Comments bw has made

  • Wow

    What a spoiler for The Happening. Thanks!On New flicks feature green themes posted 1 year, 5 months ago 8 Responses

  • Great planning

    I had a chance to meet and speak with Danny Kennedy a few months ago and he's the real deal. With the right market incentives, this company is really set to spearhead the consumer solar market in CA. I can't wait to watch it happen.On 'Dell of solar' seeks to make it cheap and user-friendly to get rooftop PV posted 1 year, 5 months ago 4 Responses

  • The article is right on

    Our current industrial civilization is based on an economic philosophy of infinite growth, which is prima facie impossible. That's not to mention issues of complexity.

    For a complete exploration of the inevitible demise of civilization, check our Derrick jensen's two volume series, "Endgame."On Wow posted 1 year, 8 months ago 19 Responses

  • It's going to take more than letters

    These thugs don't understand the environment, they only understand dollars, which Rogers manages to bring up repeatedly ("eceived $460 million in local, state, and federal clean coal and economic development incentives", "will receive $125 million in federal clean coal tax incentives", etc.). Hell, the greenwash column was even written by a guy with the last name "Overcash," as in, Nothing Over Cash. Not the environment. Not the future. Not the climate or the planet or our very lives.

    He barely addressed any of the points brought up in the original letter.

    The new Cliffside unit will help supply those power needs while reducing air pollution.

    Anyone happen to have the numbers on net reduction in air pollution? They are conspicuously absent from Overcash's column. I can't imagine that opening this new plant will actually reduce air pollution.

    It's going to take more than letters. Thank you to all the NC activists who chained themselves to bulldozers in protest of this atrocity.On Duke Energy CEO responds to climate scientist Jim Hansen posted 1 year, 8 months ago 13 Responses

  • It is indeed about the paradigm

    It is the nature of our industrial paradigm that is driving these disturbing experiments, not meat eaters.

    The difference, I suppose then, is that some of us are actively trying to remove ourselves from that paradigm (veganism being only one such way) while others are content to accept it.

    I'm not happy simply hoping for change, I'm going to live the dream to the best of my ability, and educate others as I go.On 'Heart-healthy' pork from pigs with bad hearts posted 1 year, 8 months ago 33 Responses

  • And it comes down to this

    I eat meat because I like it, not because I don't know that I can get protein, or iron, or omega 3's elsewhere.

    This is usually how this kind of discussion ends (when it is with an educated person, at least).

    Awareness of the alternatives. An understanding of the cruelty--even at your tiny local farm there is, indeed, cruelty--and a knowledge of the severe environmental degradation that demand for meat perpetuates; but in the end it's a matter of taste. "I do it because I like it." I would suggest that this is a poor way to defend any decision you make in you life.

    Two additional comments:

    "Carnivores with a Conscience" is one of the most ridiculous oxymorons I've ever heard. As is the idea that a pig can somehow be happy while getting fattened for slaughter and then, ultimately, being slaughtered.

    To the question of what to do with all these man-made (or at least, man-modified) species? It's not a hard answer: let them live out the remainder of their lives in peace until they are all extinct (I can hear the gasps now). Cows, pigs and chickens are miserable creatures bred for one purpose only: to live, be tortured, die and have their flesh feasted upon. They are a shadow of their genetic forebears. They would not and could not exist without us. Their species are already extinct, you see? Let them rest in peace.
    On 'Heart-healthy' pork from pigs with bad hearts posted 1 year, 8 months ago 33 Responses

  • Sparingly

    As if eating it sparingly makes the dead pigs feel any better. Demand for pork--even demand from those who only eat it occasionally--is what drives these sick experiments, not that you, or any flesh eater, should be held complicit. The meat machine is just too big, and growing every day as feedlots pop up in countries that now emulate our Standard American Diet. SAD, indeed.

    I also recommend Oryx & Crake, Atwood is stellar.On 'Heart-healthy' pork from pigs with bad hearts posted 1 year, 8 months ago 33 Responses

  • A step in the right direction

    Behavioral economics seems like a step in the right direction--as a discipline, economics sorely needs an injection of emotion. If that is what behavioral economics offers, then full-steam ahead.

    Unfortunately it seems that even behavioral economics neglects to address overarching problem with the traditional economic philosophies that still drive our world culture's destructive activity on this planet: the requirement that everything be monetized.On What behavioral economics has to offer posted 1 year, 8 months ago 8 Responses

  • Technological Optimism

    Perhaps Sachs is suggesting that even with cutbacks in total use, a global economic system predicated on unending growth will--under current technology--be unable to support a long-term decline in CO2 emissions. That is to say that lowering primary energy use per dollar may indeed be incompatible with our current economic philosophy. Even at complete efficiency, growth is still required, and that is a paradox that leads to a wall through which only technology can break.

    Of course, if you're a technological optimist you'll hope that increasing efficiency can stem GHG emissions just long enough for that alternative energy silver bullet--and it may indeed come--but I prefer to leave deus ex machina to the movies.

    I'm inclined to go with Sachs on this one: an expanding global economy (read: an economic system that requires infinite growth) is going to run into loads of trouble with current technology, even if we exploit every significant opportunity for efficiency.On Since when is regulation optimal? posted 1 year, 8 months ago 25 Responses