I enjoyed the story of the Kon Tiki - in fact it is one of my favourite ocean travel stories. Doubtful I'd enjoy the story of the Ra as much :O( Petroleum IS the disaster - and as a person who just recently gathered and hauled ten garbage bags of plastic from Shi Shi Beach (a three mile hike of trail and another two of beach) - I'd say petroleum, it's by-products, and the plastics made of it are the biggest environmental concern facing the world today... disgusting... I barely made a dent in the mess out there... Time to start thinking long and hard about where it comes from and where it goes citizens of the planet... glass and paper may be clumsier to deal with but at least they can be broken down by natural processes... ~daniel~ *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
I have to take exception here to what was said. A dent implies a measurable impact. By way of illustration and for effect, 3 grains of sand moved amongst a trillion trillion grains of sand, while a numerical measuremnet, remains an impractical measurement. So, the bags of garbage off Shi Shi were but a few grains of sand. Sad really. But noble. Thank's Dan. You're trying. And I don't find as many discarded yogurt containers on the beach anymore beside kayak-keel tracks in the sand. And I'm walking to the corner store for milk. Changed my buying locations to local retailer in the neighborhood too. Costs more. Will be using the kayak bike cart this summer. But I'm still part of the problem. Still use petroleum. Plastic everywhere. My mitigating actions feel like a few grains of sand. If you ever write about your trip, I'm sure there will be some reflective prose touching on these issues. Wishing you well. Always. DL ~daniel~ said: >I enjoyed the story of the Kon Tiki - in fact it is one of my favourite ocean travel stories. Doubtful I'd enjoy the story of the Ra as much :O( Petroleum IS the disaster - and as a person who just recently gathered and hauled ten garbage bags of plastic from Shi Shi Beach (a three mile hike of trail and another two of beach) - I'd say petroleum, it's by-products, and the plastics made of it are the biggest environmental concern facing the world today... disgusting... I barely made a dent in the mess out there... Time to start thinking long and hard about where it comes from and where it goes citizens of the planet... glass and paper may be clumsier to deal with but at least they can be broken down by natural processes...< *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
Doug wrote: >So, the bags of garbage off Shi Shi were >but a few grains of sand. Sad really. But noble. >Thank's Dan. You're trying. G'Day Doug and Dan and all, Good to see those individual actions. Love the kayak bike! Wish I could get one to work on the hills of Sydney - maybe an electric kayak bike! Its amazing what high intensity sunlight and seawater can do to some disposable plastic containers. I've cleaned up all sorts of friable translucent objects just barely identifiable and looking as if they are well on the way to becoming grains of high tech 'sand'. But even in that kind of environment some plastics seem to be indestructible. Individual action like individual purchases may seem impossibly low impact but for environmental actions "a little a lot" is often worth much more than "a lot a little". Not dissimilar to marketing where huge profits are sometimes made from selling disposables for a few cents while giving away the capital equipment that uses those disposables. Of course the disposables can be part of the environmental problem darn it - roll on a recycling economy. All the best, PeterO *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Doug Lloyd <douglloyd_at_shaw.ca> wrote: > ......I'm walking to the corner store > for milk. Changed my buying locations to local retailer in the neighborhood > too. Costs more. Will be using the kayak bike cart this summer. But I'm > still part of the problem. Still use petroleum. Plastic everywhere. My > mitigating actions feel like a few grains of sand...... > Yes... we have met the enemy and he is us. No doubt about it. Much more true now than in the 1950s when it was first penned in a Pogo cartoon strip. Even so, lots of people taking small steps can make a big difference. We changed over to fluorescent lights years ago. I dunno how much of a difference they make to our electric bill (at US$0.04/kwhr) but they don't go bad as often which is good enough for me. What if we all went to LED lighting? And then set our houses up so that the lights (all LED) ran off batteries charged by solar panels? Or all went to on-demand water heaters instead of the big hot water tanks most of us (at least in the USA) use now. Composting toilets could make a big difference in water usage but many health districts won't permit them (stupidly, in my opinion). I use two 30-watt solar panels on the RV instead of a generator. Turns out I still have to listen to generators. Twenty five years after I first put solar panels to use I still had people coming up to me and asking me if those things worked. Good grief! It's an education issue I think. Several of the people who asked me if they worked were surprised that they did. We had enough power over a week's camping that we never worried about turning on lights or watching a movie. If they noticed and tried it then someone will come up to them and ask if they work. Packaging! What if Wal-Mart had to pay an excise tax on how many cubic yards of packaging went out the door. What if every package had to list its volume and that was tagged? Oregon makes people pay a deposit on bottles and cans and some people augment their retirement by cleaning up the highways and beaches. Bicycles make so much sense (even if, as PeterO surmises, they work better with electric motors to help). Sue and I have just been looking at a way we could sell the lake house (gasp!) and build a much more efficient home next to the shop and reduce our payments and carbon footprint at the same time. I'm sure we'd save $1k a month. Sure we use kayaks made of petroleum products (even our SOF kayaks) but we can reduce in other ways. Our governments are, for the most part, too hidebound to actually come up with effective ways to encourage us to change but over the long stretch it's probably cost effective anyway. After all, prices generally only go up (except for the stock market today). I just wish I had a Segway. :P Craig Jungers Moses Lake, WA www.nwkayaking.net *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
I'm delighted to read this, as it shows an awareness vastly beyond that of...well, nearly everyone. Let me share one of my favorite quotes, which I think is quite apropros here: Children make the best theorists, since they have not yet been educated into accepting our routine social practices as "natural", and so insist on posing to those practices the most embarrassingly general and fundmental questions, regarding them with a wondering estrangement which we adults have long forgotten. Since they do not yet grasp our social practices as inevitable, they do not see why we might not do things entirely differently. "Where does capitalism come from, mummy?" is thus the prototypical theoretical question, one which usually receives what one might term a "Wittgensteinian" reply: "This is just the way we do things dear." It is those children who remain discontented with this shabby parental response who grow up to be emancipatory theorists, unable to conquer their amazement at what everyone else seems to take for granted. --- Critical social theorist Terry Eagleton in his 1990 essay, "The Significance of Theory", We, for large values of "we", have accepted the premise that we can exploit natural resources without bound. We can dig up all the coal, pump out all the oil, cut down all the trees, dump all the trash, etc., and there will be no adverse consequences for us, because the planet will absorb all of them. This *might* have been true to a first approximation when (a) there were a lot fewer of us and (b) we didn't have the technology to conduct these operations on a large scale, but it's certainly not true now. But (a) most of us haven't figured it out yet [1] and (b) some of the ones who *have* figured it out are busy lining their pockets, reasoning that they will be safely dead before the consequences become too severe. Oh, and there are also (c) some remarkably stupid people who will claim that all of this is necessary for "safety" and "the economy" and "national security" because they lack the intellectual ability to work through the required reasoning to its inexorable conclusions. [2] So, with an agreeing nod to the Subject line on this message, I would say that it is *one* of the disasters we have inflicted on ourselves, and that perhaps we can dare to faintly hope that at least some dim awareness of that will filter through the collective consciousness. But even that's not enough: we're up against greed here. All-encompassing, mindless, blind, addictive greed. Why do you THINK that BP passed on a device costing a mere $500K -- chump change -- while pocketing billions in profits just in the last quarter? Slick Operator: The BP I've Known Too Well http://www.truthout.org/slick-operator-the-bp-ive-known-too-well59178 There really is no operational difference between the business models of BP and crack dealers. It's just that BP has better lawyers and spokesliars. My point being that all of the awareness, all of the conservation, all of the trash pickup, all of the effort that each one of us makes in small and large ways every day *will not matter* until and unless we do something substantive about the greed. Because while you are switching to CF bulbs and I'm picking garbage out of the river, our efforts are being neatly undercut -- by many orders of magnitude -- by what BP and others are doing to make piles of money. So here is what will happen: - BP will issue press releases using the completely predictable catchphrase of our time "No one could have foreseen..." neatly ignoring of course that many people foresaw quite clearly, but were marginalized because their foresight was inconvenient. - The tradition of privatizing profits and socializing costs will continue: BP will post a few billion in profits next quarter while the US taxpayers pony up for the cleanup. - BP will engage its army of attorneys to fight any and all claims against it. (This one is history already: anybody else see the stories about their lawyers offering $5K settlements along the coast?) The litigation will drag out at least past 2020 by which time many of the people whose livelihoods are now being erased will be destitute and desperate, and will start accepting pathetic settlements. - We will be told that while *this* technology failed, the *next* technology will never fail. - The mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, self-soiling drooling morons who support "drill baby drill" will be back at it soon enough. They will blame conservationists, environmental groups, marine biologists, academic researchers for "blowing this out of proportion" and will assert that this is a one-time event... even though it's clearly not. - Instead of using this as a wake-up call to encourage serious conservation of petroleum-based products, politicians will avoid that difficult path and will instead endorse more drilling "with appropriate safeguards" that will of course remain as unenforced as current ones thanks to cronyism, payoffs, and laziness. (I trust you've all see the news stories about MMS personnel having sex with employees of the energy companies they putatively regulate.) - An area the size of the state of Maryland is now coated in oil. Leakage is running at about 1.1 million gallons/day: http://blog.skytruth.org/2010/05/gulf-oil-spill-radar-satellite-image.html It will get bigger. It will coat shorelines in LA, MI and AL, and possibly FL. It will destroy fisheries, kill wildlife and i adversely affect the health of everyone breathing the fumes. Reasonable predictions will be made about the effects, they will be decried as "unduly pessimistic", and shortly thereafter they will be demonstrated to be unfortunately much too optimistic. - Once we strip out all the excess verbiage, the bottom line is that nobody has a viable plan to stop this anytime soon. ("hope" is not an engineering strategy.) - "No marigolds in the promised land, there's a hole in the ground where they used to grow." ---Rsk [1] Consider, for example, the inferior people who do not comprehend and accept anthropogenic global warming. I suppose the only redeeming quality these lesser individuals have is that they provide company for the equally-inferior people who do not comprehend plate tectonics, the big bang theory or evolution. We can only hope they're not breeding. [2] Consider that if a sovereign nation has done to us what BP has just done that it would be considered an act of war. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. 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Oops!! Too late! I've had two sons. There oughta be a law! Mark Sanders www.sandmarks.net On 5/9/2010 8:16 AM, Rich Kulawiec wrote: > ---Rsk > > [1] Consider, for example, the inferior people who do not comprehend > and accept anthropogenic global warming. I suppose the only redeeming > quality these lesser individuals have is that they provide company > for the equally-inferior people who do not comprehend plate tectonics, > the big bang theory or evolution. We can only hope they're not breeding. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
Rich Kulawiec wrote: >I'm delighted to read this, as it shows an awareness vastly beyond >that of...well, nearly everyone. Let me share one of my favorite >quotes, which I think is quite apropros here: > > Children make the best theorists, since they have not yet > been educated into accepting our routine social practices > etc.... Obviously you have not read Lord of the Flies :) Jackie *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
Rich Kulawiec wrote: > [1] Consider, for example, the inferior people who do not comprehend >and accept anthropogenic global warming. I suppose the only redeeming >quality these lesser individuals have is that they provide company >for the equally-inferior people who do not comprehend plate tectonics, >the big bang theory or evolution. We can only hope they're not breeding. > > Eugenics..... Oh for Pete's sake, Rich.... this is the equivalent of pulling the Nazi card. You erase your entire argument with this lame remark. Surely you don't really think you need it. You are smarter than that. Aren't you? >[2] Consider that if a sovereign nation has done to us what BP has >just done that it would be considered an act of war. > Right. You're beginning to sound like Bradford. sheesh Jackie (what happened to my beloved PaddleWise... I really miss Ralph right now) *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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