Online in the Guardian today

[campbeji]

Thought you might find this interesting

www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/16/managing-england-woodlands-plants?CMP=twt_gu

[caveman]

That is interesting. I wonder how much wood fuel would be produced though I suppose that doesn't really matter as there are benefits for all. The piece on the same page about the demise of the honey bee is less uplifting.

It is not from the Guardian but try this link:

blogs.stuzog.com/dandeliontimes/2010/07/07/there-really-is-only-one-kind-of-sustainability/

It is a hard line blog on sustainability. The writers position is well supported with good examples which I hope I can remember the next time I am engaged in an argument with one of those 'sustainable economic growth' prats.

[campbeji]

Hi Caveman,

I don't know about remembering the arguments I'm strugling to understand them properly.

I have read a lot about ecology, sustainability, biodiversity, environmental management etc etc. Pretty much without exception everything has either been wrong or at best contradictory.

I of course know the answer (since I'm always right), there are two main problems, humans are like greedy kids in a sweet shop, we will stuff our faces with as much as we can get our hands on and dump the junk on the floor. Secondly there are just too many of us (over 4 billion isn't it?), our environment can't stand the interference from the sheer weight of numbers. It's like when we were teenagers and there was a house party, 50 teens in a small house and the house gets trashed and takes a week to tidy up.

Some people think we can 'manage' the situation, but the best we can do is to minimize the destruction, and hope that we can survive until a long term solution comes along. There is too much of people and organisations thinking they are fixing problems while in fact they are putting a sticking plaster on one problem and making ten others worse.

The best we can do as individuals is pick up after ourselves, try to teach others and not have too many kids

Jim

[Cye]

oh i wouldn't get too bogged down in or concerned about the various topical green discussions.

such arguments or chat is very often carried on between folks who are either doing nothing of significance themselves, or are involved in some big headline green initiative or other with one hand, whilst carrying out some abomination with the other.

the solutions will come from small-scale local initiatives if folks wake up.

i'm not sure that looking at the population growth graphed on the likes of www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15391515 would mean anything to most people. Most folks don't understand the basics of what 'growth' is, and the media don't seem to know how to explain it either. tonight i watched the bbc news reader telling us that the squeeze on our purses was now easing, as inflation had dropped to 4.8%, and yet what 4.8% means is that the squeeze is actually still increasing, and that the reader should have said "things are still getting more expensive, but the rate at which prices are increasing is not as great as last month". We hear a lot on the news about 'standard of living', and joe bloggs thinks that means 'quality of life', but the term only refers to the rate at which we spend money, not what we're spending it on, and certainly not quality of life.

i think the best most of us can do as individuals is to focus on the things we can do ourselves from a practical perspective, e.g., learning how to use less stuff, support ourselves including food, energy, making & repairing things, using resources efficiently, etc. Working with nature and not against it will make not only make this easier but will help restore or support some of the environmental riches we are currently losing. Practice these things, share the knowledge with others who are of like mind, work as a community, develop small scale working models such as allotments, renewable energy, etc so that a community can refine and perfect these techniques. Everything must start off small, and we can only hope to encourage others if we can demonstrate working models ourselves.

No-one else will deliver a solution for us and our children.

I wouldn't get too depressed about the world population (~7 billion), this island has only ~5 million (I think), most of the farmland here is used very very inefficiently from a net calorific output perspective, and could easily support the population without imported energy if the correct approach was taken .

you are correct about the problems of greed and population but there is nothing we can do about this, other than in a small local sense of building and demonstrating viable alternatives. do what you can and worry not about the stuff we have no control over!

[campbeji]

I new that 4 billion thing was wrong when I typed it, I just couldn't be bothered looking it up

I must admit that I do have a lot of problems with the tree hugging extermists, most are probably well meaning but dont seem to understand the problems properly and are intent on trying to ram their take on it down everyones throats, usually this just alienates the very people who can help their cause.

An example would be in the balloon industry (I run a balloon printing company) there are quite a few environmental groups who are trying to ban balloon releases, their main arguments are that they kill sealife and cause litter.

I spent the best part of 6 months trying to get some of these organisations to send me proof of these 'sealife deaths', totally without success. I spoke to various experts in the field and nothing! The best I got was various organisations referencing each other like a great big circular argument, not one had any solid proof, just vauge references to studies done by someone somewhere, but they didn't have a copy of it.

As for the litter thing, well if a release is done properly then the natural latex will degrade pretty quickly when it falls back to earth. But to hear some of the stats being tossed around there is tons of them being picked up from beaches around the country. Again no proof, at least nothing conclusive. In ten years of running my business the only time I have found a balloon on a beach is some little waterballoons that kids left at Crawfordsburn and a burst balloon that I dropped out of my pocket by accident.

Despite all this the environmental groups are spending lots of money trying to ban balloon releases, even though there are many many other things they could pursue with a much higher priority (in my opinion)

Anyway thats enough of that rant ;D I do think that you are correct in that its up to individuals to show the leadership to actually do something about it all and not just talk about it. I'm going to have a think about what I should do first.

Jim