[backstop]

Geogann -

Welcome to the site -

Its good to see fresh respect for this quiet spacecraft we call Earth.

I hope you'll find a good many kindred spirits here.


Regards,

Backstop

PS - Care to expand on your thoughts on inter-generational equity ?

[markam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ow thoughtful of you.

[emersonbiggins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('markam', 'I') am talking about the average american who does not have the resources, education or ability to control their lives. They live where they can, they work where they can, and do whatever is necessary to survive. The health of the earth is meaningless to them.

[nth]

You have to know it is in nature to have species die off.
This is only natural that humans populate the world and cause their own extinction. According to scientists, this has happen again and again.

Now, the question becomes if you are not able to provide a living for yourself, why are you worrying about future generations?

Who dictates who should live versus who should perish?

Without oil and fossil fuel, Earth cannot support so much people, so those questions above becomes valid.

[Raxozanne]

Have you ever thought that there was probably a good reason for carbon being in all those carbon sinks? (i.e: so that it isn't in the atmosphere).

How much can we keep taking from the earth?: a limited sustainable amount that we have already surpassed (currently using: 1.2 earths, plus needing an extra 0.8 earths for China and India to modernise)

How much will we keep taking from the earth?: As much as we can get our greedy little fingers on.

However awful it sounds what Markam says is true, who wouldn't chop down the last tree to keep their children alive in the short-term however suicidal it would be in the long term?

Humans, so smart but yet still so stupid...

[Novus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f I had to drive 20 miles to get to a job in order to feed my kids, motorized transportation is more important than the earth. Not even a contest.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ow much can we keep taking from the earth?

[Kickinthegob]

georgann, are you aware of the The Gaia Hypothesis?
Perhaps the native Indians best demonstrated this in practice, perhaps they really cared for the land and future of their offspring. The problem I have with applying this theory in real life would be I have no control over 6 billion people, besides, me thinks mother nature will require no assistance in correcting the current imbalance. If science is correct, this world will continue to turn for billions of years, perhaps long long after humans have gone. I don't have kids myself but, like The Story In Your Eyes...

I’m frightened for your children
That the life that we are living is in vain
And the sunshine we’ve been waiting for
Will turn to rain

Listen to the tide slowly turning
Wash all our heartaches away
We’re part of the fire that is burning
And from the ashes we can build another day

-Moody Blues

[FireJack]

I remember seeing this amusing program on discovery, it was a theroetical picture of earth 400 million years from now when earth will have a single continent again. I missed the start but I assumed that humans and mammals had sopposedly gone extinct long long ago. Squids were set up to be the future dominant species on earth. Of all the portrails of the future that one seems most realistic (mabey not the squid part).

[Gary]

I think that the question posed is a good one.

I chose some years ago to try to begin to live in ways that really made sense to me, rather than just accepting the conventions we are handed in my particular (American, materialistic, consumerist) culture.

I ride cargo trikes and pedicabs now and do work as a "sustainable household helper." I fix stuff, clean stuff, make stuff for people. I can carry up to 700 pounds of tools on my trike if need be, but rarely have to haul that much. (Actually, pedicabbing brings more opportunity for hauling lots of weight around than my handyperson work does, so far.

My inspiration for making the change was actually the very thing alluded to by georgann. "Intergenerational equity" is how someone put it.

I kept looking at my kids and thinking that we have designed a way of living that consumes the reources needed to live, and that poisons the ecosystem with the byproducts of so much that we do.

So why not try to design a way of living that enriches the habitat we leve to our kids ? Why not -- to the extent that we are able --try to understand and live as an integral part of the larger environment?

This makes sense to me, although it is not easy to do living the infrastructure of a city as I do. Also, I am a long way from shedding some of the consumer addictions I've developed -- coffee and chocolate and diet pop, for example.

I've been thinking that resource depletion, resource war, and gtlobal climate change are the triple threat that will shape our lives for the next two or three decades. Michael Klare wrote a terrific article available at Energybulletin.net about this, but focusing on British Defense Secretary John Reid's recent speech about resource depletion and the impacts ofglobal climate change as the primary motivator for war in the near future.

So, yes. "Intergenerational equity seems like a very, very big deal to me. I can't do everything, but what I can do I will try to do. I like the idea of leaving the kids a place worth living in. And maybe their kids, and the kids after that....

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('markam', 'I') am talking about the average American who does not have the resources, education or ability to control their lives...

[coyote]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('markam', 'T')rust me, every single person on the earth feels that way.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('markam', '
')I am talking about the average american who does not have the resources, education or ability to control their lives. They live where they can, they work where they can, and do whatever is necessary to survive. The health of the earth is meaningless to them.

[markam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'm')ay then start to embrace a social cause once again

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('markam', ' ')Only people growing up in the new reality, without a memory of the past america, will be able to really accept the changes that are coming.

[Heineken]

Nothing is happening.

I see the same lines of migrating SUVs, the same hideous shopping strips a la Kunstler, the same knock-down and pave-over of forests and meadows for rows and swirls of identical oversized houses.

The same glittering seas of cars gathered at major consumption nodes.

The same endless suburbs growing more endless.

The same bottomless spew of predictable, manipulative hash from our "leaders."

The same lewd and garish "reality shows" cluttering TV---just one step away now from outright freak shows and public executions.

The same ongoing mass extinction of earth's infinitely precious endowment of plant and animal species.

In response to Peak Oil, Peak Water, Peak Health Care, deforestation, global warming, overpopulation, fiscal lunacy, runaway militarism, and a kind of creeping fascism, we are doing pretty much what we've been doing all along---NOTHING!

Nothing is happening.

[Grifter]

Road widening
Airport expansions
air conditioning unit sales...sigh.

[Don35]

The down side is the longer we go w/o change the hard the fall will be. THATS what scares me!

[kevincarter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')In response to Peak Oil, Peak Water, Peak Health Care, deforestation, global warming, overpopulation, fiscal lunacy, runaway militarism, and a kind of creeping fascism, we are doing pretty much what we've been doing all along---NOTHING.

[mark]

What else would you expect at peak? Peak cluelessness!

For the rest of us, life becomes surreal.