Its great if our own decisions significantly lower the net environmental impact. However just choosing what car we drive, wearing sweatshirts at home in the winter and switching to a diet based on grains and low on meat/fish and veggies/fruits (growing lettuce in Calif is not exactly environmentaly friendly), while commendable, would not seriously reduce the impact we have.
Today we have a lot more appliances in our houses and we use a lot more resources than before the industrial revolution, or even 100 or 50 years ago. Thats true even in third world cities and towns. We have fridges and ovens, TVs and electronics, motorcycles and cars, books and papers, food related packaging, and now computers and mobile phones, just to name a few. Each fridge has exacted an environmental cost ( mining for metal, energy for manufacture and transport, pollution from manufacture, energy for operation and final disposal of chemicals). Such is more or less true for every item. Ideally if we reuse and recycle, and get alternate ecofriendly energy, and implement measures to curb pollution perhaps the cost would not be as high as it really is. I can't help wondering that our use of resources just keeps increasing, not only on a per capita basis but also spreading throughout the rural tropics. It requires a months stay in a third world village to see how many thousand times more resources we urban folk consume. As I am doing here sitting in this freezing airconditioned windowless room in lovely miami typing this email. Even if we all drive hybrid cars, or that run on biofuel, we know that a better alternative is rail based mass transit. However, the fact that we are all much morte mobile than 100 years ago ( including jet travel ) means that our impact grows more and more. I don't intend to sound pessimistic, just that the field of matural resource economics hasn't yet matured enough to quantify impacts. And we cannot go back to the pre-industrial age. ãmartya Quoting Wendee Holtcamp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Interestingly about littering... a lot of otherwise non-litterers throw out > orange peels, bananas, and other biodegradeable things. However in > reality... this attracts wildlife to the roadside to eat said food items, > increasing roadkill which not only kills wildlife but puts human lives in > danger! Something to think about. > > I heard of this logic from the infamous Dr Splatt, a high school teacher who > does "roadkill science" with his students (http://roadkill.edutel.com/). > They go out and monitor roadkill and correlate it with various factors. The > above was based on one students's study years ago showing an association > between roadkill and litter. I thought that was interesting and now I tell > everyone that likes to throw food out the window! > > Abut the book - the thing that struck me was that something like 64-87% of > all environmental impacts (air and water pollution, land alteration and > global warming) were caused by 3 conglomerated categories - transportation, > home operations (energy, AC/heating, etc), and food. The rest were all > relatively small in comparison. So the driving we do, the type of car we > drive, the energy (green) and energy efficiency of appliances and the food > choices we make were presumably the most important. > > Wendee > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Wendee Holtcamp, M.S. Wildlife Ecology > Freelance Writer-Photographer > http://www.wendeeholtcamp.com > Bohemian Adventures Blog > > http://bohemianadventures.blogspot.com > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > CRIKEY! > > > I do think that sometimes people get really upset at things that don't > really matter when you look at the big picture. For example, sometimes when > > I am driving down the highway and I am finished with my pop, I throw the can > > out the window on to the side of the highway. I realize that this is really > > rude, and it probably upsets a lot of people, but does it reallly have any > environmental impact at all, relatively speaking? > > I am of course joking... (SNIP) >
