DescentBB

Well, blah blah…Wait…I was wondering how raising ones lifestyle is reliant on lowering someone else’s, and you suckered me into defending against something totally irrelevant…

So right back on you…

Why do you have to lower someone’s lifestyle to raise someone else’s?

Anyway…

1. “Total BS Spidey check out some basic economics.”

Lol I own a small business, I have a pretty good idea of economics…Fact…we had a high standard of living in America long before we had cheap consumer goods…in fact cheap consumer goods have led to a decline in that standard.

2. “Right. Not your (as a consumer) fault. Not the successive deficits run up by Republican politician fault. Oh no must be those \"Liberals\" “

I always try to buy American, and never consume cheap goods whenever possible.

3. “Where do I talk about that? I was describing your countries economic statistics. When your dollar is only good for wallpaper you can't buy stuff on the open market unless you hand out fistfuls of it.”

You mentioned “Cheap Goods”

4. “The company I work for here in Canada sells 80% of our product (high quality, custom, HVAC units) into the U.S. but only 45% of our production is there. You guys tank and I'm selling pencils on the street in a week. Pull it together will you. “

Guess you’ll have to sell those expensive widgets to the Chinese with those high standards of living.

This point for point crap is way too tedious for me.

Spidey wrote:And if we keep dumbing down our kids in this liberal indoctrination warehouse system (Public School) we will be in for the flush.

Well, I hate to break it to you, but I am a product of your "liberal indoctrination warehouse system" and although you'll probably assume that I'm saying this just to nerf your comment, I am a person who has a squuare head on your shoulders, cares about what happens around me, and hasn't had any "liberal messages" beaten into my skull.

To be fair, it could very well be that I had gotten these messages but had ignored them, with my up brining making sure that I challenge what I thought was wrong, and such. But then again, that requires parents to be responsible, though we couldn't have that. A. because the system would fall apart, and II. that's another thread

Back to the topic at hand.
There's a certain view of the world by consumers, which has been said in previous posts. Manufacturers, may it be intentional or otherwise, are creating products that are meant to be used, and thrown as soon as they break. For the life of me, I can't think of any such products.

Nextly, many people in the US, and probably many other countries are.... (brace yourself)......




WASTEFUL PEOPLE!

We have become a society obsessed with convience and luxury. We always try to look for a way out, prescriptions for everything under the sun, "Carbon Credits" All of these tihngs invented to make us think that we're doing good. I will admit that there are some things that a prescription drugs need to help treat, but it seems from the commercials that if you have any kind of illness (short of the common cold, haven't quite gotten that one...) there's a pill, patch or injection for it.

Carbon credits, offset credits, whatever you like to call them, its (as said above) a way for the big rich people look like they're doing something. They couldn't live in a smaller house, or drive cars that use much less fuel (since they can afford such things), and I'm sure there are those who have used their money to buy better cars, that's great. There are also those who had to run out and get the Hummer, yeah! Gotta love it! You get basically a military vehicle, with out the armor, or weaponry, but with the great mileage, or lack thereof. Why do they get it? I can only guess because I'm not in one of those "privileged" families.

Overpopulation! Neat topic. The truth is, that unless we slow down the pace, in a certain number of years from now, we're going to run out of space. No way around it unless you've got a sub-space vacuole that you want to rent out that I'm not aware of. Eventually we'll have to limit the housing that can be built because we need tos ave room for FARMING! Yeah! The thing that helps to put food on our tables. Virtually anything that you can eat without dying on, can be traced to agriculture. Though that may be partially defeated by saying that some soft drinks are loaded with so much crap that isn't organic that it doesn't qualify, which is true, but if you pump that stuff into your body long enough, you'll die. Our bodies evolved eating organic stuff, berries, deer, sticks, anything that we found to be edible. (For those creationists amoung us, same thing applies you your thinking, after we were "created" we had to decide what was editble, and what not. I doubt very seriously that God hand-holded us after booting Adam and Eve outta the garden. If he did, I'd love to learn about it.) That's what our bodies are used to taking in, start pouring artificial stuff into our systems and we'll go belly up faster than a backstroke swimmer at a meet.

When it comes down to it, we either need to slow down alot, stop all together, or just stagnant population growth. But all method will make you get tared and feathered if you try to talk about it. Why? Well, think about it, the last way about it is basically telling people "Stop making kids, and by the way... You have no choice in the matter. Oh, and you, Mr. Rapist, you can't to that, sorry, but it'll just increase the population." No going to happen.

Oh! A method that those who just want to nuke the globe may like: Just randomly take out large portions of cities. That'll never work unless we have an orgainized fight with lethal things, what are those called..? Oh yeah, wars. As soon as we get a couple of those going we'll be okay for a while. But if you think that way you'll get brow beaten with "You want mother's sons to get shipped off to be killed!" And to be honest, as effective as it may be, I wouldn't want to loose anyone out of my family, and I will assume that many others share my way of thinking on that subject.

I think the notion that we are going to run out of space is completely wrong. As to out growing our food sources, I haven't read much on that subject but my instincts tell me that too is wrong.

Nature has a way of culling the herd. It may be ugly, starving children etc. but it is a part of the natural survival of the species. Trying to manipulate nature to accommodate all the people everywhere so they can live as if they too were born in fertile, resource rich areas controlled by industrious benevolent cultures is where some people have created the problems they claim we all face.
If you don't accept the premise that all people deserve the best there is then the problem is not there. It would be nice if every starving waif in the dirt poor regions could have what we have here but it may be our undoing to try and make it artificially come to be.

Expect revolt and world war if you try too hard. It would require a world wide central authority to control the whole planet and redistribute the wealth according to their plan.

It's starting to sound like 'Soylent Green\" now. Science fiction writers are sometimes prophetical.

We many not be running out of land yet, but here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, subdivisions are slowly replacing prime farmland. The REAL problem that's starting to stare us in to face is clean water! That commodity is presently becoming more and more scarce. Many local communities are now restricting new development because of the lack of available ground water. Humans will die from lack of water long before they die of starvation. We don't have the large scale power intensive ability to tap and desalinate sea water on a vast scale yet.

I watched 'Nova' on PBS last night about cars and the future and it was very interesting. They claimed that there are over 800 million cars on the planet. China will have the same number of cars in 2 decades that the U.S. does NOW. On top of that, out of ALL the oil that has been pumped from the ground in the last century, ONE QUARTER of it was used in the last 10 years! Use is going up exponentially. You really would be interested to see this show, especially the alternative energy methods. I want a 'Tesla' electric sports car, it's cool but way too expensive for me.

That gets to one of my other points. Burning up oil to move around our inefficient cars. It has far more important uses being turned into all sorts of products, like plastics, pharmaceuticals and a whole host of chemicals that we need for modern life, although some chemicals we could do without. The point is that oil has far more uses than just burning it wastefully. Only 1% of the gasoline energy an engine burns goes into moving the driver of the car. We're wasting a valuable chemical treasure trove. Corn based ethanol is just a stop gap and a poor one at that. Already farmers are growing more corn for fuel, driving up the price of, no surprise, FOOD! Which we do need to survive.

Oh Spidey, how in the world can you just buy only 'American' products! Everything I see now has either 'made in China' or 'made in Mexico' or from someplace else that's been stamped on it. Very few things are American made and they're harder to find. A lot of our cars are made in Mexico even. You really have to hunt for it.

As for lowering your standard of living so that someone else can raise theirs, it's already being done for us with globalization. It's no longer a choice. As other countries strive toward modernization, they have to take from the worlds limited resources to do so. Capitalism by it's very nature will drive up the price of goods as demand increases or resources become scarce. As prices go up, the demand for cheaper goods also goes up and the search for cheap labor will rise. Labor is the one commodity that can be manipulated by corporations to get the lower prices they need to sell their goods at a price people want. They certainly can't get lower prices for other commodities when there is a fixed or restricted world supply. Until we can get resources from, say other planets, we have a fixed resource base here on earth.

So as the demand for more goods rises around the world, we Americans will have to give up something to compensate since we consume a large portion of the world's resources now. Since the big multinational corporations are still looking for cheap labor, we in the U.S. lose out in good paying jobs while other countries pay their laborers considerably less than our workers would get for the same job. If we don't get paid as much, we can't buy as much! It's all about balance.

Now we have inflation showing up here in the U.S., thanks to Bush's little war that has us SO far in dept, we are selling our country to the Chinese and Saudis in the form of treasuries to pay for it. They will OWN us soon! So much for tax cut and spend. Our dollar WILL only be good for wallpaper and the standard of living WILL drop for a large majority of people in the U.S. Then when that happens, the corporations will come looking HERE for cheap labor to make the goods for the new rich people in other countries to consume. What goes around, comes around.

Spidey wrote:Why do you have to lower someone’s lifestyle to raise someone else’s?

Simply because the perception of "lifestyle" is relative.

If A's lifestyle doesn't change, but B's lifestyle is starting to catch up, then A feels like theirs is relatively decreasing.

It's a "Keeping ahead of the Jones'" ideal that afflicts pretty much everyone in our Western culture.

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Then there's the question of ethics. If A has enough surplus resources to prevent B from dying from starvation/disease/etc, they should do so, shouldn't they?

[Note: I know you may be thinking it, but please don't accuse me of endorsing communism, because I'm not talking about an artificial enforcement of economic 'equality'.
I do believe that those with a surplus of resources have an ethical responsibility toward those without. That's the example shown by the earliest Christian church, and it's just common ethical sense.]

Here's the best way for me to say it:

It's good for a population to want the best lifestyle they can have. That comes from simple human nature.

However, when that lifestyle comes at the expense of, or by the ignorance of, another population's health... it's crossed the ethical line into "looking out for number one, I don't care about the rest" territory.

tunnelcat wrote:Still, no one is talking about the touchy subject concerning population control of the human species as an option for our food and energy woes.

That's because "population control" is a completely stupid idea propagated by people with no understanding of population dynamics.

Populations grow according to the available resources and consumption rates -- not, as Malthus suggested, "out of control", but rather, exactly in line with those resources. The big scare in the 60s and 70s was "exponential" population growth and overpopulation, and if you looked at the graph of world population with an untrained eye, it sure looked that way. But if you actually have a clue (I did my masters work studying mathematical biology) you'll recognize the logistic growth pattern -- population will top out at about 10-12 billion people; we crossed the inflection point at 5-6 billion in the late 80s.

The reason population will top out at that level is that's the appropriate level for population to top out at, based on resources and consumption.

At a population of 10-12 billion people, we won't all live as comfortably as modern-day Americans -- at least not until technology makes some big leaps. But we also won't all live like Haitian peasants. The people at the top end might come down a little bit, and the people at the bottom end will come up, and we'll all settle into a comfortable level of population/consumption. It's what happens to every life form on earth; humans are no different.

Now, given the understanding that populations will do what populations do -- grow based on resources and consumption -- how can we ensure a comfortable lifestyle? Simple: think more carefully about what you choose to consume. Drive slowly. Live closer to work. Turn off lights and appliances that aren't in use. Buy more fresh fruits and veggies and fewer prepackaged meals. In general, eliminate expensive inefficiencies in the way you live your life -- things that have a high cost and very little benefit. Consume what you need to consume to be comfortable, not 10 times that much because you're not paying attention.

Lothar wrote:Populations grow according to the available resources and consumption rates -- not, as Malthus suggested, "out of control", but rather, exactly in line with those resources.
... population will top out at about 10-12 billion people...
...based on resources and consumption.

Very true. Population growth is constrained by the available resources, and can't go "out of control".

BTW, the 'inflection point in the '80s' Lothar referred to is a mathematical term for the point where the curvature of a function changes sign. In this case, it's the point where population growth went from 'accelerating' to 'decelerating' (note that it's still growing in both cases). It's analagous to a point where you're still moving forward, but you have taken your foot off the gas pedal, and put on the brake.

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However, I think Tunnelcat still has a point, in that humanity still has some choice in how the changes in population growth happen.

Will it be more voluntary (e.g. cultural changes in how many children familes have), or simply due to the effects of dwindling resources (populations not able to sustain themselves)? I'd say the former is certainly more preferable.

“Oh Spidey, how in the world can you just buy only 'American' products!”


I never said that, read it again.

It would be an interesting project for all of us to wander around our house for an hour and check everything you can for country of origin. Your computer, the clothes in your closet, your shoes, your dishes, all the stuff that fills your house and empties your wallet.
Of course the \"Made In\" sticker only tells part of the story. If you have an Intel chip in your computer it was probably made in Portland, Phoenix or Albuquerque but where did the RAM come from and the DVD reader/writer? Same goes for your \"American\" car. Who made the dash? The shifter knob?
I bet less than half of the goods in my house are from North America. Yours too.

Ford Prefect wrote:Same goes for your "American" car. Who made the dash? The shifter knob?

My wife and I had to laugh the other day when we heard that a 'buy-American' group had discovered that when the origin of the parts were considered, Toyota minivans were mostly American-built and the Ford Mustang actually had more than half foreign-built parts.

O.K. Spidey. The operative word you said was \"try\". I'll conceed that. But you'll have to admit that it's almost immpossible to figure out where products come from, especially their component parts. The odds are that even those products stamped 'made in America' are composed of some or mostly foreign parts. Even my Chrysler car was entirely built in Mexico with some U.S. sourced parts. You can't find very many things that are totally made in the U.S.A. anymore. The problem with foreign built products is that no one seems to have any oversight on quality control. Just look at the recent pet food and toy scares lately. Quality control after the fact is lazy and dangerous and seems to be more prevelent with foreign goods.

As for population growth control, my idea is valid from a humanitarian point of view. Population control by natural selection can be a very cruel way to cull a population. So can war, which is destructive, when resources get scarce and we end up fighting over who gets the rights to those resources. Is that a stable way to run the world, by letting nature or war take it's course? My only point is that maybe we should suggest the idea of limiting family sizes as being 'green' for all of our benefit. We should strive to make it something that people want to do, not force it on anybody. It should be choice that people desire for the purpose of creating a better, cleaner world, not just little stopgap measures that make us feel good or the typical 'cowboy' last minute rescues that Americans seem to like that entails somebody coming up with a technological solution to cure our probelms.

tunnelcat wrote:...or the typical 'cowboy' last minute rescues that Americans seem to like that entails somebody coming up with a technological solution to cure our probelms.

Come on! As long as we've got Bruce Willis we can always pull it out in the end!

So Will.. I can put you down as supporting Bruce Willis for President.
I sense a grass roots movement. Or that grass is involved somehow.

tunnelcat wrote:Population control by natural selection can be a very cruel way to cull a population.

Populations don't necessarily settle out at carrying capacity through the "cruel" application of natural selection, war, etc. They can settle simply because surplus is limited, with no excess pain/death/etc.

The only reason you'd need war, natural selection, etc. to "cull the population" is if you overshoot the carrying capacity significantly -- something we're not presently in danger of.

maybe we should suggest the idea of limiting family sizes as being 'green' for all of our benefit.

There's nothing wrong with suggesting that people make different choices that are better for their (and our) lifestyles... but in order to be successful, you have to create a situation in which the choice they're making is actually a beneficial one. That means creating economic, social, family, and political structures (in all countries) that allow people to function well without having a terribly large number of children. Too often, people deal only with part of the picture, and can't figure out why people keep having kids at nearly the previous rate.

BTW, you're the first person I've ever heard use the term "population control" to refer to something voluntary, rather than some sort of official government policy. Perhaps you should find a less-loaded term to describe your idea.

Ford Prefect wrote:So Will.. I can put you down as supporting Bruce Willis for President.
I sense a grass roots movement. Or that grass is involved somehow.

Actually I'd vote for him, he's pretty cool.
And as far as grass goes, for years it was my first thing in the morning and last thing before sleep with lots in between. But I quit when I joined a band and they handed me a three set list of songs and said I had to learn them in two weeks. One of the best things I ever did was quit that ★■◆●.

roid wrote:what's wrong with carbon credits/trading? They are a perfect way to put the TRUE cost of greenhouse gas emissions onto our wallets, so we'll do something about it.

No, they don't. The rich companies simply buy enough carbon credits to allow them to keep polluting, the cost is passed right along to us, and nothing changes.

Spidey wrote:Example: Electric cars will avoid pollution…wrong!

A wise person once said that necessity is the mother of all invention. Barring some massive plague or war, the world's demand for electricity will only increase. As such, it should be expected that the means of producing energy need to be equally inventive. I have more faith we can find clean, effective sources of electricity right here at home than more oil from foreign countries.

I just watched a group of Nobel winning economists on CNBC talking about the world's economy. They essentially verified that in order for wages and the standard of living to rise in third world countries, it WILL have to go down in the U.S. and other developed countries. Not all of the worlds nations can live at our high standard of living, we'll have to sacrifice something.

The other interesting note was on why OPEC was raising the price of oil by cutting back on production. These economists claimed that since the U.S. stock market is stagnant, the Saudi's investment choices are somewhat limited, so they are just cutting back on the production of oil to keep the potential value at home. They obviously don't need the money right now, so they are keeping their money in the form of an oil bank under their own back yards, which will only increase in value over time.

However, that's not stopping them from buying our treasuries. They are slowly buying our country bit by bit. It's costing us 5000 dollars a second to finance Bush's war. He's selling the U.S. to foreign interests one piece at a time and forcing us into a recession with the rising price of oil. If we don't find some other clean, viable energy solution soon, we are seriously borked!

Tunnelcat, you will never get a discussion about population control as long as anyone in religion is in power. To them, the purpose of life is to produce as many people as possible, as their god demands.

Even if you did get a discussion, it would go nowhere. People are selfish. \"I WANT A BABY\" will always win. (Notice no woman ever says she wants a son/daughter, just 'a baby'..which most stop caring about and just drug up to shut them up once they are no longer cute and little)

Testi, for once, we agree on something, you got to the meat of the problem and it's probably not solvable with humans. Why did I EVEN try. Thank you.

Lothar wrote:Populations don't necessarily settle out at carrying capacity through the "cruel" application of natural selection, war, etc. They can settle simply because surplus is limited, with no excess pain/death/etc.

Can you explain how this happens?

My understanding was that the natural mechanisms for decelerating population growth because of limited resources are:
- lower survival rates for pregancies and births
- decreased life spans

I'm not sure how limited resources causes population growth to slow without the above. Of course, my knowledge of biology is pretty limited, so I'd appreciate any clarification.

Kyouryuu…Please do not quote me out of context!

Lothar wrote: Populations don't necessarily settle out at carrying capacity through the "cruel" application of natural selection, war, etc. They can settle simply because surplus is limited, with no excess pain/death/etc.

The only reason you'd need war, natural selection, etc. to "cull the population" is if you overshoot the carrying capacity significantly -- something we're not presently in danger of.

I don't agree Lothar. Populations of animals in nature don't self regulate, settle out or stay stable. Reproduction is a very strong survival trait and most species will keep breeding by default, although there are exceptions. But they are constantly under pressure from natural forces or water and food supply availability, so their numbers can drastically spike and ebb over time, never a totally steady state. Nature will 'cull' or regulate numbers by starvation when times get lean, nothing nice about it, just dirty and efficient.

Lothar wrote:There's nothing wrong with suggesting that people make different choices that are better for their (and our) lifestyles... but in order to be successful, you have to create a situation in which the choice they're making is actually a beneficial one. That means creating economic, social, family, and political structures (in all countries) that allow people to function well without having a terribly large number of children. Too often, people deal only with part of the picture, and can't figure out why people keep having kids at nearly the previous rate.

The 'choice' here for all of humanity is whether we want to live in a clean and bountiful world that can support the ENTIRE human population in plenty, peace and abundance, discounting natural disasters that will always be factor out of our control. Globalization is the new fad for corporations, why can't people start thinking about global survival. We may be rapidly approaching a point of no return in our energy and water consumption. That should be reason enough to take a look at future population numbers. Why wait for nature to do the job for us?

Lothar wrote:BTW, you're the first person I've ever heard use the term "population control" to refer to something voluntary, rather than some sort of official government policy. Perhaps you should find a less-loaded term to describe your idea.

Your right on the use of the terminology of 'population control', it is a little 'draconian' sounding. The ZPG (Zero Population Growth) movement that started in the 1960's was probably also a victim of that as well. But why do we need to feed humans some little goody, touchy, feely saying to get them motivated to save themselves. Are we that stupid? Maybe a better term could be 'population sustainability', hmmmm?

But the population question is finally starting to get on the media radar screen.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/ ... TE=DEFAULT

tunnelcat wrote:http://hoste...TE=DEFAULT

Any chance of not making your urls so big that they break the tables?

Well, affluence is the best “Population Control” I have ever seen, so if the trend continues towards higher living standards in the rest of the world, maybe it will become a moot point, and millions wont have to starve to death in the future because of starvation.

TIGERassault wrote:

tunnelcat wrote:http://hoste...TE=DEFAULT

Any chance of not making your urls so big that they break the tables?

Next time, I'll shorten them up. I'm new at this.

Spidey, The whole world can't all have the standard of living the U.S. has at the present, too many people, not enough clean energy sources for everyone, yet.

Tunnelcat, you have an affinity for putting words in my mouth.

Affluence, doesn’t imply the “standard of living in the USA“, just enough to stop breeding like rabbits.

I think affluence tends to decrease the amount of kids you have, because affluence can bring with it increased awareness of the world around you. As you become larger than your surroundings, your world grows, and the problems beyond your own local area come into greater focus.

i do believe that affluent people, in a wonderful world (problems? what problems?), would probably have more kids.

tunnelcat wrote:Krom, your idea of turning off vampire power sources is fine except for newer TV's, and the cable company's DVR. If you unplug these items, you lose channel memory on the TV and you can't record or download programs to the DVR, it kind of defeats the purpose of having a DVR. Most everything else I unplug, except for a couple of clocks.

There are pushes for newer TVs and appliances to use less energy while on standby, i've heard something called "the 1watt plan" or whatever - new appliances are supposed to use only 1 watt or less while on standby.
Companies seem to be listening.

Kyouryuu wrote:

roid wrote:what's wrong with carbon credits/trading? They are a perfect way to put the TRUE cost of greenhouse gas emissions onto our wallets, so we'll do something about it.

No, they don't. The rich companies simply buy enough carbon credits to allow them to keep polluting, the cost is passed right along to us, and nothing changes.

Who'd they buy them off?

They arn't just bought, someone along the line actually SELLS those credits as their business. You've heard of carbon offsets, like purchasing land to plant trees on. That's a business right there. When land becomes too expensive, they just use some other way to absorb carbon. There are other ways, such as Algae.
Carbon Credits are priced according to how much money is required to clean up the carbon.
It's just outsourcing your environmental responsabilities. Much like you pay cleaners to keep your building clean, it's a necesity but it can be outsourced. These types of economic ecologies encourage professionalism, and are thus the backbone of our civilisations. Farmers make food for soldiers - soldiers protect farmers. Professionalism - it works.

Carbon credits and trading are just like hiring a cleaner. You pay the cleaner to clean up your ★■◆●. If he's too expensive, you make an effort to not make as much ★■◆●. But if you CAN afford to just pay whatever without changing your habits, that's fine too. If in the end whatever mess you are making IS being cleaned up - it hurts no-body.

There are plans on putting huge algae photobioreactor farms next to coal power stations - to absorb the CO2. They will take up a lot of land - but they will do the job. Due to carbon trading - they could be 2 entirely seperate companies. The coal plant could be buying it's "carbon credits" from the algae company nextdoor. The end result though is that the carbon is mitigated.
Think of it like sewage. You could just throw your ★■◆● out in the street like old-school London, everyone gets sick. Or a company could take care of that sewage - and get paid with rates (ie: a tax). That's what taxes are for. Stadiums probably pay higher sewage rates coz they have more sewage. That's how it should be. Should they try to make less sewage? Not really - if it was a real problem to get rid of sewage (ie: if land for a sewage treatment plant was sparse) then the rates would go up. Thus the market takes care of it.

Carbon Credits and Trading are creating a market for the clean up greenhouse gas emissions. Unless you'd prefer everyone just emptied their toilets onto the street.