Comments tui3 has made

Closing the loop - other measures

It would be nice to have stronger measures to address the waste issue.  For example, a mandatory level of recycled content in new products. Bring on extended producer responsibility - in my view, the sooner this happens across the board the better.  On As material prices fall, U.K. grapples with mounds of un-recycled recyclables posted 1 year ago 3 Responses

Put sustainability criteria on any Wall St package

Amid all this talk of a proposed $700 billion rescue package for Wall Street, I wonder whether this might be an opportunity to make a change towards sustainability in investments.  

I say make any rescue package subject to requirements on Wall St to invest from now on only in sustainable, planet-protecting investments.

That might be just the type of major step we need.
On Last year's world CO2 emissions exceeded most dire IPCC predictions posted 1 year, 2 months ago 5 Responses

Time to stop population and meat explosion?

Very interesting post - thank you.  All this suffering over the millenia seems so tragic and stupid.  Malthusian, really. Can we stop it from repeating again?  Should we just allow the population explosion to continue? Should we sit back and allow meat eaters and "breeders" to ravage the planet completely? Perhaps it is time for governments around the world to make some hard decisions.  But is this in principle almost impossible?

The ecological economists Daly and Cobb in their 1989 book opined that capitalists/corporates like high birth rates, to create an expanding labour supply and keep wages low.  

I have heard the usual view that if all nations get rich enough, population growth will decrease.  I don't consider this as anything more than theory, and I have read somewhere that emerging evidence is contradicting it.  In any case when people get rich, they'll probably want western-style consumption, so it might simply take us collectively from the frying pan into the fire. And if there are powerful forces wanting high population growth and cheap labour (as Cobb and Daly contended), will these forces win out anyway?

Popularity politics - the need for politicians to be popular - also makes it very hard for governments to take hard steps, I think.  I wonder whether it might be in principle impossible to stop the population explosion in any humane way under democracies.  Perhaps this is an odd thought, but thousands of years ago Plato had serious criticisms of democracy, and he favoured a completely different form of government.  

Meat Free Week sounds good in principle. Good luck with it. What about something longer lasting and allowing a little meat?  

Referring to a "meat explosion" up above makes me think of Peter Jackson and his early movie "Bad Taste".  It might be a useful phrase, for its emotional associations, in discouraging people from eating meat.

Again, thank you for the post.On Why Paul Roberts' End of Food deserves to be digested posted 1 year, 3 months ago 14 Responses

How can we help China - options?

I appreciate the comments above about harsh criticism not being very acceptable in China. I think that it is not their way - they may prefer respectful suggestions. (And so would I if I was receiving them.) So how can we best help them with the pollution problem?  Perhaps the West can offer some of its people (as appropriate) to assist the Chinese officials?

In the longer term, I agree with other posters above that Western consumption of manufactured goods must decrease. I think that we in the West must find other ways to happiness than buying goods, a very high percentage of which only end up in landfills anyway. I think that Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping are helping to spread a very important message. In their film "What Would Jesus Buy?", Professor Bill McKibben says:

"In a hundred years Americans will find another way to have fun besides shopping. My worry is that we won't have time to evolve these changes at the usual rate - by then we will derail the earth's systems, especially its climate."On Gray skies loom over Beijing as Chinese officials announce emergency air-pollution measures posted 1 year, 4 months ago 9 Responses