Comments EcoSpeak has made

Unanswerable question

d41295 is asking a question that no one, not even the most skilled climate scientist, can answer.  This is an attempt to back Andrew into a corner.

d41295's irritable poking should be ignored.  

Or how about this:  d41295, how about you provide Grist readers with some credible data that show that human activity definitely has not contributed to the recent increase in global temperature averages.

You do that, d, and then you can go back to your buddies and whine and complain about environentalists always "talking out of their asses."

Whatever, dude.  We all know that we don't know everything about climate change.  We never will know everything, even after it's just a chapter in some kid's history book.

But we do know, with absolute certainty, that things are definitely changing, like it or not.On Warming people believe, humans at fault, not so much posted 2 years, 10 months ago 30 Responses

Collective action

I'm no mathematician, so please point out any errors in my calculations if you should identify them.  
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There are approx. 243,023,485 registered passenger vehicles in America today, which get around 17 miles per gallon and drive an average of 24.3 minutes to get their owners to and from work each morning.  Going 55 miles per hour, that means each car is traveling approx. 22.3 miles to and from work each day.

This means an average car in America is eating up 1.3 gallons of gas each day for the commute to work.

Let's say half of the total number of registered passenger vehicles in America make this average daily commute.  This would mean 157,965,265.25 gallons of gas are being consumed each day just to get Americans to and from work.

Each gallon of gas burned emits 19.4 pounds of CO2.  So this means that Americans' daily commute to work emits 3,064,526,145.85 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere.  Each day.    

OK, now say that by some act of god or Congress half of all registered passenger car-owning Americans switched in their current cars for hybrids and made the daily 24.3-minute commute to work each day, averaging 40 miles per gallon, a low estimate for hybrids.  

Each hybrid would use just over half a gallon of gas for its commute.  So each day American commuters, in their "sexy" hybrids, would expel 1,320,103,570.5 pounds of CO2 into the air, a 67% reduction.

Of course such a scenario is hardly on the horizon (I am in no way suggesting that such a scenario is possible); and even the CO2 emissions of the hybrids are a jaw-droppingly large number. But get enough individuals to make the same small change and it adds up to massive numbers.

You and I cannot control the actions of 300 million other Americans; we can only control our own actions, and our own emissions.  But I suspect that most other Grist readers have to make that daily commute to work, regardless of whether or not we want to or feel bad about participating in such a wasteful system.  Driving a hybrid to work at least reduces our output, since we cannot eliminate it altogether.

Agreed, the focus should be on society-wide changes, not on the miniscule habits of individual consumers.  But certainly we should all do what we as individuals can do, and hope that enough of us are doing it to make a difference.On You may be surprised posted 2 years, 10 months ago 56 Responses

LDS

I've always assumed men in Hummers are making up for a lack of physical presence in the pants--Little D*ck Syndrome (LDS).  Women, on the other hand, drive Hummers in order to make up for a lack of spiritual satisfaction--an unloving husband, perhaps, or an insufficient supply of self-confidence.  Both are filling voids in empty lives and empty souls.

Of course this assumption is totally non-scientific.  I usually try to avoid interactions with Hummer-driving types, beyond occasionally giving them the bird when I pass them on the freeway.

Luckily, my husband drives a Prius.  ;)

(Someone should do a study on the smugness of hybrid car owners.  I wonder which is worse, self-righteous eco-freaks or men with LDS?)On Some are really, really big posted 2 years, 11 months ago 9 Responses

Right on, LandMan

LandMan, I think your analysis of the state of immmigration in America is right on.  No, I'm no bigot.  I think we all have an equal right to this land, and all land, regardless of our country of origin.  One planet for all!

That's not the issue.  The issue is the protection of our valuable natural resources, and understanding that if they are trampled by too many people, whether first or tenth-generation Americans, the consequences for all the people, and all the plants and animals in our country, will be terribly sad.  There are all ready too many people in America, and we've lost that sense of nature, of space and bounty, that so many previous generations of Americans held dear.  "Wilderness" can now be accessed by any city-dweller with a full tank of gas.  Wildlife now find their main source of sustenance from the garbage cans or gardens of suburbia...from the miles of new housing tracts springing up each day.

LandMan's original post about the declining rates of population growth is incredibly hopeful.  All of our environmental problems boil down to the fact that there are simply too many people here, consuming too much.  If the global population continues to grow, we will only experience a heightened state of environmental distress, regardless of whatever attempts we make to reduce our impact.

As far as our precious country goes, legal immigration does not need to be stopped, or even reduced significantly.  Illegal immigration is another story.  And no, I have nothing against "Mexicans" or any other individuals of Hispanic or other descent.  Perhaps our federal government, rather than supporting faulty governments south of the border while allowing lax enforcement of immigration rules, should both tighten the border and encourage said governments to take better care of their citizens, working to create conditions that make life live-able for them, too, so they aren't so desperate as to seek 1,000-mile, risk-laden journeys across the desert (causing major harm to that ecosystem in the process).On Like a Top 10 list, without 10 posted 2 years, 11 months ago 16 Responses

24,817

Oops.

And I drive a Prius!On Slate and TH challenge readers to lose 2.5 tons apiece posted 3 years, 1 month ago 7 Responses

Monkeys with Guns

So who wants to move to the far northern forests of Canada?  They should be positively tropical soon.

Then we can live like we're really supposed to, growing our own food and getting eaten by bears every once in a while.  And we can leave the rest of the planet to stew in its own noxious gases.

Anyone?  Anyone?

I've often thought suicide is the only good option.  With all that I believe and all the criticism I give to others, it makes me a hypocrite to not completely stop my own destructive behavior entirely.  Depressing, I know.  Perhaps that's why I haven't done it yet.

And I keep hoping that by the time I've made a life and can support myself, there'll be some quite corner of a Western state where I can go live and leave it all behind.  But there may not be.  I will probably be one of several thousand others, all looking to that same corner because the housing is big and cheap and the traffic not yet too bad.

Mass death would be a good option, from an environmental perspective.  But don't you all remember the tsunami two years ago?  Seeing 200,000 people die all at once was terrible, to put it mildly.  Each human life has value.

And so a good solution evades us.  We'll continue to gobble up the earth until circumstances make it impossible, and then everyone will look around in fear, asking, "How did this happen?"

And then, perhaps, we'll join all the thousands of other species we've destroyed, banished forever into extinction because of our own stupidity.On It's easy if you try posted 3 years, 1 month ago 35 Responses

How About

-Hummer-dumbers

-Tail pipe smokers

-Corporate morass dumb*ss

-New-wave MCPs: Mean Capitalist Pigs

They call us Crunchy and Granola...maybe we call them Soggy Sugar Cereal?On The history of tree-hugging, and the future of name-calling posted 3 years, 1 month ago 9 Responses

Amazon Adds to Mass Natural

I do hope everyone saw the Michael Pollan article about Wal-Mart selling organic foods, titled "Mass Natural," in the New York Times Magazine on June 4.

Excerpt:  "Beginning later this year, Wal-Mart plans to roll out a complete selection of organic foods -- food certified by the U.S.D.A. to have been grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilizers -- in its nearly 4,000 stores....Organic food will soon be available to the tens of millions of Americans who now cannot afford it -- indeed, who have little or no idea what the term even means. Organic food, which represents merely 2.5 percent of America's half-trillion-dollar food economy, is about to go mainstream."

The rest of Pollan's article discusses how the organic movement really cannot go mainstream and still be organic.  It may be produced without conventional pesticides, but the scale of production required to supply such massive markets undermines the principles of the organic movement.  It's seen as such a hot-selling niche market that everyone wants in on it.  Another example of the Tragedy of the Commons.  Perhaps this is why locally grown produce is becoming more fashionable, the way organics were several years ago?On File under: WTF posted 3 years, 5 months ago 2 Responses