billyrainbow’s Recent Comments

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  In a dream world of limitless energy we could all live like George Jetson with every detail down to the flossing of our teeth taken care of by machines so that our biggest concern was "button finger-itis." Or swelling up like feedlot animals from focusing more on making ourselves comfortable than getting real things done. Oh, wait, maybe it's loo late already.
  
  We've been all over the population explosion question recently, but the dishwasher thing pokes it really hard once again. Luxury processes that may be fine for a few people are a disaster for several billion. Further, while conservation may be asking a bit too much if it's letting your underwear go an extra day before changing, it certainly isn't too dear to insistently suggest that washing your dishes by hand will save water and electricity as well as obnoxious chemical use (and production), and that's not to mention the complex costs to the environment of designing, manufacturing, and distributing dishwashers in the first place.
  
  i know, it's hard to believe that the world can survive without scrubbing every drink cup with special soap, "rinse aid," and spots on our dishes, but we have some amazing, quite natural tools that can easily address the threat; our hands and a few seconds with a dish towel. i mean, really! How could our ancestors possibly have survived all those millenia with spots on their dishes?
  
  If our civilization is defined by our ability to have not just clean, but actually spotless, machine-washed dishes, then we are truly doomed. Let's all buy Hummers, burn multiple 200 W incandescent lights in every blaring TV infested room of our sprawling houses 24 hours a day, and install automatic butt-wipers in every bathroom, because we might as well milk it for all it's worth now, while there's still enough to wallow up over our heads in.

  On Ask Umbra on rinse aids posted 4 months, 3 weeks ago 7 Responses

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  Umbra,

  your "ten foot pole" comments on population control are without doubt the most inspiring, concisely stated, rational, productive (um, excuse me for that), and entirely worthwhile remarks i have ever seen! Many thanks for sharing them with us!!

  
  i'm hanging your statement on my wall.

  Have a beautiful day,

  billy rainbow

  On Umbra advises on population posted 6 months, 4 weeks ago 35 Responses

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  Umbra,

  if you are going to offer "hard," "tough love" kind of advice like "don't eat tuna," don't you think the best idea is to go straight to the heart of the matter instead of offering what may as well be a band-aid for a sucking chest wound?

  It's not that we eat tuna, it's that there's too many people doing the eating. Even pollution remediation ideas are in many cases disingenuous if not outright deceitful, because the environment can process a certain level of most types of pollution just fine. Not that it should have to; eliminating pollution is a crucial goal for a number of reasons. However, like resource conservation, it is important to realize that the most key aspect of the problem in many cases is simply the scale, which is in turn a function of the number of people involved.

  
  We can learn to control population now, or have it forced on us in the typical ways - war, famine, disease, and as already mentioned, resource depletion and pollution.

  None of the above is new information. We have known these things for quite some time, in some cases written material on the problems dates back to the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese.

  In some sense, it's almost a crime to make a prarmount virtue out of conservation when it's done without the primary focus being on conservation of our own numbers. The more we pare down our individual environmental footprints and the more we compromise our lifestyles to make room for more people, the more we hasten the inevitable catastrophe - perhaps even on the scale of an "Armageddon" - when there are no longer any conservation options available because there just isn't anything left to conserve, the vast numbers of humans needing whatever it is for their survival having already claimed it all.

  Conservation really is good policy, as is not just reducing but actually eliminationg all pollution. Even in a purely unemotional world of simple mathematics efficiency demands conservation in a realtively closed system, and even were the system not closed, excuses to grant exceptions are subject to high standards when having something immediately is more important than doing it right.

  i know that talking about population control opens a whole can of worms (which ought to be conserved, poor things), and there have been way too many really ugly things come out of that kind of discussion, like eugnecs and genocide, for example. And there's always the issues of who gets to decide who can have how many children, and what the criteria are for making the decisions. But we have got to provide those answers, and soon, or the fate of the world's tuna and polar bears either moot or among the least of all our species' worries.

  Have a nice day,
  billy rainbow

  On Umbra advises on tuna and mercury posted 7 months ago 6 Responses

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  Nad3r 4 PreZ

  A far better statement that any i can make about Ralph Nader's presidential prospects is made by the "three women holding their nekkid butts" graphic at the top of the page.  It's like the bumper sticker says, "If Americans were intended to vote, then they would be given candidates."  All four are heinous liars, with the one that smells the worst at any given moment more a function of which way the wind is blowing than their actual manure content, although in all fairness, it's more a choice of evil manure vs. slick manure vs. crafty manure vs. manure wearing a cure little sun bonnet done in a nice floral print.  What i was wondering is, since he's out of work right now, maybe Fidel would like the job for a while.  Or if he really isn't up to it, how about Hugo?  Since he's not going to be president for life after all, maybe he could use a side job until Venezuela will let him go full-time.  However bad he might be, he's at least proven that he isn't going to farm Exxon's manure.  Seriously, whatever one might think of Fidel and Hugo, we certainly haven't been offered any better.On Ralph Nader announces his presidential run, calls for carbon tax posted 1 year, 8 months ago 23 Responses

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  Products

  Your request regarding "shirty" letters notwithstanding, one can only wonder how you can recognize that something is "eeeeeeevil" - and then go right ahead and do it!

  It reminds me of Perry Ferrel's heroine in "Jane Says" who's always "going to kick tomorrow."

  Surely, you must realize that if crime is committed by those who don't know any better, then by all measures it's incalculably worse when those who do know better do it, and incalculably more multiples vile when those doing it not only know better, but would present themselves as champions of a better way.  Some could call it worse than hypocrisy.

  i like Grist.  No, actually, i LOVE Grist.  i would give my hard-earned cash to it if the financial turmoil of the past few years had left me with any to give.  But it makes it really hard to promote the cause, or even quote your wonderful wealth of information when you so boldly advertise what is arguably one of the turest roots of so many of our problems today;  the compulsion to own a bunch of things we don't need, and may not even be able to use all that much.

  In the full realization that the advertising framing and infiltrating your pages is tragically necessary to make the pages possible in the first place, must you yet display enthusiasm for the underlying principle?  As previously noted, i'm clearly not paying for much Grist myself, so some of the argument can be thrown back in my face, but that still doesn't excuse failures on either of our parts.

  Please, i beg of you in the name of the planet and the descendants we hope to have, bail on the enthusiasm for consumption!  (Yes, it's come to the point where less is more.)On 15 Green Fashion Finds posted 2 years, 2 months ago 10 Responses