Comments katwin24 has made

difficult choice

I was really excited by Obama's candidacy in the beginning, but his stances on things like ethanol, coal, nuclear, and, yes, health care, make me uneasy. I didn't especially like Hillary and agree that she lacks charisma BUT I think I'm tired of the notion that charisma somehow equals capability.

So, I've decided to go with Hillary. She's smart and determined, I can only hope that she realizes green is our only future.On Obama or Clinton: who's greener? posted 1 year, 9 months ago 46 Responses

I would say more of a vicious cycle...

but then I haven't read Achebe book. The poor don't seem to have much to choose from in family planning, or in ways to reduce their infant mortality rates, especially in the third world.

I live in Europe where large rowboats crammed beyond belief with desparate Africans fleeing misery are rescued (if they're lucky) with alarming frequency. How many have been lost at sea? No one knows. I don't think Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan (for muzzling Planned Parenthood) or their present day counterparts are responsible for ALL the suffering on the continent but they certainly must shoulder at lot of the blame, particularly for the spread of AIDS, and the orphaned street children left behind to fend for themselves, doing whatever they must to get by - often times prostituting themselves which results in even more unplanned pregnancies in the case of the girls.

In Europe there is also  a very Jeckyll/Hyde attitude towards population: although most governments give lots of lip service to environmental protection, they also encourage large families. In France, there's a bonus system after the third child whether you need the money or not. Although Europeans over all are much less energy dependent than Americans (most people don't have clothes dryers or air-conditioning, for example, and drive sensible cars although that is starting to change), Europe is densely packed.

Yet politicians are terrified by their rapidly dwindling social security coffers. The baby boomers are retiring, living longer, and the political answer on how to pay for all this is to simply encourage more babies, or here's another one - 'immigration ciblee' whereby only the best and brightest, or most useful are allowed to emigrate and settle thus depriving (one could say plundering) the country of origin of its human resources. Which I daresay it needs more than the West does. In any case, it does not address the corresponding environmental problems likely to occur, but merely passes it on to the next generation (who can't vote yet)

In the battle between economics and the environment, economics always wins, to the detriment of us all. I suppose the politicians might like a carbon trading type of system for births, people paying each other and a tax to the state for the right to pass on their genes to more than a set number of individuals - 1.7, 2.3, 2? - but since female reproduction is tied to so many religious beliefs that'll never happen. I'm joking of course, but mainly because there is too much room for abuse in such a system. Just imagine if China had never instigated its draconian measures of population control (as reprehensible as they might be) especially in light of their recent economic growth and new acquisitive habits. The Chinese are now making their own SUVs - I saw them at the Paris Auto Show - that are extremely popular and inexpensive to boot!

Some people believe we can continue our population growth with little consequence, I don't happen to be one of them. They say - there's enough food, there's enough water, there's enough fish in the sea. Perhaps, but for whom? Industrial agriculture pollutes our water supplies, creates dependencies on pesticides, encourages the pests to evolve into more resistant little buggers and yet with all the surplus in the world, poor countries are still going hungry. In Darwin's Nightmare, we see a country with a starving population exporting Nile Perch to meet the demand for cheap fish in Europe and destroying the viability of their lake in the process. Potable water is being cornered and marketed by a few faceless multinationals. And even if GMOs become safe, pesticides innocuous, water bottled and distributed freely, mercury levels in wild fish diminished and farmed fish cheap, available and non-polluting (like when a self-declared atheist/vegan/gun control proponent wins the Republican nomination); even then in this land of plenty for plenty of humans, we will have lost much of what makes our world inspiring - our great  tracts of wilderness and the astounding variety of life on this planet.

Didn't realize how long this got. Sorry.
Anyway, here's a start - let's send Anne Coulter to Mars right away. We use all our stockpiled plutonium to power her vessel.On Rethinking 'overpopulation' posted 3 years, 1 month ago 77 Responses

More razzle-dazzle, sleight of hand

I briefly perused the above site before I became so outraged by its blatant & willful ignorance, that I had to leave. Unfortunately, some of it "sounds" like sense, if you don't know much (or care much) about science, as is the case for a great many Americans.

In a nutshell,
$2 BILLION to Big Coal, but only $44 million to wind (or to make the point clearer, wind gets 2.22% of what coal gets).

Exploitation of the deep water oil reserves rumored to be in the Gulf - which will take years to develop, cost lots of money (yours & mine in subsidies), and to hell with any risks involved (to human safety, to the environment)

Easing restrictions on refinery-building

AND - NUCLEAR, NUCLEAR, NUCLEAR!  Safe?!? and affordable?!?, pollution free, no green house gases, blah, blah, blah. Sounds OK on paper but  Nuclear is Big Business and Big Business is about profits and cost-cutting and usually quite unethical behavior. And the much touted Yucca Mountain site for storage is not as safe and certain as is claimed.

So it seems that Mr Roberts is right on the Definitely, mainly right on the Probably and as for any real vision or leadership in the next 2 categories, he is again, sadly, on the mark.

I'm sending my copy of The Curve of Blinding Energy by John McPhee to the White House - it's a short book, an easy read for our intellectually challenged president who obviously has no idea just how dangerous nuclear can be in America. (the fact that the Twin Towers is mentioned more than once as a possible terrorist target or  as a measure of scale back in 1975? is eerie and might just get his attention)

Other than that, I hope people will not be fooled by this insincere bid for the votes of the growing numbers of  environmentally concerned citizens and will vote for their planet.On What to expect. posted 3 years, 2 months ago 7 Responses