth bothering with.
Mussels wrote: ↑Mon Jul 03, 2023 12:28 pm
Allocate everyone a number of tons of CO2 every year and everything they buy will have the supply CO2 taken off the ration, people with money will suddenly find lots of ways to help save the planet.
That might work, but it needs to cover everyone, worldwide. I am not going to be happy giving up my air travel if POTUS can fly in several very large planes just to go to a meeting in Europe that is mainly a photo op.
Everyone, same rules? Hmmmm
United Airlines canceled 751 flights last Wednesday, more than any other airline. So when it emerged that United CEO Scott Kirby bypassed the congestion by flying on a private jet that day, he apologized: "Taking a private jet was the wrong decision because it was insensitive to our customers who were waiting to get home. I sincerely apologize to our customers and our team members who have been working around-the-clock for several days — often through severe weather — to take care of our customers.”
Mussels wrote: ↑Mon Jul 03, 2023 12:28 pm
Allocate everyone a number of tons of CO2 every year and everything they buy will have the supply CO2 taken off the ration, people with money will suddenly find lots of ways to help save the planet.
The theory is that it is an incentive to reduce your carbon emissions and sell remaining rights. If you want to produce more carbon, you buy in the secondary market.
Cousin Jack wrote: ↑Mon Jul 03, 2023 12:19 pm
Pointless, saving <1% of the polution from air travel will achieve nothing, except inconvenience a few people
Got to start somewhere, but if you think a few people being inconvenienced is more important than saving the world then it's not worth bothering with.
OK, you start. I'll join in later.
CJ
Selfish bastard
I started years ago, I haven't flown anywhere since 2003
Mussels wrote: ↑Mon Jul 03, 2023 12:28 pm
Allocate everyone a number of tons of CO2 every year and everything they buy will have the supply CO2 taken off the ration, people with money will suddenly find lots of ways to help save the planet.
The theory is that it is an incentive to reduce your carbon emissions and sell remaining rights. If you want to produce more carbon, you buy in the secondary market.
Is it effective? Fuck knows.
It isn't.
There are a myriad of different 'standards' for a companies 'greeness'. Some are a fair attempt, some are crap. Then there are the secondary markets, some sellers are honest and fair, some are sharks. They plant 1m trees, and walk away. And 5 years later, when all those trees have died from unsuitable conditions and lack of care, and after the land has been sold 3 times to cover the tracks, they sell another 1m trees in the same place. Rinse and repeat, or even just say you planted the trees, who is checking?
The good news is that the International Financial Reporting Standards body is in the process of setting up some agreed international standards that should bring some order into the chaos. Like all international standards it is a slow, painful process. However it has 1 good thing going for it, the CJ sprog is Programme Director for the process.
