Do you worry about conserving natural resources?

[viscousmemories]

When I was growing up, my Mom would often comment about leaving the lights, TV, or other electrical appliances on when not in use. Given our circumstances I'm sure her concern was the cost rather than the waste of electricity, which is probably why she never commented (that I remember) about our wasting water. I moved to Santa Cruz, California back in '90 (during a drought) and for the first time conserving water became a real issue. There were limits on when you could water your lawn, how many showers you could take, etc.

Ever since then I've been as conscious of wasting water as I am of wasting electricity. But why? It's not the money. I'm not paying for utilities where I am now, and in the places I've lived over the last few years I wasn't concerned about the cost. I am, however, concerned about "doing my part to conserve".

But what is "my part", really? I mean, Penni mentioned in her journal the fact that Britney Spears will have her hairdresser or favorite coffee flown to her wherever she is. I, on the other hand, don't even own a car. Surely she uses thousands of times the resources I do, so why one Earth should I be expected to wear a sweater in the house or take shorter showers? Am I expected to do so? Does it make anything resembling a difference? Should I feel guilty if I don't? Do you?

[LadyShea]

Well, due to the drought(s) I seem to have always lived in, water conservation is simply something thats done. Currently, it is mandated in that we can't water lawns, or have fountains and such, even filling our pool is regulated.

I think "doing your part" is as simple as not watering the sidewalk with broken sprinklers, or leaving the hose running as you soap your car. Cutting your showers short is unlikely to make a difference.

Electricity...well, after the brownouts and grid overloads, that is something that affects Californians quite a bit. Also the cost. However, electricity can be generated, it's not a finite resource like our water.

[seebs]

Whether or not what I do will make much of a difference compared to what someone else does, I still do what I can... Because if everyone else did, it would matter a lot.

Oddly, I'm not much of a Green. I like nuclear power, I don't particularly care which species are or aren't extinct... But I drive a hybrid car, telecommute as much as I can, and use flourescent lights almost exclusively. If I had more money, one of the first things I'd get would be a low-power flat screen display to replace my bulky 200W CRT.

[JoeP]

Economists (those with any sense) rave on about charging real costs for resources. The idea of carbon taxes is an example. Making people pay a price for water, just like for electricity, that reflects the full long-term cost of using resources, means that people are motivated to behave 'green' without thinking about it. Your mother's comments are no surprise.

Whether you should bother because your individual contribution (or consumption) is a vanishingly small part of the total is a major problem, bordering on philosophical. Bwitney's consumption is not significant either. If she suddenly dropped to your income and level of consumption, the world would not last appreciably longer. The issue is that if *everyone* is careful about consumption, resource usage drops dramatically. Do you as individual base your decisions on "if everyone did this..." or on "if I can get away with this..."?

Economically, there's another dimension too. What if by not using electricity or water you (combined with millions of others) put lots of utility workers out of jobs? With a knock-on effect on retailers etc?

joe

(I think I've been on this page for an hour or so ... had to eat after all ... I bet someone else has posted in the meantime)

[Dingfod]

For me, it's all about choices. When I needed a vehicle capable of pulling a 3500 pound horse trailer and 2000 pounds of horses, I bought a truck. I chose one that gets better gas mileage than a Ford or a Dodge. My Chevrolet, despite having a 5.3L V-8 gets 19 mpg city and 22 mpg highway. I have friends that drive Dodge and Ford and they're both lucky if they get 15 mpg on the highway. However, I commute on a motorcycle that gets 50 mpg.

I've replaced burned out incandescent lightbulbs with fluorescent, I get lower energy bills and longer bulb life. I bought a low power LCD monitor to replace the energy hogging CRT. I don't water my yard. I depend on rainwater for watering the grass and shrubs. But, am I constantly thinking of conserving natural resources? Not hardly. I waste lots of natural resources. I shave with an electric razor. OK, that might be a net savings over running hot water to shave with and certainly is a savings over buying those damned expensive razor blades. I brush my teeth with an electric toothbrush, where's the savings in that? OK, maybe in dental bills because it does a better job of it than I can.

I cut down trees with a chainsaw rather than a handsaw and axe. I trim with a gas-powered weedeater rather than trim by hand. I mow with a lawn tractor instead of a manual reel-type lawnmower ( a herd of goats would be even better). These I do in the interest of labor and time savings. If I were to manually mow and trim, I would be doing nothing but that from sunup to sundown 7-days a week, about six months a year, the grass and weeds grow that fast here at Horse Holler Farm.

My grandmother was one that seriously didn't believe in wasting anything. Use, reuse, recycle, then stack what's left up all over the house, barn and garage was her modus operandi. My dad would be just like that if my mother would let him. However, I can see some merit to living like that. I try to waste as little as possible without being nutty about it.

Warren

[JoeP]

Not one, but two snuck-in posts.

However, electricity can be generated, it's not a finite resource like our water.
Ahem - really? :spinning:

:glare: You mustn't feel bad about getting it completely the wrong way round. :boxedin: This is the way everybody thinks about electricity - just switch it on - and how people in dry areas think about water (not so in Britain :didi: ).

Over decades, there's the same amount of water in the world. Everything you drink or wash in goes back into the system. :D The only big reason to conserve it is that moving it around is costly. Only so much rainfall goes into an area like California (which could not possibly be populated like it is without water management technology). But using it all up isn't a worry for future generations (they just have to move somewhere else ... like Canada ... or New Zealand ... or the Amazon).

But where does electricity come from? Burning coal or oil leaves less coal or oil for the future. Reacting uranium leaves more radioactive stuff in the biosphere than before. Your electricity is as finite as its source. Renewable energy like wind and waves is a tiny fraction of the total, as far as I know.

joe

[LadyShea]

Not one, but two snuck-in posts.


Ahem - really? :spinning:

:glare: You mustn't feel bad about getting it completely the wrong way round. :boxedin: This is the way everybody thinks about electricity - just switch it on - and how people in dry areas think about water (not so in Britain :didi: ).

Over decades, there's the same amount of water in the world. Everything you drink or wash in goes back into the system. :D The only big reason to conserve it is that moving it around is costly. Only so much rainfall goes into an area like California (which could not possibly be populated like it is without water management technology). But using it all up isn't a worry for future generations (they just have to move somewhere else ... like Canada ... or New Zealand ... or the Amazon).

But where does electricity come from? Burning coal or oil leaves less coal or oil for the future. Reacting uranium leaves more radioactive stuff in the biosphere than before. Your electricity is as finite as its source. Renewable energy like wind and waves is a tiny fraction of the total, as far as I know.

joe


Point taken. Our electricity, here in the Southwest US at least, is generated by water in many cases. Hoover Dam in my specific case. And yes, there is plenty of water in the world in a big picture way, but there isn't enough here, in this area, for the next 20 years unless this drought ends.

So, I meant "finite" for ME, personally. Sorry to have phrased things incorrectly.

[JoeP]

Your "phrasing things incorrectly" is good: helps us discuss issues around vm's post. After all - and this is important - plenty of people think the way you originally worded it. The true conservation impact of most of actions isn't apparent.

Hydroelectric power should be renewable, apart from the slight impact of building the dams in the first place. But I have a vague feeling it's not perfect. Anyone?

[viscousmemories]

Your "phrasing things incorrectly" is good: helps us discuss issues around vm's post. After all - and this is important - plenty of people think the way you originally worded it. The true conservation impact of most of actions isn't apparent.
I totally agree. I thought exactly the same thing LadyShea thought until you posted. I mean I knew about the radioactive waste and fossil fuel consumption methods of making electricity, but I very likely overestimated the percentage of electricity that comes from renewable resources like water and air.

Hydroelectric power should be renewable, apart from the slight impact of building the dams in the first place. But I have a vague feeling it's not perfect. Anyone?
I get that feeling too, and with wind as well. I remember seeing windmills all over the place in Europe, but hardly any here in the States. What gives?

[LadyShea]

I get that feeling too, and with wind as well. I remember seeing windmills all over the place in Europe, but hardly any here in the States. What gives?

If you have ever been out to Palm Springs, you have seen the largest experiement in wind power in the US. Thousands of windmills all over the desert. I think the problem was it turned out too expensive to maintain, but will have to research it.

Also, if you drive up 395 towards China Lake, you will see a huge solar project, the collection panels actually track the sun across the sky all day. Again, there seems to be a great expense involved in the startup of these (though of course in the long run, they will pay for themselves), and the gubment doesn't want to fund alternative energy. Especially the current administration that has much invested in the big energy corps.

The problem with hydro power is droughts. If this drought doesn't end soon, Hoover Dam won't be able to provide its current output which is a major source of energy on the Western US grid. I believe, though correct me if I am wrong, that most nuclear power plants are on the East coast.

[Adam]

Should I feel guilty if I don't? Do you?

I sometimes feel sort of guilty about using up resources, but I blame it either on standard liberal guilt, or else my Catholic upbringing...hell, there's precious little I don't feel guilty about at times. When I'm being rational about things, though....

You can't find a clearer textbook example of the tragedy of the commons than natural resource utilization. It's not in any or our interests to moderate our individual consumption, but it is in all our our interests for all of us to moderate our consumption. The effect each of us has on net consumption is negligible so, if I decide to cut my usage in half, I bear the cost of using half as many resources, but reap no real benefit, because I've had no appreciable effect on the rate at which our resources are being used. It doesn't make any sense for me, as an individual, to moderate my own consumption, nor does it make any sense for me, as someone who does worry about the rate at which we're depleting our available resources, to encourage others to moderate their consumption on an individual basis. There's only one known solution to the tragedy of the commons: government intervention. So, I'm in the somewhat strange position of refusing to moderate my own consumption, but supprting government intervention to force me to moderate my consumption, along with everyone else.

I'm another who has always found the idea of conserving water sort of odd, except, of course, in localities suffering drought. I mean, it all goes back into the system, right? It's not like the water I run down the drain vanishes.

[viscousmemories]

If you have ever been out to Palm Springs, you have seen the largest experiement in wind power in the US. Thousands of windmills all over the desert.

Also, if you drive up 395 towards China Lake, you will see a huge solar project, the collection panels actually track the sun across the sky all day.
Interesting. I hadn't heard of either of those projects.

The problem with hydro power is droughts. If this drought doesn't end soon, Hoover Dam won't be able to provide its current output which is a major source of energy on the Western US grid.
That makes sense.

I believe, though correct me if I am wrong, that most nuclear power plants are on the East coast.
You seem to be right, according to this map (http://www.insc.anl.gov/pwrmaps/map/world_map.php). We do have a plant local here, though. The San Onofre plant (http://www.nucleartourist.com/us/songs.htm) right outside (if not technically in) Camp Pendleton. I drive past it every time I go down to San Diego.

[LadyShea]

http://ingridbaddour.com/resources/windmills_240.jpg

Palm Springs Windmills. It's really cool to go out there, as I said there are thousands of them in all directions, but as far as I know they do nothing.

Edited to add: I lied, apparently they do provide power to the Coachella Valley

Increasingly popular as alternative sources of energy, wind turbine generators are a type of windmill that produces electricity by harnessing the wind. Wind turbine generators are much less harmful to the environment than burning fossil fuels, but they do require average wind speeds of at least 21 km/h (13 mph). The largest of these windmills stands 150 feet tall with blades half the legend of a football field. The compartments at the top containing the generator, hub and gearbox weigh 30,000 to 45,000 pounds. A wind turbine's cost can range upwards to $300,000 and can produce 300 kilowatts an hour - the amount of electricity used by a typical household in a month. Almost all of the currently installed wind electric generation capacity is in California. The high-tech megatowers are engineered in cooperation with NASA and nursed by federal and state subsidies. This wind farm on the San Gorgonio Mountain Pass in the San Bernadino Mountains contains more than 4000 separate windmills and provides enough electricity to power Palm Springs and the entire Coachella Valley. http://www.palmsprings.com/services/wind.html

The drawbacks

1. Require steady wind and lots of room
2. 300,000.00 per!
3. 4000 needed to power a rather small city

[Dingfod]

A great deal of the fresh water supplies come from aquifers that took tens of thousands of years to fill and are been drawn down at drastic rates. Water IS an endless cycle, it's the fresh water and how rapidly it can be replenished that is in short supply. It never made sense to me to be watering lawns, pastures, or fields with fresh clean water, they should be using treated plant effluent, conserving the fresh water supplies for culinary consumption only. In fact, why flush a toilet with drinkable quality water. It just doesn't make sense.

I seriously considered xeriscaping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeriscaping) my yard in Utah but was too lazy to actually dig up the yard to do it. What I did do was spend a great deal of time adjusting the automatic timing of my lawn sprinklers to the point where I was having summer water bills under $35 and still kept the lawn green, which had the secondary benefit of minimizing the need to mow it. I typically only mowed four or five times a summer. My neighbor's water bills ran over $100 a month and they mowed about once a week. My lawn was green, but not as green as their overwatered swamp.

Here in northeastern Oklahoma, fresh water is abundant and the landscape verdant, so I do not water the grass at all. It does get a bit brown in July and August, normally anyway, this year is not normal because it's a green as can be. Bermuda grass is resilient and will come back when the September rains come. Despite the abundance of fresh water here, municipal and rural water prices must be higher than they were in Utah, because it isn't hard at all to have a $100 water bill. That can be obtained by one night of leaving the hose running into the horse trough. Believe me, it's happened a couple of times.


Warren

[Albion]

We have a wind farm at this end of California too - Altamont Pass. Most of the windmills don't seem to move quite a lot of the time. They do make the landscape a bit interesting at least. There's been a huge controversy about wind farms in the UK recently; people are going on about how they wreck the scenery and how noisy they are, so they're talking about siting them offshore. Not sure how that'll work.

As far as water is concerned, there's plenty of water around; there just isn't all that much clean freshwater. That's part of the problem with using your hosepipe to clean the driveway or letting the tap run the whole time you're washing up. The water doesn't disappear, but it has to be treated before it can be used again.

I think the problem with the consumer culture is not so much that of the direct environmental impact of whether we turn the AC up a couple of notches or not or whether we use disposable or washable diapers or buy a newspaper every day rather than reading it online (although we're going to run out of landfill space one of these days), it's one where our need for goods starts to outweigh our concerns about what it takes to produce them - people working for a few cents an hour in conditions that we wouldn't think were appropriate even for animals, and very often major pollution in some of the areas where these sweatshops are located. Some of the pictures of the factories just across the Mexican border look like something out of Lord of the Rings after Saruman's done his thing.

It's always easy to make someone feel guilty about not being environmentally aware, but even an environmentally considerate western lifestyle is going to have some sort of impact.

[Dingfod]

On my way back from Denver, I passed a windmill farm south of Lamar, Colorado that had maybe a hundred of them stretching basically from horizon to horizon. If they are noisy and blot the scenery, who the hell is going to hear the noise or have their view spoiled out there in the vast emptiness of the Southeast Colorado prairie but a bunch of prairie dogs and cows? The wind was blowing hard enough that I couldn't hear any noise at all, despite being almost right under one of those 100+ foot tall giants. It just seemed such an ideal location for such a thing. In fact, a great deal of the high plains would be pretty good for wind power. The average wind speed in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle exceeds that of Wyoming or Chicago, both legendary in their windy-ness. Those areas also have a lot of cloudless days, making solar power a real contender there too. I imagine millions of windmills and millions of acres of solar panels placed in the empty land from Amarillo northward could generate a tremendous amount of power.

Sorry, but I don't know how to rotate this picture I took of some of the windmills:
http://img78.photobucket.com/albums/v297/warrenly/IMG004.jpg


Warren

[livius drusus]

I think the problem with the consumer culture is not so much that of the direct environmental impact of whether we turn the AC up a couple of notches or not or whether we use disposable or washable diapers or buy a newspaper every day rather than reading it online (although we're going to run out of landfill space one of these days), it's one where our need for goods starts to outweigh our concerns about what it takes to produce them - people working for a few cents an hour in conditions that we wouldn't think were appropriate even for animals, and very often major pollution in some of the areas where these sweatshops are located. Some of the pictures of the factories just across the Mexican border look like something out of Lord of the Rings after Saruman's done his thing.

That's a really good point, Albion. What we pay in money doesn't even come close to reflecting the actual cost in people and environmental impact. We're so distanced from the means of production it requires a real effort to be gainfully concerned.

Here's a resource I've found helpful in picking goods and services with a care for their provenance: Green Pages Online (http://www.greenpages.org/). I've found some great things in the Green Pages, and even if you're not looking for anything in particular, it's a fine place for eye-shopping too.

[livius drusus]

Here you go, Warren. :)

[squian]

As far as water is concerned, there's plenty of water around; there just isn't all that much clean freshwater. That's part of the problem with using your hosepipe to clean the driveway or letting the tap run the whole time you're washing up. The water doesn't disappear, but it has to be treated before it can be used again.

In fact, this is a part of conservation has not been highlighted so far in this thread. And it's not just that there is not enough clean water to be had. But also dirty water must go somewhere. Our drainage and water recovery systems have limited capability that is often stressed or overrun by natural events like rain.

In California, cleaning your driveway is sending all that stuff into the Pacific Ocean. When it rains (thankfully not that often), the sewage systems in SoCal often overflow into streams and rivers that dump into the ocean. It's been about 4 years since I understood how this abuse of the ecosystem worked and I have not been able to go into the ocean since. I'd sooner swim in my own toliet (at least I know whose shit it is).

This goes to warrenly's point about flushing with potable water. Or running water when you brush your teeth. You are sending more waste through a system which has limited capacity. In general, this waste aspect of conservation is often overlooked. JoeP aptly pointed out that nuclear power's major flaw is the radioactive waste. But almost everything we consume has waste. It all needs to go somewhere.

[Penni]

I constantly worry about conserving resources. But, I agree with what many have said here about the impact being so little that it really doesn't matter at all. So, then sometimes I get lax, like I may not wash and recycle my Lean Cuisine plastic dishy thing right now, and then I'll feel kinda guilty.

It takes more than people to conquer the situation we will be facing in a couple decades to a couple centuries. It takes governments and businesses. People (and so governments and businesses) just aren't far-sighted enough to care, so I really feel that charging the REAL value of water and other resources is critical. Other answers simply are not long term. Windmill farms and solar energy farms take up too much space. I think I read once that the entire rest of the state of NY would have to be a windmill farm just to power Manhattan. And taking water from elsewhere will only work for so long, i.e. if you take water from the Amazon for California, you change the Amazon INTO California eventually: desertification.

So, as I talked about in my journal, with this issue, I also feel like giving up. I wil continue to do what is not too labor or time intensive and I will consider that "my part." Not because I think I am helping to save the world, but because it makes me feel less hypocritical when I think about everything we as a species do to modify this planet in ways that ultimately are inhospitable/unsustainable for our culture and our survival (not to mention the survival of billions of other species).

[The Lone Ranger]

As a rule, I try to live responsibly, not because my efforts make much of difference, but because I think it's the right thing to do. Perhaps the biggest problem, as has been pointed out, is that we rarely pay anything close to the real cost for goods and services when we buy them. (As economists say, the "externalities" are rarely factored in.)

If the price of gasoline, say, reflected the cost of -- all the respiratory ailments caused by the byproducts of gasoline burning (I've seen estimates that several thousand people die every year in Los Angeles alone from respiratory ailments caused by breathing the polluted air); the destruction of lakes and forests in the Northeast and Appalachians due to the sulfur and nitrogen oxides that are released when gasoline is burned, and that contribute to "acid rain"; of cleaning up and "disposing of" (and where does it go when it's "disposed of"? it's not like it magically disappears) soil that is contaminated by gasoline leaking from underground storage tankers; the additional costs of treating drinking water that are incurred because of groundwater that is contaminated by the same leaking tankers; the ruined shores from spills of oil on its way to the refinery to be turned into gasoline; and so on, and so on -- a gallon of gas would be a lot more expensive. And maybe people would be more inclined to take into consideration the true costs of their lifestyles.

Alas, as has also been pointed out, the tragedy of the commons comes into play. It simply doesn't pay the individual to cut back on his or her lifestyle, even though we'd all be better off in the long run if everyone did. So, though I'm no fan of governmental intervention, I think that it ultimately will prove necessary for governments to step in and take a more active role in regulating people's resource consumption. It may quite literally be a matter of survival. Unfortunately, governments are generally not too farsighted, and as one of my economics professors once pointed out, most economic systems (including, most notably, unregulated capitalism) tend to punish those individuals and corporations who forego maximum profitability in favor of more responsible use of resources.

So, we need to educate people. We need to remind them that the Earth's resources are finite, and that in the long run, we'd all be better off if we used those resources more wisely. In practice, that probably means lobbying for the election of political candidates who will have the courage to say this and to enact legislation to promote such practices. (But remember how poor Jimmy Carter was ridiculed for wearing a sweater in the White House, instead of turning up the thermostat? And remember how one of Reagan's first acts upon entering the White House was to have the solar-powered water heater that Carter had installed torn out?)

One of the things that concerns me most is how rapidly wild spaces are being gobbled up, in the name of "progress." I'm only in my 30s, but where I grew up was way out in the middle of nowhere at the time -- now it's all housing developments. One of my favorite professors at Wake Forest U. bought a nice tract of land back in the 60s, upon which to build his house. Except for where the house was built, he left the forest intact. Nowadays, it's an oasis of trees that's almost completely surrounded by asphalt and manicured lawns. Sad.

When I was growing up, I could go out every day and wander through the woods on our property, listen to the birds singing, and pick wild strawberries in the spring and wild blueberries in the summer. I'd go down to the creek and watch fishes swimming in the clear water, catch frogs, turtles, and water snakes, and watch kingfishers patrolling the banks for their next meal. At night, I'd lie outside in the cool grass and watch fireflies drifting to and fro while countless stars glittered overhead.

It saddens me more than I can say that my nieces and nephews have almost no idea of what that was like. And, frankly, I don't want to live in a world where people can't wander through forests and see wildlife, and lie back on a mountainside and watch the stars. I fear that we're heading for a future in which the only greenery will be on mechanized farms where the food is grown to support the ever-growing human population, and "wilderness" will be a meaningless concept.



The problem with any energy-generating process is that you run smack up against the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. There is not, and never will be, any such thing as completely "clean" energy, because there is not -- and never can be -- any such thing as an energy-production technology that doesn't generate waste.

Nuclear power generates a lot of heated water -- which kills fish if it's dumped into rivers -- not to mention radioactive byproducts that are dangerous and often poisonous, so must be dealt with. (And, uranium must be processed before it can be used as fuel for reactors. According to some estimates, when you take into account all the energy that is spent in mining and processing the uranium that fuels a fission plant, it indirectly produces more carbon dioxide per kilowatt/hour of electricity than simply burning coal.)

Solar power produces waste heat, as do all energy-production technologies. In addition, considerable amounts of silicon and other substances must be mined in order to make solar panels, and the panels have a limited lifetime, then must be disposed of.

Wind turbines make a considerable amount of noise under the best of circumstances, and kill birds. Again, there's the damage caused by the mining of the materials necessary to construct them, and the pollution created by the manufacturing process. Eventually, of course, they will wear out and need replacing.

Dams create lakes, which can seriously alter the habitats of fishes and other animals, sometimes detrimentally. (This is a serious concern here in the Pacific Northwest, where dams are thought to be among the most serious of threats to the long-term survival of numerous salmon runs.) When water is impounded by a dam, it starts to drop the silt it's carrying. This interferes with the normal deposition of nutrients further downstream, and so interferes with the functioning of ecosystems downstream (including farms -- the Aswan Dam in Egypt practically destroyed Egypt's agriculture by interrupting the normal flooding cycles of the Nile). More to the point, the silt is dropped into the lake, which gradually begins to fill in. So, most dammed lakes will exist for only a century or two before being filled in. (There's quite a lot of variation of course, depending upon the original depth of the lake, how much sediment is deposited per year, etc.)


In short, there is no technological solution to our environmental concerns, and there never can be. Those who think otherwise are wishing for the physically impossible. The Earth's limited resources simply cannot continue to indefinitely support an ever-growing human population with ever-growing demands for food, fuel, shelter, SUVs, clothes, and so forth.

The problem, bluntly, is that there are too many people demanding too many resources. If people learned to use resources more wisely, probably the Earth could indefinitely support several hundred million people with the sorts of lifestyles Americans are used to, perhaps even a few billion people. Right now though, there is tremendous inefficiency in the distribution of goods and services, and tremendous waste in the extraction and use of resources. That simply can't continue. One way or another, it won't.



-- Michael

[Dingfod]

What The Lone Ranger has stated is one of the reasons I became an advocate of voluntary human extinction. (http://www.vhemt.org/) Reduced numbers of humans is really the only answer. Since I abhor war, violence,and disease as means to reduce populations, I think a campaign to convince people not to reproduce is in order.


Warren, tongue only half-way in cheek

[JoeP]

Total agree with Warren in "Reduced numbers of humans is really the only answer". But I hover between thinking that voluntary reduced reproduction will never work fast enough, and thinking that any other means (war, disease) causes further environmental damage.

Other species that overpopulate their environment suffer population crashes, but don't affect the rest of the species there anything like the way humans do.

[JoeP]

Waddaya know: www.vhemt.org is blocked by my company under the category "advocacy groups".

[livius drusus]

Great post, Michael.

One of the things that concerns me most is how rapidly wild spaces are being gobbled up, in the name of "progress." I'm only in my 30s, but where I grew up was way out in the middle of nowhere at the time -- now it's all housing developments. One of my favorite professors at Wake Forest U. bought a nice tract of land back in the 60s, upon which to build his house. Except for where the house was built, he left the forest intact. Nowadays, it's an oasis of trees that's almost completely surrounded by asphalt and manicured lawns. Sad.

My parents live in a very old house on 30 or so acres of wooded wetland in a small Connecticut town about a half hour away from Hartford. The town, which has had its own (farming and poultry) character for a hundred years or so, is growing ever more into a suburb for commuters. Condo developments replace pasture and gigantic, hastily made houses dominate tiny half-acre lots, and my parents are the last ones with a significant amount of undeveloped land left.

It's heartbreaking. From an agrarian community with strong roots in the soil to what is fundamentally an extended hotel... The loss is cultural as much as it is environmental.

[Penni]

Great post, Michael.

hastily made houses dominate tiny half-acre lots...

Tiny?? Hahahahahah, out here, you have a lot of land if you have a home with 0.10 acres! HUGE is how I think of half-acre lots, and what does that say about us?

Actually, I almost think it might be good to condemn half-acre lots. Obviously truly large lots serve a purpose and are ideal for certai lifestyles, as are truly tiny lots, aka density or multiple unit developments. It's when we get the quarter to half acre lots with cookie cutter homes that I truly lament development.

[pescifish]

Do you worry about conserving natural resources?
No, not really. I doubt I'm a big consumer of resources in the large scale of things though. I don't generate much trash and I almost never get past about 30% of my water allotment. I do run the a/c and heat to keep the house temp between 66 and 80 at all times (I use the bird as the excuse for that.) I use a me-powered push mower for my lawn. I'd recycle, but there's no waste management company in the area that does anything besides the usual soda and bottles and I don't drink soda or bottle stuff in the first place.

p.s. There is a lovely windmill farm in the Tehachipi mountains (between Bakersfield and Mojave) in California. To me (and most people I know) they are a gorgeous addition to the mountain landscape.

[godfry n. glad]

Hydroelectric power should be renewable, apart from the slight impact of building the dams in the first place. But I have a vague feeling it's not perfect. Anyone?

Dams have a couple of problems. One is that many dams have been poorly designed in terms of the native migratory fish stock. That's a problem which can be dealt with, but retrofitting to accomodate migratory fish runs has proven to be a less than impressive effort. The second, although more long run, is more permanent...siltation behind the dams.

The problem with water is not that there is not enough, but that there is not enough water of sufficient quality for consumption and irrigation. Most of the water on the planet is salt water...unusable for consumption or crops. I have no idea of the costs or problems associated with desalination, but given that I see few instances of mass desalination (which would address a lot of problems worldwide), I suspect that there are problems which make it relatively uneconomic. That, of course, may change with the situation.

As for "fresh" water....much of it is polluted, thanks in large part to the presence of humans.

godfry