September 19, 2007
· Filed under Food, Society
“Oh Bell, you’re Englishness is showing. Here in America, in most places we didn’t fight for local shops, and now all we have are huge supermarkets, and the majority of those are huge national or multinational chains like walmart.
Supermarkets that are part of the multinational system are bad for the environment in many ways. They create a huge footprint taking up alot of land. They are one centralized location that everyone has to drive to rather than numerous decentralized small shops scattered around a neighborhood. In the battle for low prices they often purchase goods that are from other countries and have to be shipped here. The places where they buy their goods often have relaxed environmental standards which cause them to emit more pollution for the same amount of goods that could be made here.
As prices are dropped artificially low for any array of items, people are influenced to be more wasteful and consumeristic.Many of the products that are sold are of low quality, break easily, and are not designed to be fixed.
Finally, the large supermarkets are often poorly designed. They have little to no windows, and rely heavily on electricity for heating, cooling, and light. A small local store could have been built, or retrofitted to take advantage of natural light and passive heating and cooling.”
September 19, 2007
· Filed under Nature, Trees, Wildlife
“I think the statistic many in the anti environmental movement like to use is that there are more trees now then there were 100 years ago. This is a stupid point to make, considering:
A. Who do you think forced those trees to be replanted.
B. 100 years ago isn’t the beginning of history. There was huge deforestation in the early history of our country. So the original number of trees in America and globally has been MUCH higher that what it is now.
Still, the solution to issues of green house gasses (which is the topic that most often leads to the discussion of trees) will require more than just dropping a few seedlings into the soil.”
September 18, 2007
· Filed under Global Warming, green roofing
“The way in which this would help would be to reduce the “urban heat island” effect.
Urban areas are hotter than the surrounding countryside because black tar roofs and concrete don’t reduce heat. They gather it and radiate it at night. While white roofs would help to reflect sunlight away from the city, thus lowering the temperature and lowering the need for air conditioning, a better solution would be a massive implementation of green roofing technology. Not only would the urban heat island effect be mitigated, the increased green space would help to clean urban air, help to reduce storm water runoff, as well as absorb carbon dioxide.”
September 18, 2007
· Filed under Farming, Food, Gardening, Society, green living
“I was asking around about something similar to “cottage gardens” here in the U.S.
During WWII, we used to plant what were known as victory gardens, as a way to reduce the strain on industry and provide food to people in times of increased need.
Why we can’t bring that concept back in order to help the “war for the environment” effort is beyond me. I guess it’s just that everyone wants the easy way out. They want to change a light bulb, or carry a canvass bag, but no one wants to make long term cultural changes.”
September 18, 2007
· Filed under Farming, Food, Global Warming, Vegan, green living, meat, vegitarian
“Actually… yeah. For the most part it is.
Here’s why. I can turn my heat/ coolness off and forget about it. I get caught up with other stuff and don’t notice that I’m a little hot or cold. It’s just become second nature.
But when I’m really hungry, that just slaps me right in the face. There’s no ignoring it, you have to eat. Sadly, in the majority of the country, if you’re out and about and need a full meal fast… your options are limited, and usually limited to meaty things.
So it takes more of a conscious effort for me to think ahead, buy vegetarian stuff at the store, bring it home, and have it constantly on hand. But it think that anything worth doing is worth doing well, and the idea that everything should be fast and effortless has run away with our commonsense. So I am working always toward lowering and lowering my intake of environmentally damaging foods, as well as reducing my own personal dependence on fossil fuels and electricity.
Everyone needs to pitch in, and pitch in in a holistic fashion.”
September 18, 2007
· Filed under House, green roofing
“I haven’t done this yet (yes, I knew about it before) because I live in a multi unit apartment building. As progressive as I would like to imagine my town is, I cant see the zoning permit people, let alone the apartment owners, jumping all over the idea.
Once I have my own place (hopefully a fun little brownstone in the city) I will be immediately looking into the specifics of green roofing with a percentage of space devoted to a garden.
Also, contrary to popular belief, you can fairly easily install a green roof on a pre-existing slanted roof.”
September 18, 2007
· Filed under House, Society, Suburbs, green living
“The suburbs. They need either massive improvement, or outright banishment. (And I don’t mean big government makes them illegal, I mean people choose to top building them)
Suburbs are a perfect example of conspicuous consumption and environmental inefficiency. People want the best of both worlds, the order and civilization of urban life, but the vast spreadoutness of rural life. This leads to very wasteful housing, transportation, and general life practices.”
September 18, 2007
· Filed under Global Warming, Water conservation
” I had wondered this same thing until I asked a professor who specializes in global water systems.
The whole planet is one big system. Any melting of the ice, whether it is done in the Arctic by global temperature increases, or in the desert due to thirsty esert dwellers, will contribute to the same problems. The sea level will still rise, and the amount of fresh water in the oceans will increase.
Even more, by harvesting it, you end up speeding up the already fast process. Plus you have to dump unreasonable amounts of pollution into the air and burn unreasonable amounts of nonrenewable resources in order to harvest the ice.”
September 18, 2007
· Filed under Farming, Food, Global Warming, Pollution, Vegan, meat, vegitarian
“If we still lived in some idealistic dream world where modern cows roam wild and graze in the same fashion that their Buffalo predecessors used to then no. Everyone goes on and on (and on) about “cow farts” and how stupid the global warming crowd is, but the truth is that this is just an overly simplified view of the situation that gets latched onto by those with juvenile minds. People who think farts are funny, and so its a stupid theory.
The environmental impact that real environmentalists are worried about in relation to livestock has very little to do with what comes out of their rear end.
The concern comes from the fact that livestock is no longer raised in any kind of a natural or efficient way.
First you have to raise corn. This is entirely petroleum based, both to make pesticides and to run tractors and power industrial water pumps to irrigate areas of the country not normally suited to agriculture.
Then you have to harvest and transport the corn to high density feedlots. Our transport system is entirely dependent on fossil fuels.
Then the livestock are grown, using questionable hormone supplements, as well as more food energy than the animal will ever produce in the form of meat.
Then the livestock are slaughtered in huge factories, and shipped all over the country/ world from centralized locations. All of which requires fossil fuel energy.
Every stage in the process requires huge amounts of land, water, and nonrenewable resources. It’s not the animals, you see, it’s what we do with them.
Global warming or no global warming, the raising of meat in our current system is an environmental and ethical blight on our culture. Any reduction in the amount of meat we consume, or increase in the quality of the way in which we produce it, would be of great benefit to the planet and the human species.”
