Comments Fenrir has made

Next "Ask Umbra" section should be about abortion and how a "fertilized woman's egg" is or is not a potential human being given certain conditions. Although I doubt she'd get into all that potential flaming by readers, it should really be noted, given the actual impact and/or benefit of abortion as an environmental decision and individual empowerment. Hope this doesn't offend anyone, but it would be really interesting to point the environmental benefits/impacts of abortion, since Umbra has already commented on child bearing or adoption.

You are absolutely right, I was also pondering on it. How green is that phone really? I mean, apart from being "green" colored, it kinda mentions having biodegradable elements, but c'mon, a simple life cycle assessment has shown many hybrid biodegradable/synthetic products to impact more than simple synthetic production (since it envolves an extra agricultural impact for the organic components). Is Grist selling out on sponsorship? I hope not. Still, you made a great point. The author would probably frown at the "green" cell phone on top of her article. Nice catch.

It's an interesting subject! What I've always been worried about is the cost of dying. It COSTS to die! I mean, shouldn'te we all die and that's it? why are there so many companies or governments trying to take advantage of an unavoidable stage? I believe it's gross to have to spend on your own death or leave the debts to the family, because funerary services, cemetery services and whatever, even death certificate or any thing the authorities need, costs and sometimes a lot.

I would so love to die peacefully and be thrown to the ocean or used to help something else, lest my body contained toxic chemicals and there were risks to the environment, in which case, shouldn't we all (probably city-consumer-folks) be disposed as dangerous wastes? We poison our body in life and then go ahead and keep polluting the earth after death. I'm a living environmental liability! Everyone should pay (not a company or government) to remediate the environmental impacts we caused in life and will cause in death, not pay for just dying! we're in a huge debt we don't even know about.

Barbiplease. Yes, you have a very good and interesting point. Perhaps consumption (C) might be a bigger issue than population (P) given the right numbers, so...? You even mentioned yourself that both are huge issues and should be taken care of, so what's the point on saying nuclear weaponry is more destructive than biochemical terrorism? what is "destructive" to begin with? what is "environmental impact" in the case of C vs P? It is still a major issue and just because we haven't written a book with statistics does not mean that we should leave an issue (even slightly) behind.

IMHO, changing your own consumer habits seems easier than telling your kids what to do with their lives even if you try your best at environmentally-educating them. They might go ahead and decide to travel all their lives, become the next big oil company's CEO or simply not care. So yes, you can change your habits but can you really force others to do so at the same or even similar rate? you still talk about the average US consumer lifestyle... have you noticed that's incredibly rich and unsustainable than most of the world's population? surely you live comfortably enough and might even reduce that to a third world country lifestyle, but still, it's your own life, that which you can control. Unless you plan on forcing the rest of the world to reduce consumption (as would be to force them to reduce procreation), that solution is clearly not the ultimate nor the most important factor. Yes, I back you up on the "let's do both" thing, have less kids and consume less. Great. But having a kid is letting a new person choose over being pollutant or not (specially in the US, why do you keep saying "America") and it is way out of reach than your own consuming habits, sooooo having extra population with extra decisions on lifestyle and consumption is far worse IMO than just having fewer people with whatever consumption choices they decide, which of course, should also be limited. First cut overpopulation to tighten possible consumer sprees, reduce consumption nonetheless.

More potential pollutants with a hopefully less consuming rate or less potential pollutants overall? It seems self-explanatory to me, but then again, maybe my third world country view is not as informed, right ;)?

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Apart from that, I swear, if I ever have a kid, I will immediately write and publish an apologee letter to the world. Stating my impossible justification for bringing yet another human to this planet instead of taking care of an already born one, and a clear commitment on how my life's professional goals will offset my kid's potential consumption choices. Still, I'll be indefinitely indebted with the planet, and everyone on it.

Well, I have to mention something out of the top of my head. If today's population is a great risk to the environment and needs to be reduced... Then how is it that having a kid per person in any means reducing it? replacing yourself is not entirely an accurate solution, since that will only "theoretically" keep the same amount of persons in the world, obviously this is not true, since there many will likely become grandparents or great grandparents before their kids replace them (and they already have a whole lot of grandkids replacing each other at a quicker rate than their death rates).

I don't believe "replacing yourself" is useful on its own. That statement might apply in the same or similar region, but definitely not applicable wordlwide. A person in Rwanda can have 10 kids without impacting as much as a single US citizen having 1 child. This of course, does not entail any other importance or compares in any mean life value but just reflects the impact of having a kid in different parts of the world and who pollutes more. If everyone replaced themselves, then there would theoretically be the same number of persons in the world and the same number of US citizens and same number of Koreans, etc. so environmental issues will not solve themselves that way. Of course I don't mean to say US citizens should stop having kids while the rest of the world keeps doing it, but it is important to mention the different impact of each nacionality's decision on having kids. My logic tells me that people should not even replace themselves, and perhaps having a single kid per couple would be little effort against the damage already done. Still, the most important thing is not to forbid people to have kids, but rather incentivize them to have less and less having their regional reality in mind. No one should force anyone to have more or less kids but rather allow easier access to alternatives and keep on informing the overall population.

Still, I think replacing is not good enough, and in order to avoid a huge reproductive rights catastrophe for our descendants, we should start right now by helping out in reducing our reproductive spree as much as possible. Having no kids should be highly compensated, but economic systems would not allow their consumers (citizens) having less and less consumers (you can just change that to soldiers or voters).

John former Marine

You're quite correct IMO. There should be a sort of program towards making each passenger pay for their respective weight... WITHOUT being politically incorrect or rude. Offending people is not the point here.
I kept thinking and maybe setting weight ranges might help, but instead of making it more expensive, you could make a special discount to those below a certain weight range and charge the rest the same.
That's my "two-cents-worth" ethical approach to the matter. Still, I think something along these lines will never be allowed in order to avoid problems. Hope no one gets offended btw!On Umbra on driving versus flying, again posted 1 year, 3 months ago 13 Responses