roncastle’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Hello, Steve, I am not a demographer or a scientist, just an old dog who has been interested in sustainability, land conservation and agriculture for over 40 years. I am not likely to be around in 2050 and I don't think we will ever reach 9 billion. There are too many negative trends in play that are likely to be short term irrevisible. Read Lester Brown's "Plan B 4.0" and his post here at Grist last week about environmental refugeeism. The coming scenarios are what I have been referring to as depeopling (a good 10 letter Scrabble word), the results of overpopulation, habitat destruction, declining fossil fuel dependent agriculture, rising sea level and the changes in weather and rainfall as the result of global warming. The point is that the Earth cannot sustain human life as we know it. But I don't see that a species as adaptable as humans will be made extinct by this evolutionary process. I heard on NPR last night an interesting previously recorded interview with Robert Thurman about his book "Why the Dahli Lama Matters" which reinforces my belief that it is the evolution of the human spirit that is most needed to create true sustainability.On Dispassion as the world ends: The absent heart of the great climate affair posted 1 week, 5 days ago 99 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Hi, Lester, The good news is that depeopling is a legitimate 10 letter Scrabble word. The bad news is that we are going to be using this word more often. For bees, we call it colony collapse. For frogs, we call it amphibian decline. For salmon, we don't really have a unique descriptor. For predators like the large cats, extinction. Since the publication of the first Plan B you have been writing about dealing with environmental refugeeism during this century. I think we should be talking about the next decade. The show is going to have to go on the road before some people realize that depeopling could happen to them.On The rising tide of environmental refugees posted 2 weeks, 1 day ago 2 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  GMO = Give Monsanto Ownership These are without a doubt some of the most evil folks on the planet. They cross pollinate their neighbors crops with their evil seeds and then sue their neighbors for patent violation. If a small farmer cannot save his own seed for next year he is doomed to failure. There are plenty of these folks in India already caught in the GMO trap who are committing suicide every day.On Bill Gates reveals support for GMO ag posted 2 weeks, 2 days ago 44 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Here's mine, written in 2001: The Speech President Bush Should Deliver by Ron Castle My fellow Americans: I apologize to you for interrupting the final game of the Final Four but I figured this would be the best way to catch most of you in front of the tube. This evening I want to talk to you about an issue that is critical for the survival of the planet. Our way of life and the way of life of many of our allies and the other G8 members has the environment running in reverse. In the past hundred years we have combusted most of the World's fossil fuels that took almost a billion years to create. Actually, substances like oil and coal have resulted from plant life that detoxified our planet home so that other forms of life might flourish, including human life, and by combusting these fuels at record rates, we are putting back into the atmosphere carbon and other toxic substances that have been locked away in safe storage beneath the surface of the earth for a billion years. As you know from your high school physics class, matter does not go away - it simply changes state - petroleum and coal, when combusted, create energy and visible and invisible garbage, which we have named pollution. It is hard for us to imagine how human existence really fits in to the history of the World. David Brower, founder of the Sierra Club who passed away last fall, said it this way, comparing 4.5 billion years of creation to the six days of creation from Genesis: 'Sunday at midnight, the Earth is created. There is no life until Tuesday noon. Millions upon millions of species come during the week, and millions of species go. By Saturday morning at seven, there's been enough chlorophyll manufactured for the fossil fuels to begin to form. Around four in the afternoon, the giant reptiles come on stage. They hang around for a long time, as species go, until nine-thirty, a five-hour run. The Grand Canyon begins taking shape eighteen minutes before midnight. Nothing like us shows up for another fifteen minutes. No homo sapiens until 30 seconds ago. Let the party begin! A second and a half back, we throw the habits of hunting and gathering to the winds, and learn to change the environment to suit our appetites. We get rid of everything we can't eat as fast we possibly can, and that's the beginning of agriculture. A third of a second before midnight, Buddha; a quarter of a second, Jesus Christ: a fortieth of a second, the industrial revolution; an eightieth of a second, we discover oil; a two-hundredth of a second, how to split atoms.' Using Mr. Brower's example, during the past eightieth of a second humans have put back into the ecosphere trillions of tons of visible and invisible garbage that were locked away two, three or maybe four days ago. Unlike any species in the history of the planet, humans have become an evolutionary force and we are evolving in reverse. In the course of a mere century we have undone the work that took Nature billions of years to do. If we compare the ten-mile deep atmosphere that surrounds our planet to one of those basket balls the players are handling this evening, the atmosphere would be about as thick as tissue paper – and, about as fragile. At the same time, human population has expanded to more than six-billion people and our numbers are predicted to reach ten-billion by perhaps as soon as the year 2040. Natural resources are shrinking and plant and animal species are being made extinct at a rate faster than any time in human history. If all of these people are to have the same energy wasting and over-consuming lifestyles as the worst of us on the planet - that is, living like you and me as Americans - then we will have to have at least three more planets and perhaps a fourth one, which should appropriately be named "Dumpster", since total annual waste in the U. S. alone now exceeds 50 trillion pounds. Somehow, I do not foresee having any additional planets, despite the fact that I am the most powerful man in the world. Instead, the future that we face is for ten billion people to figure out how to live adequately on 25 percent or less of the natural resources per capita that Americans presently consume. Most of you probably think that this is surprising news. You don’t see much about the big picture in the press. And, many of you are probably wondering why no President has told you this before. The handwriting has been on the wall for at least forty years. No President has told you this before because they have lacked the courage and the will to tell it like it is. I am keeping my campaign promise that I will be compassionate, conservative and will work cooperatively on both sides of the aisle to make our Federal government work responsibly for ALL Americans. And, so I am. After all, conservation and conservative both come from the same root word. Beginning tomorrow morning, I am establishing a new cabinet position, the Department of Natural Capitalism. We will begin laying the groundwork immediately to establish a master plan to get the environment out of reverse and into fifth gear by the year 2016. Our implementation policies will be divided into five each three-year spans, which we will name First Gear through Fifth Gear. We will work with the other members of the G8 and all nations and peoples in the world to transfer our planning ideas, implementation strategies and renewable technologies to all parts of the globe. This will be a huge undertaking unlike any in the history of man (including World War Two) and, to use my transmission analogy that I know ALL Americans can relate to, we may not have synchro-mesh but we will shift gears in a decidedly accelerating fashion until we restructure all human activities to be in harmony with the rest of life on the planet. Unemployment will be eliminated. Every person can have a job restoring habitat, working in organic agriculture or working in the new industries that will emerge: public transportation; renewable energy; fuel cell manufacturing; zero emissions vehicles; watershed restoration; recyclable manufacturing; just to name a few. Making this transition will create new challenges and new opportunities for all of us. Within the next 30 days I will submit two bills to Congress. The first is an Ecology Tax (ET) that will be evenly implemented over the next 15 years. ET will “phone home” by progressively raising the costs of all sources of energy production, transportation, consumer goods, chemical fertilizers and biocides and all forms of consumption that are harmful to the environment. Thus, for example, the costs of all fossil fuels and fossil fuel generated electricity will increase in a graduated manner so that all forms of renewable energy will become the least cost alternative. Organic farming, which values the life of microbes in the soil, will become the defacto method of agriculture. We will have clean water and clean air. These policies will both free us from a need for imported oil by the time we are at our shift point from Second to Third Gear but will also begin significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time our full employment policy will have millions of Americans planting millions of trees every day to restore denuded habitat, brown fields and riparian areas to protect our watersheds. In honor of my parents, we will call this our Planet Campaign for Bushes (PCB’s) - bushes are trees, too, you know. In fact they are the only "trees" in West Texas. This will also help to clean up the atmosphere in the same manner that petroleum and coal were formed billions of years ago. This is a true recycling effort. And, finally, PCB’s will become a good thing. The second part of our economic program will be our End All The Income Tax Bill (EAT-IT). The government has been eating out of your pocketbook for decades – now it’s your turn. At the same time that taxes are increasing on eco-damaging activities we will begin an incremental phase out of all personal income taxes. So, when coal fired electricity goes up in price every family will have a reduction in personal taxes that will allow you to continue your current consumption. But, if renewable electricity is cheaper - and it will be very soon - you can buy renewable and use your tax cut for whatever you wish. Organic produce may be a little more expensive at first but will soon become significantly cheaper than food grown with chemicals that harm our bodies, our soils and our water. Freedom of choice is a basic tenet of our economy and our way of life. It’s your money – you earned it – and you are entitled to spend it how you wish. These economic adjustments will provide every family with more disposable income and the freedom to direct your personal spending in ways that will help rather than harm the planet. America is not backing up on the environment any more. We are moving full speed ahead while reducing our emissions. I believe that if the rest of the world will immediately implement similar standards we will not need the Kyoto Treaty. There are many more exciting things that I could tell you this evening but I believe it is sound cooperative policy to allow the Congress an opportunity to work with my administration to put the finishing touches on these exciting new changes. I encourage each of you to contact your Senators and Congressman and tell them you want them behind these programs. Finally, there are three things I want to say to you. First, special interest politics are dead. The Republican Party received over $558 million dollars in campaign contributions during the 1999 elections and we appreciate the support of our friends. The Democrats received over $382 million. But the health of the environment is more important than the special interests of any industry, corporation or individual. Imagine what almost a billion dollars could do to help the environment rather than politicians. We will all work cooperatively to make this transition happen and industries with invested capital will be treated fairly to rescue stranded costs. Second, as of today, by my Executive Order we are ALL environmentalists. To all of you who have been environmentalists for all of these years without an Executive Order, I salute you. Third, to all of you SUV drivers out there and especially all yall SUV drivers in the great state of Texas, I am sorry that the value of your vehicles will undoubtedly plummet. But, as my mom Barbara has always told me, if you would have put some thought into it you never should have bought such inefficient vehicles to begin with. In fact, I sold my Suburban last week. In closing, I quote the words of one of America’s greatest conservationists, Teddy Roosevelt who said in 1907: Here is your country. Do not let anyone take it or its glory away from you. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its bounty, its beauty, its riches, or its romance. The World and the Future and your very children shall judge you according to [the way] you deal with this Sacred Trust. Today is the day that we begin taking these words to heart. Working together, my fellow Americans, we can save the planet. Thank you, God bless you, God bless American and God bless planet earth. Good night. ### March 29, 2001On Dispassion as the world ends: The absent heart of the great climate affair posted 3 weeks, 2 days ago 99 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  What's the radioactive half life of a solar panel?On Stewart Brand's nuclear enthusiasm falls short on facts and logic posted 3 weeks, 3 days ago 159 Responses