Not for the 1.3B people that would have no livelyhood without the livestock industry. Then again, since, as an earlier poster pointed out, even our exhaling must be bad for the environment on SOME level, so fewer people must therefore be better.

Which brings up the question of what exactly, people mean when they use the word "sustainable?" Seems like they usually mean in the ecological sense. But so few consider economic sutainability. Ever notice that most people in third world countries (say, most of central Africa, for example) don't seem to give a horse's patootie about global warming? Ya' know why? They are too busy worrying about FOOD! and not having JOBS! You can't expect the people to sustain the planet if no one is sustaining the people.

you know what helps a person turn a decent conversation into one filled with ridiculous straw men and extremes
?

http://www.dave-stephens.com/touring...staya1-009.jpg

its idiotic

Pictures from Successories office posters do that? I'll have to employ them more regularly then. :-)

Extremist ecological theories proposed with straight faces beg for equally ridiculous theories proposed with a mocking smile. And since when has economic sustainability been a straw man?

sustainable agriculture doesn't mean its an economic wash, it mean *sustainable*: it's a design that can pass the test of time without depleting resources. money is a resource. in fact, sustainable agriculture can be *cheaper* in a lot of ways. using animal fertilizer and properly rotating fields means you don't have to spend a lot on synthetic fertilizer (which takes petroluem to produce, btw). these kinds of farms can be almost entirely self-sustaining, food wise, with plenty of surplus to sell.

Exactly, have you been to Tokyo: it rocks! I sincerly hope that you work in a planning department cause I would actually move to the US if it was like that. I grew up in Cambridge, UK and I nearly go insane from the bordem and the lack of noise when I go back there.

Right, the thing is I haven't questioned any of that. I was responding to an earlier post series. The first guy said that he drove all the time when he moved back to a sparsely populated western state. He said he drove as everyone lives 20+ miles apart from their nearest neighbor and there's no public transportation. And the next guy has the audacity to chide and ridicule the first guy by saying something to the effect that, "Gee, hmm, well no public transportaion and people living far apart, think real hard, and you find find your not-riding problem is inside those two conditions, and gee, they might be related." Which struck me as pedantic and patronizing. This was the guy from Finland. The fact is that not everyone can, or wants to, or should be made to live in a dense urban setting.

But while we're on the point, this is exactly the use of the word "sustainable" that most folks use exclusively. Of course such farms can be almost or entirely self-sustaining food-wise. But they can't compete in a free market, except by advertising some perceived benefit to the consumer. "Sustainable" farming, of the kind you've described anyway, requires vastly more manual labor, and they probably should be paid a living wage. Unless said sustainable farmer has a rather large family, which has already been reviled as backwards and not ecologically minded by serious posters here. And while such farmers might have surplus food to sell, large commercial farmers grow more food per acre, and less expensively, period. So the family farm has to sell its food for a higher price, which few consumers are willing to pay (organic food is a luxury of the relatively well-to-do in most metropolitan settings in the USA...folks on food stamps ain't buyin' this stuff.) so-called "clean" farming is not economically sustainable, that is, such farmers simply cannot compete, which is precisely why large agribusiness conglomerates like Archer-Daniels-Midland ("supermarket to the world") own most of the farmland these days.

The ONLY way for ecologically sustainable farming practitioners to sell their product on the open market and survive in business is to convince people with more disposable income to spend it on their more expensive "niche" food. --YOU should buy MY honey instead of Sue-Bee Brand, even though it's 50% more costly, because it's local/organic/tastes like sex/we pay living wages to our migratory bees/we throw back all the wasps we accidentaly trap while collecting it.--
But for the other 90% of Americans, price rules the day. They buy from the ecologically callous industrial brand name because doing so is ECONOMICALLY sustainable for them at the consumer level.

And I'm sorry if I hijacked the thread into farming policy, but it should have been moved to Car-Free Living a while ago anyways. Satire typically falls flat on true believers of any stripe.

Why has no one complained about paint on bikes? Paint is an incredibly wasteful and toxic process, by far the most ecologically detrimental portion of automobile manufacture. And we have said in this thread that ANYthing we can do as a partial solution ought to be implemented (slowing down before you hit the brick wall is better than running into it fullspeed, right?). So why has no one raised the hew and cry to boycott paint on bikes? Don't forget that all that fancy synthetic clothing we wear is petroleum by-product, too. Smelting steel is pretty energy-intensive...yet no one proposes we ban industrial metallurgy, cuz then we'd have nothing to ride!

Only with food production and internal combustion (oh, and population controls) do the zealots feel safe proclaiming radical solutions "for the good of the planet" that are self-evidently bad for human persons. The solution is not always to be found in the extreme, but, dare I even say it, in moderation. Medius via interfixus est per aurum. Were I to propose the possiblity of constructing a triangle with three 90-degree angles, the proper response is not to proclaim that math has slipped its bonds and run amok! Math must be detroyed; numbers are evil! Such a response is the product of a clearly immature mind, and deserves gentle, corrective, satirical mocking. No. The response of a mature human person is to engage in cogent, rational dialectic, not to insultingly suggest that the transportation problem (to cite one example) with rural areas is that they are, well, rural.

Maybe, just maybe, I've explained my satire in such excruciatingly distinct detail that I've killed the thread. Voltaire never stooped to this. Truly, Olympus must tremble at the seriousness with which some of you take yourselves.

Why has no one responded to my pirates and global warming graph?
That's clearly the solution, people. I mean, it's on a graph, and not just anyone can make a random graph and put it on the internet. It's scientific data people. Less pirates cause global warming. Duh.

From http://www.lovearth.net/gmdeliberatelydestroyed.htm :


The electric streetcar, contrary to Van Wilkin's incredible naïve whitewash, did not die a natural death: General Motors killed it. GM killed it by employing a host of anti-competitive devices which, like National City Lines, debased rail transit and promoted auto sales.

This is not about a "plot" hatch by wild-eyed corporate rogues, but rather about a consummate business strategy crafted by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., the MIT-trained genius behind General Motors, to expand auto sales and maximize profits by eliminating streetcars. In 1922, according to GM's own files, Sloan established a special unit within the corporation which was charged, among other things, with the task of replacing America's electric railways with cars, trucks and buses.

A year earlier, in 1921, GM lost $65 million, leading Sloan to conclude that the auto market was saturated, that those who desired cars already owned them, and that the only way to increase GM's sales and restore its profitability was by eliminating its principal rival: electric railways.

At the time, 90 percent of all trips were by rail, chiefly electric rail; only one in 10 Americans owned an automobile. There were 1,200 separate electric street and interurban railways, a thriving and profitable industry with 44,000 miles of track, 300,000 employees, 15 billion annual passengers, and $1 billion in income. Virtually every city and town in America of more than 2,500 people had its own electric rail system.

General Motors sought to reduce competition from electric railways through a variety of measures, including the use of freight leverage. GM, for decades, was the nation's largest shipper of freight over railroads, which controlled some of America's most extensive railways. By wielding freight traffic as a club, GM persuaded railroads to abandon their electric rail subsidiaries.


From http://blogging.la/archives/2007/03/...o_indu_1.phtml :

Further influencing the public and city policy, then-L.A. Times publisher Harry Chandler was very pro-automobile. Chandler had heavy investments in Goodyear and Union Oil, among other freeway-construction related corporations, but not in GM or other car companies. "The Times sought to generate public support for the automobile as the primary mode of transportation in Southern California...While touting the importance of the automobile to Southern California's future, the Times also campaigned against the streetcar." And this contributed to public opinion that the streetcars should yield to automobile traffic:

"In 1920, for example, as the automobile competed with the streetcar for space on the streets of downtown Los Angeles, city officials attempted to control congestion by enforcing a parking ban on weekdays. The Times vigorously denounced the ordinance, insisting that the rights of motorists take precedence over the streetcar's right of way...While the Times advocated municipal support for the construction of roads and highways in Los Angeles, it denounced proposals for subsidizing streetcar maintenance." (Avila, pp. 192-193)

I was going to let it slide but there is an issue around 1860…

You are clearly limiting yourself to 35000 pirates. At 45000 the temperature went up. 20000 it went up. Freakin' shortsighted swashbuckler. Sure it's all wine and women while you run around the seas knocking up pirate chicks in your ports of call. Then out of lack of self control you knock up a few too many and we're overpopulated with pirates and we're right back where we started.

It's not just about the sex dude. Think sustainability. Keep your sword in the scabbard will ya?

Ah he11, I re-read the chart, global warming slowed as the population increased. Have at it man.

(please post pics)

PS, if this catches on is there a form or application I need to fill out before “helping the cause?”

I initially read the chart in a much more negative, and I think scary light. Increased temperatures are KILLING the pirates. That would mean we would have no more pirates AND no apparent way to stop the skyrocketing temperatures...

I doubt Gore has added the pirates into his equation... how easily he's forgotten his former lifestyle!!

We need the pirates to save us from living the movie "Waterworld". Save the Pirates.

Salt Lake City has two of the few remaining pirates who are doing their part to stop global warming:
http://www.piratesofthegreatsaltlake.com/

i don't know, i mean i think the smokers would qualify as pirates so i assume things were going to start getting better real soon for those kids with all those pirates around helping the environment

Yo, Finnish guy:

I don't think I or other guy were saying that it was impossible to have small sized towns equipped with awesome public transportation, that's obviously not the case. But that if you live in Montana, you need a car, because chances are that you live 20 miles from the nearest town.

Im a vegan, and car-free, but dont really care about global warming.

But.. i ****ing HATE pirates.

You're obviously not paying attention. This has nothing to do with global warming and everything to do with the subversive acts of car companies trying to keep us from building monorails. It took me a bit to figure out it's about industry, not transportation. I was lost too. Now I am found.

Just because Montana (without adding in Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Kansas and parts of Iowa) is much larger than Northern Finland, this does not mean that we are not thinking big enough. Think bigger. Deeper. He'll even give hints later in the show.

Ever met a vegan pirate? Just despicable people...

Also, I was thinking about this thread while I was driving to the beach this morning, and I realized that while cars can often be replaced by a bicycle, sometimes I need my gasoline and 4 wheels. I was able to go the ocean, and be back by lunch; a bicycle would have made it a whole day activity. I suppose that's the sacrifice though...

So these are cold water pirates?

finnish guy's first objecction, though, was that our friend from the American West was a Bad Man for living 20 miles from his nearest neighbor. American West guy and myself noted, in excruciating detail, that public transit is simply not practicable in low-pop.-density RURAL areas.

The presentation of General Motors as the boogey man haunting the dreams of peaceful earth-licking vegan-bunnies everywhere is utterly immaterial to the case. Because "even small towns of 2,500 people" who had electric trolly systems does not now, nor has it ever, accurately described RURAL, farming America. Or any other truly rural part of the world, for that matter.

Finnish Guy might just as well castigate the Alankan Inuit for contributing to global warming because it's their fault they live in so remote a location that the mail/doctor/schoolbooks have to come in by propeller plane. The underlying assumption, that people should either a) move to where the mass transit is, or b) expand mass transit to everywhere is exemplary of exactly the narrow-minded "I know what's best for everyone else In America because I live on the east/west coast," elitism and shrill tone that makes folks not trust even their good ideas come election time. (The variation on this underlying assumption, "I know what's best for everyone in America because I live in enlightened Europe," seems to be the operative viral strain here.

Please see the second paragraph in my post again. Nowhere in this thread have you seen me do anything other than make fun of Finnish guy for taking jabs at a dude trying to do his part.

Well, I have tried to get registered as a pirate in order to see if that will help me with the ladies. Technically that is an "anything" other than making fun of Finnish guy. Obviously the pirates are looking to hoard all of the goodies for themselves as I have yet to receive my application.

Dateline: Barbary Coast.

NORTH AFRICAN PRIATE SPECIES DECLARED ENDANGERED

In what some are calling the greatest ecological disaster since the GreenPeace thought blowing holes in oil tankers was a good idea, researchers at Helsinki's Haavenuthinbettertuudoo Climate Studies Institute have concluded that the Black-Spotted Barbary Pirate is loosing habitat at an alarming rate.

Dr. Wilfred von Hoozhyuurdaad explains, "We've noticed a spike in ninja activity in the western mediteranean lately. The ninja are not indigenous to this part of the world's oceans and they are having a tremendous impact on the pirates who aren't prepared for them. The ninja are beating the pirates everywhere they compete for resources, even killing the pirates themselves."

Dr. Jim Jones from South America is also deeply concerned. "Our locally predominant species, the Spanish Dwarf Pirate, is being actively decimated by these new ninja." The South American pirate secretes a white powdery substance into the water, which calcifies into a wonderful habitat. Think of it like this: the fish who swim in the coral actually build the coral beds. But Dr. Jones notes that, "The ninja are absorbing the pirates' white powder, and it seems to only make them more aggressive. No species ofpirate is likely prepared for these ninja...it's like those africanized honey bees; they just came out of nowhere."

Dr. Hoozhyuurdaad believes that the threat stems from somewhere in the kaiser-soze portion of the ninjas' brains, and that a mutation there could account for this aberrant behaviour. Studies are ongoing, but scientists note that only massive donations from the public to StopNinjazNow.org can fuel further research. Do your part, before it's too late...for the pirates.

Yeah well, whatever man, you're just another tool of the automotive industry trying to hide the 400 mile per gallon car because you just support Bu$h's lies and dying for oil profits and killing baby seals. Being in my early 20's i know all there is to ever know about the socio-ecological impacts of all my actions, which means that everyone on the planet would be so much better if they rode track bikes (because track bikes are more ecological than any other bike true story) and wore second hand clothes and ate vegan and only bathed twice a week to help conserve the earth.

*pedals off on a 4000 dollar NJS bike to college classes paid by his parents*

this is simply not true. organic/sustainable methods may require more *management*, but often times you will hear these farmers say that the animals do most of the work for them. google 'management intensive grazing'. these farmers have discovered that if you imitate nature's pattern of interdependance on different species, you dont have to do a lot of extra work and spend a lot of money making up for the pieces of the puzzle that are missing in a monoculture farm.

'Less expensively' is relative. the cost on the shelf may be higher, but you aren't paying the hidden costs of government subsidies, health care costs, and nitrate pollution of rivers and the gulf of mexico, among a myriad of other things.

and organic food is not "a luxury" as much as people think it is. everyone always points to the really poor people who can't afford expensive food, but these same folks still manage to come up with an extra $40 or $60 a month for cell phones that they didn't 10 years ago. americans in general have a large amount of discressionary income that they historically *have not chosen* to spend on food, because up until recently there has been no value proposition, because people don't understand the difference. its the wal-mart mentality, buy the cheapest thing cause its the cheapest thing. well guess what? you get what you pay for, even with food.

you may be right that "clean farmers" cannot compete with large-scale industrial operations, but in a lot of cases they really don't have to. they aren't trying to play the lowest production/lowest price game, and they manage to do a decent business in light of not being a major player. claiming that not being the biggest and cheapest means your operation is not economically sustainable just isn't accurate. the double punchline is that most farmers in the US typically grow industrial corn to be processed, and they sell it for less than it costs to produce, with the govt making up the difference. its certainly not a recipe to get rich. the only 'econmically sustaniable' part is on behalf of the corn brokers who buy it at a subsidized low price and turn it into processed foods.

true, but throwing up your hands and saying its not worth trying because 90% of everyone else doesn't care is a bull**** excuse. I think if everyone were at least *fully aware* of the problems of industrial food operations we'd see a signifigant decrease in demand for those products. of course some people are not going to care and buy whatever's cheapest. some people will continue to rob and steal from others, too. I can't make everyone have a conscience.

the other option of course, is government intervention. we created laws against pollution because we found companies would use dirty manufacturing processes and dump chemicals wherever they wanted if we didn't intervene, cause it was cheaper for them. it might be time to start recognizing that food is one of the most important things in our lives, and the industry in which majority of it is created obviously values profits over our health interests (both in the food itself that we eat, and the way that it is produced), and maybe that needs to change.