Environmentalism

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*sigh*

Yah, I've met some real anarcho-primitivists. They're living in the woods. If he knew anything about liberal economics, its de-regulative, not regulative.

My argument is that certain strains of environmentalism aren't helpful, but that doesn't mean all environmental awareness or legislation is bad. A certain degree of it is actually very necessary. My uncle actually lived in a neighborhood where a company was dumping transformers into a nearby landfill. The heavy metals leached into the water supply, and some local children developed cancer as a result. its dead serious stuff. We really can't let people do whatever the hell they want in terms of the environment. These aren't all fringe people drafting environmental legislation. Many of them are very mainstream people that have been hurt.

The whole west coast is irradiated now because of Fukushima. Radiation levels in snow in Washington were 6 times higher than whats considered safe. They should have never built nuclear reactors right next to a known fault line, let alone build them so close to each other and store spent fuel in a structure right above the reactor.

That's ridiculous. Only 12% of the US workforce is actually unionized. That's a stark contrast to several decades ago when the majority of Americans were unionized.

The fact we just had a huge oil spill in the gulf shows me that the environmental lobbies aren't active enough.

this too...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEQMA0zwMM4[/youtube]

"In 1970, CEO salary and bonus packages were typically about $700,000 - 25 times the average production worker salary; by 2000, CEO salaries had jumped to almost $2.2 million on average, 90 times the average salary of a worker, according to a 2004 study on CEO pay by Kevin J. Murphy and Jan Zabojnik. Toss in stock options and other benefits, and the salary of a CEO is nearly 500 times the average worker salary, the study says."
source


Unions have been decimated in their presence because of the outsourcing of American jobs to sweat shops in Indonesia and China, totalitarian governments we should have never dealt with as a, so called, free nation. Corporate boards care more about increased profits for their selves than the consequences of destroying the American labor force and supporting third world dictatorships. The result of maximizing profits for their selves and minimizing income for the worker is that they have way more expendable capital than the average person to pay for lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians.

To say environmental lobbyists and unions is some kind of threat is a joke.

Last edited by JNathanK on 20 Feb 2012, 2:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Link: Tuba City Water Irradiated

I suppose nuclear waste from uranium mines is a kind of dust.

Link: Radioactivity on the Spokane Reservation

When I say dust, I'm talking about regular dirt blowing in the air. It really is that insane here.

I have to choose my priorities, so I'll be bowing out of PPR and most news threads again for a while.

I thought you were being facetious, but there's actual legislation on this? Where is this at exactly? I'd like to see the full context of it. Does it have to do with top soil depletion?

top soil depletion and/or *lots* of dirt in the air, I would guess.

Top soil depletion is a myth. The "Great Dust Bowl" was really punishment by God for un-American activities related to the COMMIE New Deal from Chairman FDR

I wonder if chemical-fertilizer manufacturers have thought about using that type of thinking as a slogan to promote their products.

"Buy Brand-X Fertilizer because god has cast a plague upon the land, depleting the topsoil of nutrients!"

@OP:

I think our best course of action would be coming up with direct and proactive ways to reclaim CO2 rather than shut down economies. That bypasses the societal 'control' issues and puts us on a path to help resolve problems like this in the future.

That means finding efficient ways of sequestering CO2.

ruveyn

Do you have proof of this statement?

There is a difference between 'normal background radiation' in an area and what is 'safe'.

Even when the reactors were blowing up at Fukushima, if you drove a few miles down the road the radiation levels were only the equivalent of living in Dartmoor in the UK, so I'm some what sceptical of claims that snow in Washington, almost the opposite side of the planet, 11 months after the accident had 'unsafe' radiation levels.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... n-dioxide/

Check out GT. Might not be as sci-fi or as far off as we think.

For my part, I don't give a toss whether climate change is natural or anthrogenic.

My approach to environmental issues is primarily economic. Our current reliance on fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, natural gas) is economically foolish. While it is certainly cheap in the short term, it has several long term economic impacts:

1) Non-renewability. I don't care whether we have hit "peak oil" or not. We certainly haven't hit "peak coal." But the fact remains that these are most certainly finite resources. If we can develop viable technology today, why are we resistant to it?

2) Stagnation. The engine of economic growth is innovation. While we have certainly done much to improve the efficiency of fossil fuel combustion, that is a very narrow field of innovation. At some point out ability to further improve will become marginal, at which point, then what? The greater the number of brains working on a greater number of ways of translating energy sources into mechanical advantage, the better.

3) Compounding. Even if climate change is primarily a natural phenomenon, we can take efforts to stem its impact. If carbon emissions serve to compound a natural process, then a move to lower emissions forms of energy production may be valuable from a mitigation standpoint.

4) Trade Security. In the last 40 years we have seen the overwhelming danger of a monopolistic marketplace for energy. The greater the diversity of energy sources, and the more modular that we can make engines, the greater the potential for us to protect ourselves from market distortions in a single area.

As far as I know, no one (except perhaps the more dogmatic environmentalists) claimed that the snow had unsafe radiation levels. Simply that they were slightly higher than background. The human body can actually take a fair bit of radiation compared to background and be alright.

It is clearly shortsighted to put the economy ahead of the environment. A couple of quotes I like are:
"The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment."
"There is no economy on Venus."

Of course, the Venus one is hyperbolic, as it is highly unlikely that we'll push the planet that far. But I thought it was a good quote nonetheless.

Let me be clear. We do not have to sacrifice the economy to save the environment. Building renewable energy infrastructure, mass transit, high speed rail, and the like would really stimulate the economy. Sweden is an interesting case in point. They have decreased their CO2 emissions by 20% while growing the economy by 40%.

Why do you hate 'merica