Whatever happened to Environmentalists?

[only_more_so]

So I was having lunch outside and this girl was "asking" people if they had a minute for the environment. She would then launch into her spiel about global warming.

Whatever happened to environmentalists trying to get people to recycle? Or not to use styrofoam containers? What about polluted rivers and wildlife and stuff like that?

I miss the days when pollution was about not choking to death.

 

[starrkers]

It's very "in" to be "environmentally aware", but it's really icky to have to get dirty.

Pardon me, my cynicism is showing.

 

[only_more_so]

It's very "in" to be "environmentally aware", but it's really icky to have to get dirty.

Pardon me, my cynicism is showing.

Well, she was nicer than the guy who used to hang out there. He would say, "I know you care about the environment."

I would say, "I bet you're wrong about a lot of other things to."

Alright, that's what I wish I'd said, I really just said, "Nope."

 

[amicus]

Hmmm...Most every property owner is concerned about the environment that affects them and their property. It goes with the turf of owning property and having pride in its appearance and functionality.

But the 'usual suspects', for the most part, are not property owners, they are urban cave dwellers who rent their space.

They have a mindset that allows them to live in filth and chaos, yet will gladly donate an entire weekend to picking up cigarette butts in Central Park, (ah, if one can even smoke there anymore.)

They detest private property as it entails responsibility and prefer, 'public property' for which no one is responsible.

Those 'public' functions and services, those run by government, are the ones that dump the styrofoam in open landfills and dump raw sewage into rivers. Private property owners care for and take care of their property, but the bureaucrats have a huge disdain for the private sector.

A Court, protecting private property under the laws of the land, would shut down a coal fired plant that polluted the air and dropped acid rain downstream on others. Not so the government, they license and permit those, 'public utilities' to violate property rights as they choose, above and beyond the law.

It is the identical rampant philosophy of the left, the 'usual suspects', that prevails; 'sacrifice the few for the benefits of the many...', and is made evident, time after time.

Tie that to a 'Zero Population Increase', no growth, anti-industrial, anti-corporate mentality and one can begin to understand why the 'usual suspects' can pollute and disregard the rights of others with impunity.

But, like die-hard Christians, they will never admit their God has died.

Such a deal, (geez y'oud think I was Jewish or sumpin)

Amicus...

 

[Carnevil9]

Global Warming makes for a much scarier fairy tale than overcrowded landfills and messy beaches, and has thus managed to absorb the vast majority of the doomsayers and do-gooders over to its side.......Carney

 

[JagFarlane]

Funny you should bring this up.

I often wonder how many people realize the first groups of enviromentalists aren't the ones running about these days, as amicus described.

Instead the first groups of enviromentalists were hunters, fishermen, trappers, and other assorted avid outdoorsmen. They were the ones whom asked for an excise fee to be placed upon all their equipment so that national parks could be paid for. They were the ones that asked for bag limits on animals and fish in order to prevent the rather popular market hunting from causing extinction. And even today, part of the classes to receive your license, is about environmentalism. No, not everyone abides by the guidelines set, but most of them actually do care about the environment, and practice guidelines such as "leave the area cleaner than when you came in".

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Global Warming makes for a much scarier fairy tale than overcrowded landfills and messy beaches, and has thus managed to absorb the vast majority of the doomsayers and do-gooders over to its side.......Carney

You bet! If you're a hard-working fundraiser for Sierra Club or FOE or one of the other Enviro groups you can't prosper by telling potential donors about landfills, air and water pollution, etc. - those things are all improving, doggone it, and "saving the earth" from them is yesterday's news. No, to get people to fork over the big bucks today you need something that'll scare the hell out of them. GW is pretty good for that, but the only problem is that the sources you've already claimed to be authoritaive don't tell a very scary story - oceans rising a foot or two maybe over century (about what they did over the last century, in fact), temps rising a degee or two C, etc. It's hardly the "we're all gonna die! " that you need to rake in some serious lucre.

Not to worry, though - slimy pols like Al Gore and ignorant journalists whose desire for sensation is eclipsed only by their laziness are quite happy to mischaracterize those authoritative sources, and to play up every crackpot alarmist as if he's the second coming of Isaac Newton! It's the happy times for enviro "development" officers.

 

[MagicaPractica]

I've always figured we need the fanatics to balance out the people who couldn't care less. Let them gnash their teeth at each other so we can get on with asking what can reasonably done to make things better without asking people to do so much that they give up in exasperation.

 

[amicus]

Hmmm...well...I suppose that is progress of a sorts, at least on this forum.

When I arrived on this forum, there was only one way or the highway, there was not a single conservate/right winger/capitalist, call them what you may, for me to cozy up with.

But I challenge your concept of 'fanatics', in several ways, mainly, thesis, antithesis and synthesis, an age old accepted means of acquiring knowledge.

Your assumption that 'truth', (if I dare even type the word on this forum), lies somewhere in the middle between the two extremes is very, very dangerous, again, in many ways.

One of those extremes is true, one is false, those in the middle are called, 'road kill...'

Chuckles...

ami

 

[cantdog]

The biggest players in Global Warming, the biggest advocates of carbon cap-and-trade legislation, are PG&E, Shell, firms like that. Carny and Who-Ever-the-Rox are out of touch.

November 2007-- a report, funded by these companies and the National Resource Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund, together, published by McKinsey & Company, was entitled Reducing US Greenhouse Gases. It found that the United States could halve greenhouse emissions by 2030 without lifestyle changes or major new tech. Fully forty per cent of the improvement is just efficiency measures, which pay for themselves and then some, in the rather short term. People have to design, build, and install the efficiency hardware, which creates another industry, and a lot of middle class and blue collar jobs.

The key to the whole thing is cap & trade for carbon. Levels the field, puts market forces on the side of the angels. Not that long or difficult a discussion, but I suppose those two find it more satisfying to carp from the sidelines.

The real players in the energy field want carbon cap & trade laws. (NOT ethanol corn subsidies or any of that malarkey. You don't burn food, that's just stupid. But the agri-lobby is 26 votes-- it's the most powerful lobby in the country.)

You don't sit in a legislature and choose which tech to support. You place a firm cap, and then the the investment money is there. The costs of meeting the cap are now clear, and the same for all. Whatever tech works the best will be the one used. Simple market economic forces will winnow the various alternative ideas for meeting the goal of low carbon footprint-- but only if the cap is in place.

 

[DeeZire]

...first groups of enviromentalists were hunters, fishermen, trappers, and other assorted avid outdoorsmen....

As in - Native Americans. Something about planning ahead for seven generations. Of course, we all know how that worked out for them - decimated by the free market and a government of liars. Isn't it funny how nothing changes?

It never ceases to amaze me how ideology can overcome reason. Like Ami stated in a thread he posted right before the forum went down a few days ago, survival of mankind hinges on adherence to the laws of nature. That's what environmentalism is all about - balancing the laws of nature with the greed of the free market. If Ami can base an argument on adhering to the laws of nature in one thread, and then advocate ignoring the laws of nature in another, we have a textbook case of hypocrisy. But that's common knowledge, at least on the left, that the conservative ideology wouldn't survive without the convenience of hypocrisy.

Go ahead and wave your anti-environmentalist flag if it makes you feel better. It actually makes you look quite juvenile and selfish, but with your blinders on, we wouldn't expect you to notice.

 

[JagFarlane]

As in - Native Americans. Something about planning ahead for seven generations. Of course, we all know how that worked out for them - decimated by the free market and a government of liars. Isn't it funny how nothing changes?

Point, I'll edit my statement to "modern environmentalists" as you do present a valid point. American Indians should be applauded also for the fact that they were well known to use every single piece of an animal that they killed [something our buffalo hunters very well should have done]

 

[keeblercrumb]

Rocket? No... just glad to see ya..

Whatever happened to Environmentalists?

Here I am.

So I guess you are all.....what? Against the environment?

Well somebody has to be, I guess.

-KC

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

The biggest players in Global Warming, the biggest advocates of carbon cap-and-trade legislation, are PG&E, Shell, firms like that. Carny and Who-Ever-the-Rox are out of touch.

November 2007-- a report, funded by these companies and the National Resource Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund, together, published by McKinsey & Company, was entitled Reducing US Greenhouse Gases. It found that the United States could halve greenhouse emissions by 2030 without lifestyle changes or major new tech. Fully forty per cent of the improvement is just efficiency measures, which pay for themselves and then some, in the rather short term. People have to design, build, and install the efficiency hardware, which creates another industry, and a lot of middle class and blue collar jobs.

The key to the whole thing is cap & trade for carbon. Levels the field, puts market forces on the side of the angels. Not that long or difficult a discussion, but I suppose those two find it more satisfying to carp from the sidelines.

The real players in the energy field want carbon cap & trade laws. (NOT ethanol corn subsidies or any of that malarkey. You don't burn food, that's just stupid. But the agri-lobby is 26 votes-- it's the most powerful lobby in the country.)

You don't sit in a legislature and choose which tech to support. You place a firm cap, and then the the investment money is there. The costs of meeting the cap are now clear, and the same for all. Whatever tech works the best will be the one used. Simple market economic forces will winnow the various alternative ideas for meeting the goal of low carbon footprint-- but only if the cap is in place.

Cant, Cant, Cant . . . You're getting closer, but still not quite there.

Indeed those corporations you name and other big incumbent energy and industrial firms loooove the cap-and-trade scam, because as the ultimate rent seekers wet dream it will make them obscenely rich with much less of that bothersome competition and the need to provide value to customers arising from it. Cap-and-Trade is nothing more than a monumental, multi-billion dollar corporate welfare subsidy - sneaky, opaque and indirect - granted to a select class of existing firms.

"Useful idiots" used to mean individuals in capitalist systems who unknowingly advanced the agenda of communist enemies; it now applies to those with liberal inclinations (in both senses of the word) who support carbon cap-and-trade, which is perhaps the most corrupt, illiberal policy ever devised. The more you learn, the more you'll hate it, and the less you'll want to be "useful" to those rent-seekers. Don't take my word - left and center-leftists including Paul Samuelson, Tom Friedman and many others have said the same thing.

To continue, besides rent-seeking corporations (those who aren't familiar with the term please click the link and glance at the wiki article - it's a supremely important concept in this debate) the biggest gainers from C&T are politicians and bureaucrats, who will have literally trillions of loot to distribute to friends and pet interests. Of course that class are all wise, high-minded, and far-sighted about about technological, economic and market trends to the point of omnicience, so that's a good thing, right?

~~~~~~~~~

All that said, you've got one notion very correct, even though you're idea for how to get there would be a disaster. It's this: "You don't sit in a legislature and choose which tech to support. You (establish a system that creates the incentives to find alternative energy sources and more energy-efficient technologies and systems), and then the the investment money (will be) there."

My parenthetical "corrections" make your statement exactly correct. Here's the key point: There is only one way to create those incentives in a manner that is honest, transparent, not economically destructive and that establishes a fair field for all with no favors for any - exactly the opposite of cap-and-and-trade on all four of those counts. That is to impose a revenue-neutral carbon tax of the sort that I've described several times on this website.

~~~~

We got into this debate a bit in this thread not too long ago: http://www.literotica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=574381

I'm copy-and-pasting some of what I said into my next post.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

We got into the central-planning vs. let 100 flowers bloom via carbon tax debate a bit in this thread not too long ago: http://www.literotica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=574381

Here's some of what I said then:

Under a carbon tax regime the politicians and bureaucrats do not have to know which form of alternative energy will turn out to make sense. A good thing, since they cannot know anymore than anyone else. The tax creates a level playing field between all non-fossil fuel energy sources. It allows the market - ie. the voluntary choices of consumers - to select winners and losers based on which forms deliver the best value. Inventors, entrepreneurs and investors who devise and take risks to produce worthwhile innovations are rewarded. Consumers who conserve are rewarded.

You might ask yourself who's being rewarded when politicians and bureacrats select winners and losers, rather than consumers. Will it be those who excel in using technological and business innovation to add value, or those who have the best lobbyists? Generally the latter are big incumbent producers like existing utility companies.

This system creates an implicit subsidy for non-fossil fuel energy sources, but does so in a way that establishes a level playing field for any and all of them - including things no one has thought of yet. No central planner has to correctly guess what will make the most sense - consumers and innovating producers will sort all that out via billions of individual choices and transactions. Rather than a few grand experiments selected by politicians and bureacrats (and subject to all the pernicious influences characteristic of those) we get thousands and millions of experiments large and small. And the way a producer gets rich is by building a better energy mousetrap - not buying influence with the right bureau or politicians.

. . . In contrast a carbon tax provides real competition and genuine price signals that reward producers who provide the best value, including ones providing innovative products that no central planner could have imagined. That kind of innovation is priceless, and that information is invaluable. Best of all, it's all "free": All we've done is rearrange the existing tax structure, taking no more money from any particular income strata, but simply taxing people more on the basis of fossil fuel use and less on their income. You get all these benefits for free!

In reality consumers, producers, innovators, entrepreneurs and investors will respond in ways that create virtuous cycles in every energy-using area of their lives. This produces a dynamism that only compounds the gains toward the policy goal, because they all have strong incentives in that direction. That is, they make or save money by engaging in behaviors that advance the policy goal. Millions of experiments and adjustments will be undertaken, with each one increasing knowledge and bringing all the players closer to the optimum solution possible given the current state of technological capabilities, while constantly expanding those capabilities.

Under a centrally planned system of subsidies allocated by bureaucrats and politicians you don't get any of that dynamism. There's tremendous misallocation of resources, and progress is much slower and more expensive, because the price signals that tell players what makes sense and what does not are not present. Only a few big experiments get done, rather millions of them, both large and micro-scale. That dynamism generated by a decentralized system of competing producers responding to the clear price signals on a level playing field yields progress that is much more rapid than anyone would predict, and at a much lower cost to society and to individuals.

It may seem counterintuitive, but it's not rocket science. Again, it's just a matter of getting the incentives on consumers and producers alligned with the policy goals. Once that's done, it's Katie bar the door - stand back and let human ingenuity do its thing.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

If you still think Cap and Trade is a good idea, why not extend it and make it transparent as described here:

Cap and Trade for Gasoline?
By JONATHAN LESSER
June 14, 2008

. . . The next obvious step for our solons is to cap demand by rationing gasoline, and then gradually reduce the quantity of ration coupons.

"Trading" in coupons would be encouraged to ensure gasoline is allocated to uses of only the highest value. So Congress could reserve quantities of ration coupons for key lobbyists and their clients. Environmentalists could buy up coupons and "retire" them, lowering gasoline sales even more. Refineries could continue to produce gasoline, but as consumer demand would be sharply limited (and declining), oil companies would be forced to reduce the prices they charge. No more windfall profits! And lower carbon emissions!

For legislators and environmentalists – if not average citizens – this plan has other virtues: As ration coupons are reduced, consumers would increasingly clamor for more electric cars, cars that ran on French-fry oil, and "flex-fuel" cars that burn everything from gasoline to garbage. Eventually, gasoline could just be banned, reducing prices to zero and eliminating all ill-gotten profits.

And if Congress then had to tackle French-fry oil speculators and impose a windfall profits tax on Big Spud, well why not?

Mr. Lesser is an energy economist and partner with Bates White, LLC.

 

[amicus]

As in - Native Americans. Something about planning ahead for seven generations. Of course, we all know how that worked out for them - decimated by the free market and a government of liars. Isn't it funny how nothing changes?

It never ceases to amaze me how ideology can overcome reason. Like Ami stated in a thread he posted right before the forum went down a few days ago, survival of mankind hinges on adherence to the laws of nature. That's what environmentalism is all about - balancing the laws of nature with the greed of the free market. If Ami can base an argument on adhering to the laws of nature in one thread, and then advocate ignoring the laws of nature in another, we have a textbook case of hypocrisy. But that's common knowledge, at least on the left, that the conservative ideology wouldn't survive without the convenience of hypocrisy.

Go ahead and wave your anti-environmentalist flag if it makes you feel better. It actually makes you look quite juvenile and selfish, but with your blinders on, we wouldn't expect you to notice.

~~~

Bit of a personal attack there, Deezire, just to promote your righteous belief in whatever 'ism' you currently favor?

Native Americans, like Barbarians and Aborigines world wide, understand the environment of their location because they live off it. They were more 'Warlords', rape, pillage and plunder than anything else, which is consistent with other barbarian tribes from the Steppes to Mongolia.

That is not to say they nurtured that environment; existing evidence indicates that as hunter/gatherers, they stripped an area of usable resources and then moved on.

Then, of course, in more, 'civilized' Europe and Asia, all the resources were the Property of "Royalty" and permission was required to hunt a single rabbit or hare.

It was only with the advent of a 'free' America that the concept of individual land and resource ownership came into question and into the lawbooks.

Even then, there was and is, a coven of "Royalists" who wanted to preserve the land and the resources for their own benefit, such as Teddy Roosevelt, who wanted to preserve vast areas of the wild west as his private hunting domain; ole King Teddy, loved to hunt big game and enjoyed his private reserves.

But then arose the parasitic intellectuals, too fey to own their own land and not of 'blue blood' to hunt elk with Teddy and his ilk, who theorized, if they can't have it, no one can and thus the emergence of 'public lands' untouchable without the permission of the PTB (McCaffrey, Powers That Be).

Those urban cave dwelling pointy heads, peering through myopic lenses, seldom left the concrete castle they infested, but when they did, as they do, insist on the opportunity to gaze upon pristine nature.

You should appreciate my extolling individual human rights and freedoms as I do it with such panache, but I don't expect any applesauce, ahm, applause.

...the always lovable amicus... (now it is time for Cloudy to chime in with her wind chimes, dream catchers and lava lamps, indicative of her era)

ahem...

 

[Guest]

~~~

Bit of a personal attack there, Deezire, just to promote your righteous belief in whatever 'ism' you currently favor?

Native Americans, like Barbarians and Aborigines world wide, understand the environment of their location because they live off it. They were more 'Warlords', rape, pillage and plunder than anything else, which is consistent with other barbarian tribes from the Steppes to Mongolia.

That is not to say they nurtured that environment; existing evidence indicates that as hunter/gatherers, they stripped an area of usable resources and then moved on.

Then, of course, in more, 'civilized' Europe and Asia, all the resources were the Property of "Royalty" and permission was required to hunt a single rabbit or hare.

It was only with the advent of a 'free' America that the concept of individual land and resource ownership came into question and into the lawbooks.

Even then, there was and is, a coven of "Royalists" who wanted to preserve the land and the resources for their own benefit, such as Teddy Roosevelt, who wanted to preserve vast areas of the wild west as his private hunting domain; ole King Teddy, loved to hunt big game and enjoyed his private reserves.

But then arose the parasitic intellectuals, too fey to own their own land and not of 'blue blood' to hunt elk with Teddy and his ilk, who theorized, if they can't have it, no one can and thus the emergence of 'public lands' untouchable without the permission of the PTB (McCaffrey, Powers That Be).

Those urban cave dwelling pointy heads, peering through myopic lenses, seldom left the concrete castle they infested, but when they did, as they do, insist on the opportunity to gaze upon pristine nature.

You should appreciate my extolling individual human rights and freedoms as I do it with such panache, but I don't expect any applesauce, ahm, applause.

...the always lovable amicus... (now it is time for Cloudy to chime in with her wind chimes, dream catchers and lava lamps, indicative of her era)

ahem...

Lava lamp?

She's a bit younger than that, ami.

Are we getting forgetful these days?

 

[cloudy]

now it is time for Cloudy to chime in with her wind chimes, dream catchers and lava lamps, indicative of her era

You wish.

It isn't worth either my time or my effort to reply to anything you say.

 

[Carnevil9]

You wish.

It isn't worth either my time or my effort to reply to anything you say.

Yet you just did. It must be loooooove.

 

[cloudy]

Yet you just did. It must be loooooove.

oh, ouch. Someone please save me from this biting wit. Help. Help.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Well, she was nicer than the guy who used to hang out there. He would say, "I know you care about the environment."

I would say, "I bet you're wrong about a lot of other things to."

Alright, that's what I wish I'd said, I really just said, "Nope."

Well, he could have said; "I know you're a selfish little shit," which would have been rude. But correct.

Jag, the "first (modern) environmentalists" were, indeed, the hunters and outdoorsmen who saw firsthand what was happening to the wilderness areas. Now though, what's happening to the wilderness is obvious to far more people, and is impinging on people who never get out there-- nevermind that there is so little 'out there' left to get to. So it's no wonder that the new environmentalists show up in urban areas, and are concerned with the entire globe.

It's very "in" to be "environmentally aware", but it's really icky to have to get dirty.

Pardon me, my cynicism is showing.

Really, given the sheer overrun of people, the best thing most of us can do for the wilderness is stay out of it. The ecologies get trampled by all those billions of well-meaning footprints. There isn't room for everyone who does want to get dirty.

I've always figured we need the fanatics to balance out the people who couldn't care less. Let them gnash their teeth at each other so we can get on with asking what can reasonably done to make things better without asking people to do so much that they give up in exasperation.

Right, because signing a petition and maybe donating twenty bucks to combat industry lobbying is waaay too much to ask.

*nods*

 

[amicus]

You wish.

It isn't worth either my time or my effort to reply to anything you say.

~~~

I would bet ten shares of my Exxon-Mobil stock that you have at least one wind chime on your porch and one 'dreamcatcher' hanging in your knick-knack corner.

Fess up!

ami

 

[amicus]

Really, given the sheer overrun of people, the best thing most of us can do for the wilderness is stay out of it. The ecologies get trampled by all those billions of well-meaning footprints. There isn't room for everyone who does want to get dirty.

~~~

That statement, as much as anything, zero's in on a mindset fostered back in the 60's and 70's no growth, "ZPG" fanatics who hate mankind.

That kind of thinking leads to killing babies in the uterus and the inhuman political act of the Chinese Communists to limit each couple to one child.

I suggest it also leads to the childless unions of same sex couples so touted in contemporary times.

It is beyond my ability to conceive of such a hateful philosophy and social ethic as to hate even the reproductive nature of the species.

And if you question why those Massachusetts teenaged girls banded together to get pregnant and raise their children together....it is their way of combating and refuting that obscene liberal, left wing mantra of anti humanity policies.

What a truly lost and confused generation. No wonder they are bitter as they pass into history.

Amicus...

 

[cloudy]

~~~

I would bet ten shares of my Exxon-Mobil stock that you have at least one wind chime on your porch and one 'dreamcatcher' hanging in your knick-knack corner.

Fess up!

ami

Nope, sorry.

(I have a medicine wheel in my office, but it's one that I made myself, and it's sacred, not a decoration. Quite different from a dreamcatcher. You're getting your tribes mixed up - it was the plains nations that used dreamcatchers)