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WandaFuca
Gym climber
San Fernando Lamas
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Jul 30, 2007 - 12:51am PT
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Love it or leave it.
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MikeL
climber
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Jul 30, 2007 - 01:19am PT
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http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.html?topic_id=79639&msg=79753#msg79753
partial excerpt:
". . . there are two classical and competing views about man’s relation to nature, both founded on distinctions about nature and society. In the first classical approach to the subject, nature is the raw material of man’s freedom that gave rise to harsh times and necessity. In a second classical approach, man is the polluter of nature. Nature in both cases is nature without man, and untouched by man: mountains, forests, lakes, and rivers."
"The U.S. is a great stage for the confrontation for these two philosophical approaches. The two present a classical confrontation between a comfortable, calculating, progressive approach to nature fundamentally grounded in rational self-interest, against that of a more feeling-oriented, primitive expression of man and nature that is somehow distant, attractive, and romantic—-a longing for a state of nature unsullied by society’s impossible demands, where true happiness has been replaced by the pursuit of safety and comfort of modern civilization. . . . . [O]n the one hand, you have the farmer who never looked at America’s trees, fields, and streams with a romantic eye. The trees are to be felled, to make clearings, build houses, and heat them; the fields are to be tilled to produce more food, or as sources of power. Then on the other hand there is the Sierra Club, which is dedicated to preventing such violations of nature from going any further, and certainly seems to regret what was already done."
"Perhaps more interesting is the coexistence of these opposing sentiments in the most advanced political minds today that leads to our political confusion. Nature is raw material, worthless without the mixture of human labor; yet nature is also the highest and most sacred thing of all. The same people who struggle to save the snail-darter bless the pill, worry about hunting deer and defend abortion. In some people’s view (like mine), it is a reverence for nature or a reverence for mastery of nature—but whichever is most convenient for us."
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paganmonkeyboy
Trad climber
the blighted lands of hatu
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Jul 30, 2007 - 01:50am PT
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i just want to leave it better than i found it.
the last time i went in to the woods for a week alone, no trail, i still carried out 7 lbs of garbage i came across (who the f*#k brings a 5 lb glass jar of mayonnaise into the woods ??? those had better be the best damn sammiches *ever*...)
i don't have any kids, but many people do. i want them to have it as good or better than i found it. preferably *better*, but it's not looking as good as it could...
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Mtnmun
Trad climber
Top of the Mountain Mun
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Jul 30, 2007 - 02:00am PT
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Man has already mined all the materials needed to sustain industry on this planet for eternity. All we have to do is mine our dumps and recycle.
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Dropline
Mountain climber
Somewhere Up There
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Jul 30, 2007 - 10:59am PT
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Definition of a modern environmentalist...
"Someone who thinks someone else should change the way they live."
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
New York, NY
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Jul 30, 2007 - 11:51am PT
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There's a guy who sets out used books and magazines on the Upper West Side. Take as you please. I often take a book or two when they're out and when I'm finished, put it in a spot where it's likely to be picked up by another reader interested in the subject. I've gotten some great reads with topics I'd never have sought on my own, and appreciate this street library.
Anyway.... Last time out, there were five editions of "Orion" magazine." I had never heard of the title, but one had a drawing of a bearded man, with the headline "Edward Abbey: The Unpublished Letters."(July/August 2006)
This inrigued me, since I had gotten the smallest introduction to Abbey here on ST(in a thread where Piton Ron mentioned a film being made of his "The MonkeyWrench Gang." I picked up the magazine and purused it, quickly discerning that I'd be interetsed in what this publication had to say....I scooped up the others, with a promise to myslef to pass them along as I finished with them.
I am finding the stories and information so interesting and educational that I will be sending in a donation/subscription to Orion (Orion.org).
The magazines say that "Orion explores an emerging alternative worldview. Informed by a growing ecological awareness and the need for cultural change, it is a forum for thoughtful and creative ideas and practical examples of how we might live justly, wisely and artfully on earth."
One story detailed about a new group of environmentalists who are working to safeguard cattle-grazing in the southwest because the impact to open space outweights what would occur if the ranch industry fails(development into residential areas and such).
Another story(May/June 2007) talks about plastics, and how as of the present, every bit of plastic that has ever been created is still here in our world. The degradation rate is that slow. Goes on to mention how, even as the plastics break down, the molecules remain, and as trash washes into the sea...the small bits are "bite-sized" for the smallest seas creatures. Talks about these eddy-type areas of the ocean the size of Africa, that are repositories of trash. Goes on to have one guy who says something akin to "In the long run.....organisms wil evolve that will eat these molecules."
Very interesting stories, nice artist profiles and highlights of their work. Lots to think about.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Jul 30, 2007 - 11:53am PT
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DMT wrote; "I'm not an Environmentalist and don't associate with that 'movement' much. I consider myself a conservationist."
That's pretty much where I stand as well. The difference between the two is that a conservationist understands the need to co-habitate with the natural world in harmony. An environmentalist puts the natural world above the existence of humans...and they always try and tell you how to live your life.
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the Fet
Knackered climber
A bivy sack in the secret campground
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Jul 30, 2007 - 12:17pm PT
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"An environmentalist puts the natural world above the existence of humans...and they always try and tell you how to live your life. "
At least that's what the right-wingers would like you to believe. LOL! When the opposition is crazy dirty hippies you don't have to listen to them... I'd guess far less than 1 percent of people who considers themselves an environmentalist is like that.
I recently saw An Inconvenient Truth, pretty late to the party for an environ-mental-ist like me. The best part was the end. After all the doom and gloom, he showed some graphs demonstrating if we used new technologies, and reduced our impacts (driving smaller cars etc.) we could easily reduce our emissions enough to stop contributing to global warming.
CFCs are a great example. When they were banned, selfish people were crying "it will cost too much, developing nations will still use them, refridgerators will cost twice as much". Guess what, an alternative was soon developed, costs didn't go up, and we've reversed the holes in the ozone layer and probably saved many people from cancer, etc.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Jul 30, 2007 - 12:21pm PT
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Explain Fet, what's the differnece between conservationaist and environmentalist in your opinion?
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the Fet
Knackered climber
A bivy sack in the secret campground
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Jul 30, 2007 - 12:22pm PT
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Pretty much the same thing IMO.
A "preservationist" however is more like enviro-nazi IMO.
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dirtbag
climber
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Jul 30, 2007 - 12:37pm PT
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the Fet describes how I feel.
I've worked for various universities and public agencies most of my life on various environmental issues, mostly dealing with wildlife conservation. The loss of biodiversity the world is currently experiencing is enormous and underreported in the popular press. We are only beginning to understand the implications of this loss.
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fowweezer
Trad climber
Pleasant Grove, UT
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Jul 30, 2007 - 12:52pm PT
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I am definitely a conservationist, and try to minimize my impact both in the wilderness and at home. I don't always do the best job, but am doing better.
What really gets me is when the damn Sierra Club and National Parks Conservation Association send me so much paper product. I donated $20 to NPCA a year ago. I recieved a blanket, a calendar, and at least 3 big business size envelopes (you know, the document sized ones) full of papers and a cute picture of a bear.
I mean, I use the blanket, but I don't need a calendar. And I'm not reading your f*#king newsletter. Stop cutting down trees and spending my $20 to try to milk me for more.
F*#k....
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Dropline
Mountain climber
Somewhere Up There
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Jul 30, 2007 - 01:08pm PT
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Dirt, Fet, and others, I agree. The impact of humans on other species on the planet is enormous, and these impacts are also adversly affecting entire systems. There are simply too many of us on the planet. This bounty of people has been created by simultaneous advances in medicine and agriculture over the last century.
What I find interesting is that people recognzie the problem but think they, somehow, are not part of it. Some here identify themselves as climbers and environmentalists and they post about how the world has to change. But most of them drive and fly to climb, often around some pretty geographically diverse parts of the USA, and sometimes around the world. So too they post here on The Taco but there isn't anything environmentally friendly about computers.
I'm not saying these are bad people, just that hypocrisy is the 800 lb gorilla in the china shop of environmentalism. George Monbiot's Eco-Junk essay above posted by Maldaly ends the hypocrisy but replaces it with something perhaps worse, that being eco-socialism.
The spectre on the horizon, or perhaps just over the hill, is of centrailized governments dictating the most fundamental aspects of how we live in order to protect "nature".
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jul 30, 2007 - 01:17pm PT
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Nick D wrote
"The mining, the chemical plants, the refineries that these kind of objects entail is staggering. Can I give them up? Probably not. No more than those in the 3rd world (that would be rural NM!) can reasonably be asked to give up things like refridgeration, or phones, etc... "
It may be true the folks will not willing give up their luxuries. That's probably human nature. Would you kill for them? Or have our brave heros in the military kill so you can have your luxuries? That's what it can come down to.
I do disagree wh"The only way everyone can be happy is if we all share a reasonable standard of living," if you mean a standard of living considerably higher than much of the world has. I know that's not true because I've seen many, many people just as happy with much less.
But it won't be a matter of you giving up those things, they'll be giving YOU up. (or more likely, they'll be giving your kids up.
As for population control. It would be the greatest step to easing our problems, but, as China knows, the devil is in the details. It's enough to make a guy suspicious when one of these new viruses starts moving around the world. It's getting easier and easier to design them these days. Not hard to fear that some neocon thinkers from somewhere might decide to ease this population problem with their own methods one day.
Peace
Karl
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marky
climber
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Jul 30, 2007 - 01:32pm PT
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on population control -- implement a "progressive" tax for having a child, or at the very least get rid of deductions (which aren't deductions at all, but pass the cost of bringing a child into the world on society at large); also make the family tax an increasing function of number of kids (e.g., tax, say $1,000 for the first kid, $3,000 for the second kid, $7,000 for the third...)
and of course, subsidize the f*#k out of family planning programs
I'll say it: in 2007, having a child is pretty selfish/narcissistic/wasteful.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jul 30, 2007 - 01:37pm PT
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Marky wrote:
"the platitudes about oil and politics, oil and economics, oil and ecology -- e.g., no blood for oil, no drilling in ANWR, etc. -- are pretty tired. And the latest fashion of talking about "peak oil" overlooks the technological advances being made. It's an axiom of economic theory that as good X becomes more expensive, consumers turn to good Y (or producers begin doing R&D for Y if it doesn't exist). "
They're platitudes because you call them so and tired for the same reason. What technological advances are you talkng about? The modern car gets about the same gas mileage as the Model T.
Economic theory is bullshit regarding oil because it's a very unique resource that took millions of years to build up. No amount of money increases the amount left in the ground, which is finite, and so, will absolutely reach a point someday where it's no longer economically (or energetically) feasible to extract. The problem is oil is scale. The world burns 120 million barrels a day of it. Figure out how much ethanol, coal gassification and whatnot it takes to replace that.
It's a little like air. No amount of money can allow us to live without air.
It's a little like cancer. Sure we can throw money at the problem and treatments get better with time, but once you have cancer, you could be Bill Gates and not buy your way out of it.
And so with oil, by the time oil is scarce enough to cost a bundle and spur all this technology, we won't have enough time to fix the problem nor enough oil to supply the energy to make the transition.
In 100 years, we've burned up half the oil known to exist, and at the current rate there's 40 years left. Naturally the cheap and easy oil is pumped first. Perhaps more oil will be discovered but don't bank on too much because the oil companies haven't had more than one or two really big finds in decades and are spending less on exploration cause it's a diminishing return already. On the other hand, with China and India coming online, demand is increasing a lot.
As for commodities, it's worth noting that the high price of commodities like copper has skyrocketed the prices of building new power plants. Why aren't they just using the alternatives?
Oil, it's going to be a major factor in environmental struggle in this century. The pressure to burn coal freely will be GREAT. Better press for the cleanest possible coal technology now while we have bargaining power
Here's one of my favorite rundowns of the issue
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
Peace
karl
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dirtbag
climber
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Jul 30, 2007 - 01:51pm PT
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One of the major problems is how the water is allocated. In California, too much water is used to irrigate farmlands in deserts or semi-deserts. The soils may be great, but there it is a poor use of resources to, say, grow lettuce in the Imperial Valley. There is a Jeffersonian notion prevalent in American thinking that farming is one of the purest lifestyles. Give a man land, which we used to have a lot of after we killed off the Indians, and a plow, and he'll make a good honest living.
Well, that way of thinking may be fine east of the 100th Meridian where water is plentiful and unirrigated farms are possible, but it has had some disastrously wasteful consequences in the West. Much of our water supply has gone to feed this delusional notion.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jul 30, 2007 - 01:52pm PT
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Good point about Water Dingus. That's the real bottom line. We can live without oil at a lesser standard but it will always come down to water.
Now the question for California is who and what uses what percentage of water and what water use is essential and what water use can be reduced or given up?
Ag is probably the biggest user by far as dirtbag pointed out.
I can't believe places like LA and Las Vegas have little or no checks on growth but not viable ways to service that growth.
This coming up against our limits is a new thing in America. The word "sustainable" is just a silly buzzword talking about something in the future until the future inexorably arrives. Then it's a serious concept.
Peace
karl
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marky
climber
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Jul 30, 2007 - 02:11pm PT
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"Economic theory is bullshit regarding oil because it's a very unique resource that took millions of years to build up. No amount of money increases the amount left in the ground, which is finite, and so, will absolutely reach a point someday where it's no longer economically (or energetically) feasible to extract."
This statement badly misses the mark. Copper too is a finite resource, yet its price has gone down significantly over the past quarter-century. Has the supply curve shifted upward? No, of course not. So the only explanation is that demand dropped -- due to the increased availability of substitutes.
There is no conceptual distinction between copper and oil. Scarcity is scarcity. In the short term, as prices go up, people will make millions of micro-level decisions to consume *less* oil. Undoubtedly that's happening now. At the margins, there is some consumer who would be willing to pay $2.99 for a gallon of gas but not $3.01; there is some other individual who would pay $17 for a gallon but not $300.
These demand-side decisions will spur production-side decisions to make better use of available resources (i.e., oil) or to forego their use altogether. There will be a substitute for oil. We may not in our lifetimes ever return to the freedom of being able to roam the country cheaply in SUVs, but I don't see that as a huge loss. The eventual "decline" of oil isn't necessarily apocalyptic -- very far from it.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Jul 30, 2007 - 02:31pm PT
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Al Gore III and Lindsay Lohan are environmentalists
The're gonna' carpool to rehab.
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