danb635’s Recent Comments

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  sustainable development?????

  Throughout most of these posts, I sense a tangible avoidance of a basic fact. No form of growth can be sustainable in/on a finite system. We can make the finite system last longer with slower growth rates, but it will still fill up someday.

  Likewise, if by development, you mean conversion of something into whatever is being developed, at some point, you will have converted all there is to convert and everything will be developed. The only way to make this sustainable is to un-develop at an equal rate to development. In my view, sustainable growth/development are just warm fuzzy terms to tell people that we are trying to delay the onset of problems. I don't see any way to fix them without radical human population control.

  Of course, on an evolutionary or geologic time scale, these problems have always fixed themselves and I am confident our present ones will too. Maybe we should all step back and admit that we are all talking about improving the experience we or our recognizable heirs experience over the next few years or centuries. On Earth Firster urges a return to conservationism posted 2 years, 8 months ago 42 Responses

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  protecting farmland from chemicals

  I note the dismay in the author's writing when he reports that we in the U.S. have become a net importer of organic food. I wish to point out that the environmental benefits that accrue to the environment from the raising of organic food do not stop at the U.S. border. If we wish to purchase these benefits where they can do the most environmental good, we should encourage organic farming where it does the most good in terms of species saved or acres of environment protected, etc. I don't know if these areas would be in the United States or not, but the environmental benefits are achieved when demand for organic food increases, not when the acres of organic farm increase in one particular country.

  Beyond that, some third world countries allow much more damaging pesticides and conditions of use than than do most developed countries so that encouraging organic in those third world countries might reap greater environmental benefit than encouraging organic in Europe or the U.S.

  Both of the above 2 arguments also apply when the concern is focused on human health instead of environmental protection.On If organic food is so popular, why are so few farms transitioning their land? posted 2 years, 8 months ago 21 Responses