Unintended Consequences

[Guest]

While watching the news, there was the conviction of a woman who cut the glass to a window which allowed a group of ELF members to burn down an Urban Horticulture research building on the University of Washington campus back in 2001. They left ample evidence as to what group did it.

 

She is now a 'normal' housewife with a kid. She has to spend 3 years in jail and has been fined $7,000,000 dollars. The damage caused by the fire.

 

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/03/06/eco-saboteur-briana-waters-found-guilty/

http://www.crosscut.com/crime-safety/14655/

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/ci_9637183

 

The trail of harm and destruction to others lives in all this is way beyond reprehensible. Briana Waters' and the other's actions ruined so many other's lives and she has the gall to act the innocent

 

This triggered a late night rant and a series of random thoughts I'd like to share which may not seem at all related but also end up in those unintended consequences.

 

Bamboo flooring is now considered 'Green' from the holy grail of eco friendly builders. Well it's selling so well the Chinese are now leveling more of their old growth forests to plant this eco friendly flooring material.

 

The Chinese are also responding in a very enthusiastic way to produce much more of the cashmere wool so cherished by us and others. They have huge herds of those favored goats now covering Mongolia to the point of creating an eco disaster of massive over-grazing. The dust storms are often registered in our weather stations in the Pacific Northwest.

 

Then there is energy independent Brazil. They have achieved this with even more massive deforestation of the Amazon Basin for the sugar cane fields. Something others point to with pride as an example of great achievement. Reminds me of the corn fiasco of making methanol in this country which has raised the cost of milk and other related food industries

 

Then to shackle the technologically capable folks trying desperately to create greater solar energy efficiency the government agencies require unbelievably stringent performance standards on start-up companies models that it's impossible to get them to market. Then if they manage to make it through this process and want to sell them they face the other impossible task of meeting the 5 year performance standard required by most contracts.

 

Then everyone wonders why they take our technologies to China who eagerly fund the development, will buy and manufacture them. They then sell them back to us and we wonder how all this happens.

 

OFF

[White Fox]

One of the things about environmental issues, and animal research, is that it is not as cut and dried as we would like to believe. As OFF mentions, there is controversy whether the motors now being developed to make use of the gradually increasing ethanol supplies we have been building up to feed them when they come on line in the future will actually help the environment. And could the auto industry that is really tied to so heavily to the oil industry be actually sabotaging that research to make it less effective or seem less so? Hard to tell now of course as only the industrial research people really know and they certainly won't talk due to competition issues, etc. They don't want to give their research away. Are prototypes of these motors working for instance? Then of course there is the controversy over whether or not alcohol is less potent on the environment when it is spilled than petroleum, so could ethanol actually help our ground water? Now today, research seems to be pulling toward electric hybrid transportation. But, where does that electricity come from. Much of it from fossil fuels for instance. Finally of course we are beginning at least to harness the wind. But, more and more we hear how owners of windmills that are located on major flyways are finding dead birds under the mills. I live near a very large one like that. With more to come. Yes, there are problems. But how does the average person relate to how big the problem is? How do I as an individual know how the death of a hundred birds over a certain period affects the echo system?

 

Many people today are thinking more and more about public transportation. Which seems a good idea and certainly on the whole should be. But of course the huge diesel engines in that public transportation spew out massive amounts of pollution in comparison to small hybrid vehicles. So should we use electric hybrids? In Ontario for instance we are banning lawn pesticides. Seems like a good move on the surface, and I am basically in favor of it. However, there is far more damage caused by road salt in the winter than by those pesticides when it comes to our water supplies, etc. And those very efficient hybrids need that road salt here to be able to travel in winter to make less pollution than those huge diesel engines and electricity supplies used by the train engines. So we keep using that road salt. We can use salt from corn, but many environmental groups claim it pollutes more.

 

What I am saying is that folks like PETA and elf have one basic problem in the way that they think. They oversimplify. This animal will suffer due to this, so we will not allow it. They do not think of the whole picture. They only think of that one animal at the time, and only think of how it will bring in money for the leaders. And unfortunately more and more the last issue seems far more important than the first. I remember a deer cull at a local park here. Deer were starving and dying horrible deaths due to starvation. And these groups were telling kids and advertising in news papers how the rangers were killing Bambi at the park. And of course, young kids were believing it.

 

Fur bearing animals mostly eat fish. How do they affect the environment. We know that fish are in short supply today, and the large fish use the smaller ones the fur bearers eat for food for themselves. How do they work together? We just do not know. It is just not that simple as the animal rights folk say it is.

 

And these things sound so easy! And these groups make it seem so much so.

 

W

[Worker 11811]

But, don't you get it?

 

As long as it only SEEMS "green" on the surface, it is okay!

 

We'd rather use paper shopping bags at the grocery store because they come from environmentally friendly trees. It doesn't matter that cutting down those trees, trucking them to the mill, refining them into paper and shipping them to market is actually WORSE for the environemnt. It doesn't matter that plastic shopping bags are lighter, easier to make and are MORE environmental in the long run. Plastic comes from "Big, Bad Oil Companies" who are ALWAYS bad in ALL circumstances!

 

We'd rather drive electric cars whose batteries are full of lead, cadmium, manganese, mercury, acid and all sorts of other chemicals just to make sure they don't burn that "nasty" petroleum!

 

Oh, and COFFEE is such a nice environmental drink too! It comes from PLANTS! That's a good thing! RIGHT?

Never mind that coffee plantations are responsible for as much deforestation as any other cash crop on the planet!

No! As long as people can sit around Starbucks and drink their coffee while listening to a long-haired hippie play the guitar and sing "Kumbaya" so they can pontificate about how much OTHER people are destroying the environment it's okay!

 

Never mind the fact that I have never owned a car that got less than 30 miles per gallon. Neither has my wife since I have known her.

 

Never mind the fact that I hardly even DROVE a car, much less owned one for the years I lived at college until I came home again. I got around town with a pair of Rollerblades and a subway pass and I could often do it FASTER than you could get around by car! But for the plastic used to make those skates and the small amount of emissions to make electricity, I did it with ZERO pollution! Don't forget! Those plastic parts of my skates are RECYCLABLE! (Even though they still hang on a hook in my garage.)

 

No! You see, I'm the "Big, Bad Wolf" because I don't dress in burlap clothing and eat twigs and berries! I drive one of those "terrible" gasoline burning cars! It doesn't matter that my car is officially classified as an "Ultra-Low Emissions Vehicle!" It burns gasoline! ANY gasoline.

 

I'm not a superficial idiot who only cares how things look on the outside and that's what makes me a bad person!

[White Fox]

Rollerblades! Are you related to Linda??!!!

 

By the way, I don't want to sound like I am knocking trains for instance. I am indeed a big believer that we need to get back to them.

 

W

[frugalfurguy]

Paper? Plastic?

 

No thanks! Cloth!

 

Reuse of cloth bags will kick the a## of both single-use "disposable" paper or plastic.

 

After a few generations of living in a cash-oriented economy, most of us will remember to bring some way to pay when we go to the grocery store. How long will it take before with the same consistency we bring our own totes? So long as stores provide cheap or subsidized throw aways, my guess it'll be only people committed to living ecological values.

 

frugalfurguy