Comments adamgottschalk has made

  • Destruction of forests not as bad as oil drilling?

    The fact that most paper is made from virgin wood fiber is heinous. All of our forest have been clear cut for more than 100 hundred years straight for construction material and for paper, straight up. I don't see how drilling for oil, whether in the ANWR or elsewhere, is worse than clearcutting forests.

    Show me the statistics/facts that paper production and paper recycling are not quantitatively as bad as plastic production. Have you not heard of all the horrid effects on environment and people from paper production?

    Finally, if you question anything about the facts I iterated about landfills, look them up anywhere online. You leap in logic by_assuming_ that ultimately the real "problem" is whether or not something will biodegrade at some point (plastic does biodegrade, though not as quickly as paper). In fact the problem is that nothing is biodegrading, and not because of plastic, not by any means, because of the way landfills have been designed, and in the end the true problem is that we get over-filled landfills.

    Look it up. Plastic makes up such a small percentage of landfills one can draw 2 conclusions: 1) that once landfills are properly designed, the majority of landfills (70+%) will be biodegrading quickly, thus the small percentage makeup that is plastic will not contribute significantly, not as significantly as paper, to the over_filling problem, and 2) there must not be nearly as much plastic in production as paper if it makes up such a small percentage of landfills (again, _look at the facts, find them anywhere; the archaeologist, the world's premier expert on landfills, is Dr. Rathje, that's R-A-
    T-H-J-E).

    You should really check yourself regarding your bleeding-heart "oil drilling is worse than clear cutting" balderdash. You're only hurting the environmental movement.On Umbra on personal actions that make a real difference posted 4 years, 3 months ago 11 Responses

  • Dairy is the worst possible food for humans

    It may well be the case that eating dairy has less of a harmful impact on the world than eating meat. I myself have been a vegan for more than 15 years. While dair may be less environmentally deleterious, it is absolutely, positively worse than meat for the human body. The main component of milk is casein, which is basically a very strong glue. In addition, in the milk soup, there are many very, very powerful hormones (milk is a hormone delivery system), meant to turn calves into cows for example, hormones which were never meant for human consumption. As dairy consumption has increased over 200% over the las 20 years, so has the incidence of premature adolescence. Further, milk oh-so-definitely does not build strong bones. In fact, American women are in the top 3 populations in the world for osteoporosis incidence--while we're told that eating all the cheese and drinking all the milk will build strong bones. When one takes in animal proteing, the body's reaction, basically to alkalize the system which goes through acidifying reactions to animal protein, is to draw calcium out from the bones. It has been proved that more calcium is lost from the bones than is taken in with a glass of milk, for example. Check out www.notmilk.orgOn Umbra on personal actions that make a real difference posted 4 years, 3 months ago 11 Responses

  • Paper or drastic

    I think it's really important to mention some facts about landfills which the vast majority of folks, like 99.9%, don't know. I also think it's vitally important to think of bigger-picture issues as has been said all along.

    Here's the real kick in the pants though: there is one archaelogist who began undertaking scientific excavations of landfills some time ago (Dr. Rathje), part of the continuing "Garbage Project". The good doctor started with the largest landfill on the planet, Fresh Kills in NYC. Every subsequent excavation has drawn basically the same conclusions. Notably, what makes up more than 70% of every landfill known to man is paper. Plastic, all of it, packaging, diapers, bottles, measures only a fraction of what paper does. Across the board an everywhere. In his first excavation, with all his mentors telling him he was crazy, he found, among countless other things, an entire intact newspaper from the 1890s! Rathje has proved, time and again, that biodegradation, of anything, simply doesn't happen in "your average" landfill. Hence we see many landfills being retro-fitted to accomodate the findings that no matter what, for biodegradation to take place, there must be air and water. Getting air and water to the middle and bottom of a humongous pile is no mean feat. Newly constructed landfills benefit from this new knoledge.

    To me the plastic thing is a bit of an environmental red herring. All through my 20s I avoided it like the plague. First off, paper production, of "your average" paper, is highly toxic, always has been infamously toxic, on par with plastic prodcution. I've heard recycling paper is more toxic than producing plastic new. Judging from the facts about landfill make-up, plastic bags are much more landfill and eco friendly than paper ones. Also, looking at the facts, one becomes much more concerned with their paper "consumption" rather than how many plastic bags one uses.

    The bigger picture has us reusing everything from the get-go, and using items which are made to last and be re-used for a long time. In some cases, hard plastic products can last many lifetimes, especially compared with the "organic" options. I can no longer see plastic as the evil I once thought it to be. There are too many great uses for plastic, many things we take for granted, in medicine, for example, and not enough bads, all told, to consider plastic any worse than, or even as bad as, paper.On Umbra on personal actions that make a real difference posted 4 years, 3 months ago 11 Responses