Anti-modern utopians and the Green Bubble

Yes, it's really the case that we can't return to a pre-industrial past, especially a pre-agricultural one. Not without losing 95-99% of the human population first. The physics just don't support it.

Here's a tiny, minor modern example. I'm reading a lot of gardening and urban homesteading books. Many of them are based on scavenging - i.e. "Get grass clippings from your neighbors." "Pick up your neighbors' old newspapers." "Get vegetable scraps from the grocery store." (Old meme: my grocer runs a composting operation out in the country, turns the scraps into compost, and sells them back at $6 a bag.)

We were looking at our own garden though, realizing that as the garden grows, the grass clipping population goes down. We would still have enough to compost - but urban homesteading based on scavenging is *not* sustainable, not if *everyone* does it. A little Kant's imperative shows the whole thing to be shaky. There simply isn't enough biomass on 1/8th of an acre, esp. if there aren't leaves and clippings to scavenge.

Similarly, economy of scale in agriculture and manufactured goods are *why* we have material things (food and manufactured goods.) Every supposedly "self-sustaining homestead" (and this includes Amish communities too) is only able to proceed because of the larger infrastructure - which is based on economy of scale.

And economy of scale, with its vast demands for water and petroleum, is one of the major causes of environmental pollution, and destruction of lands and habitats.

Getting around it is pretty grim, because physics isn't about to be repealed anytime soon.

I don't think we need to return to a pre-industrial society to enjoy many of the goods that Rod advocates. We should make use of this economic crisis to simplify, simplify, simplify. Times are almost certain to get worse given Obama's slap happy spending policies and the draconian taxes that are coming, so it will soon likely be necessary for us all to return to basics to some degree. I grew up on a farm in Idaho and we did not eschew the modern world, but we didn't have so many things, repaired broken things, rarely ate out, bottled food in the summer for winter use, etc. We also were part of a strong church community that helped each other out in times of sickness or economic hardship. Our entertainment came from community sports teams, talent shows, church parties, weddings and the like. I don't live in Idaho any more (though my parents do) but I am still part of a strong church community that enriches my life immensely. I think what I most resent about the modern liberal agenda is the self-righteous harping about enviromentalism (I am sympathetic, but really don't know what to believe since I hear such different accounts from different sources!) while they make a sustained effort to destroy traditional community that centers around family (and this necessitates recognizing gender differences) and church, all in the name of equality and rights. Meanwhile, Obama is instituting more and more policies that control more and more aspects of our lives. I don't mean to sound nutty, but I've been reading James Kalb's The Tyranny of Liberalism, and I think he is right. The liberal agenda that seeks to organize life on the basis of abstract concepts that ignore how people actually organize themselves in families and communities leads to rampant materialism. If we encourage thick webs of family and local community in our social policies, we are far more likely to seek other goods and satisfactions than material ones. We should make use of this crisis not to completely eschew the modern world, but to return to some of the more satisfying pleasures of the past derived from strong interconnected community and sensible, frugal living.

I think what I most resent about the modern liberal agenda is the self-righteous harping about enviromentalism (I am sympathetic, but really don't know what to believe since I hear such different accounts from different sources!) ...

Yes, it is offputting to listen to self-righteous yammering and the self-righteous folks tend to undermine their goals by being so.

The sources that are believable are much more easy to validate. Use sources that base their claims on established scientific research that has been validated by other researchers. Do not listen to people who have a political agenda and engage in science-denialism. If someone accuses scientists of lying without providing a clear explanation, supported by evidence, do not believe them. Remember that businesses have a long history of making fake science claims. Look at the cigarette industry and its fight against the evidence that cigarettes cause serious illnesses.

That is not to say that all businesses will lie all the time, but there will be those who are tempted to ignore the evidence or make false claims about what was found. Look at how long businesses and some politicians refused to acknowledge that human activity is a major contributor to changes in the world-wide climate. Are the solutions that are being discussed the best ones? I don't know, but I do know that those who refused to even acknowledge the problem have taken themselves away from the table when it comes to finding a solution. Such dishonesty may be a reasonable short-term solution, but is likely to cause everyone, the businesses that refused to acknowledge the problem included, more pain, more costs.

Ef Schumacher is as pertinent today as he was 30 years ago. I don't have my copy of Small Is Beautiful in front of me, so I can't quote his exact words, but to paraphrase, he protested the false dichotomy between a society having $1 technology and $1000 technology. Why not $100 technology, he asked? Things that are simple and cheap to make that still allow people to escape from back-breaking labor. Google "intermediate technology" for more on this subject.

"Generally, the most effective approaches to being green require people to pay for and clean up their own waste."

Freelunch -- boo-yah! We need this line repeated, frequently.

The elephant in the room here is religion.

If one assumes that Marx was at least half-way wrong, if one assumes that economic practices are as much the superstructural manifestation of an ideological base as the other way round, then one can't help but see why "green bubbles" in and of themselves are bound to burst.

"Green bubbles" constitute attempts to change economic practices *without* changing the ideological assumptions on which those practices are based.

We would probably be better off -- and certainly no worse -- if we had a modern economy made up of individuals with pre-modern or post-modern sensibilities than if we had a pre-modern or post-modern economy made up of individuals whose sensibilities were equally as modern as those which helped bring about the modern conditions from which they themselves have distanced themselves symbolically through blowing "green bubbles."

Instead of symbolically mimicking the economic practices of pre-modern cultures, we need to reinvestigate and to rejuvenate pre-modern ideas -- including traditional religion -- as a way of backing up to different forks in the road at which we could have taken better paths forward than the ones that we did.

Speaking on behalf of Radical Orthodoxy, John Milbank gets it right when he says "We oppose the modern, but we also seek to save it. We espouse not the pre-modern, but an alternative vision of modernity."

What's needed is a genuine traditionalism, not a Burkean conservatism or a leftist utopianism that can only ever yield unsatisfied nostalgic longing.

What's needed is a reinvestigation of tradition -- and especially of pre-modern traditions -- one that might redirect future progress in better directions than the ones we've been on and will continue to be on, barring some fundamental rethinking of our basic assumptions, as opposed to superficial revision of a few of our practices -- or barring some catastrophe.

We won't be truly posterior to our present conditions until we are truly post-modern, which will take becoming truly pre-modern -- at least virtually -- in how we think about things.

And we won't be truly post-modern (as Milbank understands) until we are post-secular.

And post-secularity is harder for our gauche-bourgeoisie to face than shopping at Whole Foods with canvas bags.

In any event it will take generations to turn things around and we should not expect to see much progress during our own lifetimes.

What we can hope for though is better prospects for future generations, and we can help prepare for those by teaching our children to unlearn the mistakes that we ourselves were taught to keep on making, to the point that it is hard for us to stop.

Nick the Greek,

One of the things we seem to forget is that even old, adequate technology like bicycles continues to improve. Bicycles became affordable for the masses by 1900 with a price around $50.00 (roughly $1,000 in today's prices). That bike might have been as mechanically sound as what you can get for $200 today (though there was no adjustable gearing). A thousand dollar bicycle today is superior in all respects to the product available then. Sewing machines and other tools have similar improvements.

Yes, it's really the case that we can't return to a pre-industrial past, especially a pre-agricultural one. Not without losing 95-99% of the human population first. The physics just don't support it.

Physics as we know it does not support a human population of 7 billion (our current figure, give or take), let alone the 9 billion expected (on the basis of mathematical calculation) by 2040, even with our present technology, let alone a pre-industrial level.

Perhaps new ways of producing enough food and at the same time controlling environmental degradation will be developed which will allow such human population numbers. We'd better hurry up. The more likely result is the "losing 90% of the human population" scenario.

But as others here point out, human beings do not seem capable of addressing problems of this complexity and this scope. We're better at immediate threats. This one is a threat all right, but not of the sort we are equipped to counter.

So, what are we left with? "Green" movements by people who are alert and well-educated enough to see the outlines of the problem (and who have the wealth to think about such things instead of worrying about where their next meal is coming from) but which address largely the emotional anxieties of the "Greens" without actually doing much to solve the problem.

I hate to think that we're just going to sit here until we encounter whatever it is that will reduce the global human population by 90%, but I'm wondering if any other scenario is realistic.

Dang the Captcha. The 10:26 post under Your Name was mine.

The opponents of modernity do not have to be resisted. It is sufficient to merely ignore them.

Freelunch: Schumacher's point is that not everyone can afford a $1000 bike, but it is more and more difficult to find a simple $50 bike because everyone wants the adjustable gearing and other features that they could probably do without, nice though they may be. I'm speaking metaphorically here, I'm not a cyclist, so I have no idea whether this example is literally true or not.

Nick the Greek: One of the things we have seen over time is that the entry level item is no longer made because it cannot successfully compete against the used market. If I, for example, have a budget of $8,000 for a car, I wouldn't buy a new car, even if it were available. I would buy a better used car that has a slightly shorter remaining life but a better resale value in the event I choose to sell it later on. At some point, the lack of demand for products that are the most basic will cause that product not to be built any more.

Re: $50 vs. $1,000 bicycles

You can also spend $1,000 on a single speed fixed gear bike... that is the ultimate status symbol for a certain sort of SWPL person! "I just spent a lot of money on a bike that has NOTHING fancy on it!"

http://cgi.ebay.com/LEMOND-FILLMORE-SINGLE-SPEED-FIXED-GEAR-FIXIE-BICYCLE_W0QQitemZ300267117954QQcmdZViewItem

Having a genetic disability I think I share a liking of modernity. It's hard to long for something that would've meant you'd die in infancy or, at best, live a life of near-total isolation where you can rarely leave your house.

I don't know if that means liking all elements of modernity or like "Modernism" at all. Still to me it's not liberal to be content in the modern world. Liberal would be wanting absolute autonomy, I don't, and Progressive would be wanting the things of the past to largely be abandoned. (I don't) I believe in continuity, I just don't believe in turning totally backward. I don't think that's liberal at all. Did Edmund Burke want to return to the Medieval era?

Physics as we know it does not support a human population of 7 billion (our current figure, give or take), let alone the 9 billion expected (on the basis of mathematical calculation) by 2040, even with our present technology, let alone a pre-industrial level.

Hogwash. Crop yields have been increasing steadily for over a century. Millions of acres of farmland around the world are being abandoned because they are no longer profitable. Millions of acres are also still being farmed by animal and man power rather than machinery, and without the yield enhancing benefits of the green revolution.

But it's coming. In just the last few years I've seen powered irrigation and tractors becoming more common in India. I suspect much the same is happening all over Asia, and will in Africa too (if it isn't already). Feeding 9 billion people is not impossible. I'm not sure what "physics" math you are using to support that, but modern agriculture could likely feed many many more than 9 billion.

Much of the problem around emissions and energy usage will be self-resolving over time. LED lighting can produce the same output as incandescents while using less than a quarter of the electricity and producing far less heat. Insulating buildings has improved in the last couple of decades. The move to solid state drives will mean computers use less electricity and produce less heat. Electric drive trains for vehicle are far more efficient than mechanical ones.

There are two weak links holding back a revolution in energy usage. One is production costs. They are coming down for most of these technologies, and for things like solar panels. But it is a long slow process that most people don't notice.

The other big hurdle is batteries. Our current battery technology leaves a lot to be desired. We really need a 10-fold performance increase in batteries to see major changes occur, and they will need to use available materials - not some super-rare element that we can't easily obtain. What we could use is a massive X-Prize for a better battery.

The problem with the greens is that they have degenerated into left-wing nuts promoting a de-industrialist political agenda.

The developed world has largely solved the environmental problems. I lived in SoCal in the 80's and occasionally go there today on business. I can tell you the place is FAR cleaner than it was in the 80's. Its the same with Japan. Friends of mine who grew up in Tokyo in the 70's told me that it was like Mexico City in the summers. Today it is clean. Pollution is largely a problem of the developing world. I believe it is a part of the development curve (much like sweatshops) and the best way to get over the pollution problem is to get the rest of the world to develop as quickly as possible. Having lived and traveled in much of Asia, I stand by this conviction.

In my opinion, the greens were a positive force in the U.S. during the 70's when we really did have serious environmental problems. The problems began when the original baby-boomer activists left the green movement in the early 80's because they started having real lives, like families and careers and, thus, had no time for frivolous politics. The hard core de-industrial leftists began to hijack the movement in the mid-80's.

It was actually the cold fusion fiasco in 1989 that finally made me decide the greens were completely full of it. During the 6 weeks when the world collectively held its breath and thought cold fusion was real, many of the "leaders" of the green movement publically denounced cold fusion, saying it was a bad thing. This is when I decided they were full of it and that they really did not care about environmental issues and were using such only to promote a political agenda of de-industrialization.

Meanwhile, the real work of environmentalism goes forward in the way that Wendell Berry describes: with small, humble and humbling tasks that make no one rich or famous and get little attention from brainy mags like The New Republic.

Translation: The people harmed by it, for no practially measureable benefit, are unimportant and ignored by the media.

Dams that blocked passage of migratory salmon are being removed.

Mostly nonsense. One can hardly find ANY example of a dam removed that "released" migratory salmon. Generally, the emotional shouts were raised, and millions of dollars raised from far remote people to buy the political body off, as a response to closer or even local people attempting to better themselves.

Roads are being torn up in national forests.

Definitely true. And moronically stupid.

Wolves are returning to many states where they were wiped out decades ago.

Because they aren't compatible with the use of the land.

Elk are being reintroduced in Eastern states, while bighorn sheep and mountain goats are being reintroduced all over the West.

Does it give you wet dreams at night? Can you point to ANY ACTUAL benefit, other than the emotional gratification of people far away? I thought not. Meanwhile, the use of organized fundraising using the very methodology (guilt tripping the wealthy) is used to steamroll and destroy the local lives of millions, again, ignored by the media. Often, the hardship and pain is celebrated by those who see the rural idiots as the obstruction to their utopian vision.

In many areas, cougar populations are at all time highs.

Yeah, the stories of encroachment upon, and entanglement with human populations are rampant out west. I hope it's YOUR kid who gets mauled, of course.

Lands that were drained and diked a century ago are being restored to wetland status.

Wasting massive amounts of precious water, and implementing almost no measurable improvement of ANYTHING.

Streetcars and light rail and being put back into our cities.

Billions and billions of debt heaped upon our children for useless stuff nobody WILL EVER USE. Hope it made you FEEL better for a moment, at least.

Bicycles are taking their place as respected modes of transportation. Farmers markets are springing up in nearly every city.

This is the normal cycle of capitalism, where people seek and exploit niche markets. Healthy and good. But, I live 23 miles round trip to the nearest store of any significant size. And it's 1800 feet elevation change along the way. Not doing it on a bicycle.

A significant number of farmers are transitioning to organic practices, or at least reducing the amount of pesticides they use.

Actually, most have sought this for as long as they've been around. Recent technological improvements have made it possible, too. Good thing.

Demand for backyard vegetable gardening supplies is skyrocketing. Consumer demand is shifting toward more efficient, green products.

Landowners are placing conservation easements on their properties, to prevent them from being subdivided.

And creating lots of future problems. But hey, shift off problems to the future, for emotional gratification today... I mean, radical ideological gratification is definitely worth more than future problems, right?

Snoozer:
[restoring wetlands]=implementing almost no measurable improvement of ANYTHING.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9118570/

"2.7 miles of wetlands = 1 less foot of storm surge" sounds pretty measurable to me. I wonder how many fewer people in New Orleans would have drowned if the region's wetlands had been properly protected.

As I have long said, environmentalism does not start with random people using 15 less watts an hour because they purchased CFL bulbs.

It started with an office building adding a computer policy that shutdown down monitors after 10 minutes of idle, and saves 15 kilowatts a day.

It starts with a manufacturing plant that reuses coolant water, instead of just throwing it out, reducing electrical use and the load on the water and sewage system.

It starts with upping average MPGs slowly each year.

At the individual level, environmentalism is almost total nonsense. If 20% of the population was hardcore environmentalists, and they aren't if they were and reused Product X and thus bought half as much of it as the rest of population...we'd get exactly the same effect if we just put laws into place requiring such a product to be 10% less wasteful. The differences is, one of those is actually attainable.

And requiring that sort of stuff from businesses is exactly where the right has stood in the way. Oh, sure, they run around mocking individual efforts at environmentalism, but they won't stop recycling centers from being built.

But attempt to require that all companies stop wasting gallons of water for each doodad, and they'll leap into action to vote it down, yelling about the free market.

Fine, we say, and we attempt to operate in a free market manner forcing companies to pay for the entire cost of their stuff. If they make something, they should have to pay for disposing of it. They should have to pay for what they spew into the air. But no, that's not acceptable either, somehow.

No, that means we're being 'anti-business', and we should go back to extolling the virtues of hemp clothing or reusing toilet paper or some. We should go back to the imaginary environmentalism that doesn't actually do anything, instead of actually attempting to change the biggest resource wasters and pollutant and trash producers, which is so obviously the corporate world we don't even need to discuss it.

I didn’t read that particular article on greens, but as a regular New Republic reader I can confidently predict that, even as we speak, someone is composing a response either for the article’s comment section or for one of the magazine’s own blogs. In this response, someone who knows this stuff better than I do will point out that the article’s authors are understating the achievements of environmentalism, which in fact has had many successes in its relatively short life: reducing acid rain in the Northeast, cleaning up what were once open sewers with names like “Lake Erie” and “the Thames,” preventing automative exhausts from building up to the point of making the Los Angeles basin literally uninhabitable, eliminating fallout from above-ground nuclear tests, creating more energy-efficient cars and appliances, reforesting and restoring various wildlife habitats, and so on.

What produced these solutions was a combination of measures: new regulatory regimes (the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, federal fuel-efficiency standards, sulfur dioxide cap-and-trade), international agreements and pressures (the Montreal Protocol, the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty), improved and add-on technologies (smokestack scrubbers, catalytic converters), and so on. Further such improvements are on the horizon, and while big challenges remain, there is enough concern among those elites mentioned in the New Republic article to ensure that serious efforts to respond to them will continue – provided one thing: that Republicans are not given control of the government again. When they’re in power, progress stops or is reversed, because the GOP is a party controlled by a coalition of know-nothings, wacked-out holy rollers and agents of the major polluters. The known-nothings include people like John Boehner, who said just a couple of days ago that it’s “comical” to suggest that atmospheric carbon dioxide is carcinogenic, which he apparently thinks is what scientists and environmentalists are saying. (For the uninformed: carbon dioxide is not a problem because it causes cancer but because it traps sunlight in the atmosphere and oceans. For the Republican leader of the U.S. House not to understand something so basic is outrageous political malpractice.) The holy rollers include people like Sen. James Inhofe who think that burning as much fossil fuel as possible is God’s will, and anyway the End is Nigh, so who cares? And the agents of industry include people like former oilmen George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and of course Sarah “Drill Baby Drill” Palin, who on these issues also qualifies as a wacked-out holy roller. (Strictly speaking, Palin’s an agent not just of industry but of the Socialist Republic of Alaska, which happens to sit atop fossil fuels that the state’s residents control in collectivist fashion and license to oil companies for their personal profit.)

It’s true that even if the U.S. and other Western countries have enlightened leadership, they can’t unilaterally solve the problem created by development in countries like China and India. But the leaders of those countries don’t want an uninhabitable planet either, and there are various pressures they will respond to as part of a coordinated worldwide policy – again, as long as Republicans have nothing to do with it. Indeed, the main environmental challenge of our time is defeating Republican candidates for office, because without that, nothing else that’s good for the planet is ever likely to happen.

The whole article sounds like typical TNR contrarianism.

The Water Crisis, A Practical Solution

The Water crisis is the most serious problem humanity has ever faced. Water pollution has infused the entire food chain with neurotoxins, poisons and pharmaceuticals, all of which damage the health and survivability of man and planet. The cause is our modern, water based sewer system. We flush all of our disposables down the drain, into the sewer system where more chemicals are added and then finally pumped back into our water system. Water based sewer systems are the prime polluters and our use of them has proved to be full of unintended and unanticipated horrors. The use of water based sewer system wastes and contaminates the entire water supply with pollutants and nutrients that if captured and recycled, could provide sufficient agricultural nutrients to ensure a sustainable food supply.

One practical solution to the water shortage is to replace our centralized water based sewer system with on site, waterless toilets and recycle grey water. Grey water is the water from the kitchen and shower and can be recycled, on site and reused for landscaping. This will reduce our demand on the water source by 80 percent while simultaneously creating a sustainable, renewable, agricultural resource, namely, organic nitrogen.
No Mix toilets collect urine and feces in separate places, the toilet bowl has two drains, one, in the front for the urine and one in the back for the feces. The feces are dry composted and the urine is processed for agricultural purposes. Separating toilets protect the water supply and provide a renewable, safe, low cost source of nitrogen, enough to greatly reduce our dependence on foreign natural gas and oil. The important key is to separate the valuable, nitrogen rich urine, human urine is 18% organic nitrogen, at the source, before it is mixed with feces and before it is flushed into the water supply.

The economic potential of capturing human urine is stunning. Human urine is 18% organic nitrogen and has been used in agriculture for thousands of years. Sweden, Germany, Holland and many other countries have been using and processing human urine for agricultural purposes and to protect the environment from water based sewer systems. Human urine is the only renewable, sustainable and economically feasible source of nitrogen available to humanity and it is free.

What is the economic value of human urine? Here is how it works, the value of comparative petroleum derived fertilizer with the same 18% nitrogen content is approximately $10.00 a gallon and requires a massive polluting industry that is not renewable. The average person produces 2 liters of urine a day or roughly $5.00 worth of organic nitrogen. A city like Miami flushes down the drain 10 to 20 million dollars worth of nitrogen a day and spends another fortune to do it. Integrated Recycling is the future of our economy and could replace taxation in funding community services. The cities will become fertilizer factories and urban and suburban farming and food production could provide a sustainable, local food supply. Schools and churches could be nurseries and local gardening centers, hubs of city and urban agriculture and recycling. This could be a sustainable, local system that is a renewable doable foundation for local economies. Local food production is the basis of all economies and the missing component in modern cities.

This kind of integrated recycling is highly profitable and turns three life threatening problems, water shortage, water pollution and imported oil into one sustainable, environmentally positive and economically beneficial solution.
Water based sewer systems unnecessarily wastes and pollutes our most valuable resource, clean water. There is only one water supply for the entire earth. We share this single resource with 6.5 billion other humans and with all living organisms. Water should be regarded as our most important natural resource and shared birthright. Water is the first thing mankind must agree to share according to the highest collective principle. Water is the tie that binds us together, for better or for worse.
Water is the blood of the earth and a true sacrament, something we all share, something that is absolutely necessary for life. We should not pollute the water supply with chemicals, insecticides or human disposables that can and should be recycled to insure a healthy and sustainable future.

Modern, water based sewer systems could be the worst idea mankind has ever adopted. Common sense informs us not to defecate in the drinking water but that is exactly what we currently do in every city of the land. We do it without thinking. That is the problem. We are not thinking right. It is possible, conceivable, that the water crisis could be THE reason people begin to think of ourselves as truly united with everyone else on the planet, known and unknown, united in our fears, hopes and desires. 6.5 billion Separate destinies have become one destiny for us all …

Artie: It's not an honesty competition, and there is no guaranteed reward, other than virtue, for that kind of honesty. I personally think that it won't be green hand-wringing or Republican indifference but pure supply/demand economics that will eventually drive the change back to a more localized, rural, agrarian culture. When cheap oil production eventually peaks and declines and all the oil-dependent minimum-wage urban jobs decline with it, small towns with cheap houses and farmland will attract lots of folks who'd rather grow animals and vegetables in the country than hustle scarce minimum-wage, fast-food and telemarketing jobs in the city.

Yes, I read World Made by Hand. It's bunk. Nor are the low-educated, minimum-wage earners going to move out of cities and into the bucolic countryside, to happily till the soil. For one thing, land costs money - and the more arable it is, the better the water, the more it costs. For another, land comes with taxes - and you'd better have some job to pay them, or the land isn't yours anymore. Who collects taxes in WMBH? A stunning literary omission there.

Read the Little House on the Prairie series of books to discover that even 19th century farming/homesteading was highly dependent on manufacture and a sophisticated (for the 19th c.) transportation infrastructure. The plows, salt pork, nails, guns, lead for ammo, store cloth bought by homesteaders were manufactured in cities and shipped around by rail. People living on the land did not make these things; they sold their crops to buy them. Somehow money has to get into the system. Rural poverty is devastating, and that's what you're looking at in this idealized situation.

Rich, what I say isn't "hogwash," because the "crop yields" to which you refer have been the result of *technology* (starting with the McCormick reapers which displaced so many agricultural workers in the 1910s-1920s), and particularly petroleum- and agri-chemical-based technology. But if I read Rod and others right, that's precisely what "crunchy cons" *and* Greens want to stop. Ditto with genetically modified crops. The whole point of the "peak oil" hysteria is that petroleum *won't* be available to run modern high-tech agriculture.

ms, your comments are one of the two most sensible in the thread. Simplify, definitely - but keeping in mind that all that simplification takes place within the context/infrastructure of a modern society. We aren't going to make our own canning jars - but at least if enough people are doing it, you will be able to find them, and they'll be reasonably priced.

The second eminently sensible comment belongs to laughable, who points out quite rightly that pharmaceutical research is not done in a "world made by hand." Nor is semiconductor manufacture, or the servers and phone lines required for the internet (which enables us to have this conversation in the first place.)

Be careful what you wish for.

Snoozer, there was a dam on the Sandy River, about twenty miles from where I'm sitting right now, the destruction of which has opened hundreds of miles of upstream rivers and tributaries for salmon and steelhead. Those of us who actually live here think it's a Very Good Thing.

Why, of course you do. You don't need any real results, it's all about feeling, isn't it?

I don't know about wet dreams, (and why so damn snarky, anyway?)

Because I'm so 'dam' tired of all the pathetic juvenile nonsense used in our state to decide adult matters. Oh, and pathetically stupidly, too.

but, yes, I think that it's terrific that native species are being re-established over their former ranges.

Why, of course you do. Nothing happens to you. No loss, no hurt. No living destroyed, no land you used to love taken from you by people far away, sitting in comfortable homes and shielded from consequences of thier emotional tantrums. Why, you love it. Feel wonderful about yourself, and when told that others are hurt by your whimsical fantasies, just paint it over with self righteous rhetoric.

I prefer living in a world with elk and mountain goats and cougars and wolves.

Like hell you do. You live in a cement jungle, or in a heavily urbanized, slightly forested hilly terrain. ( oh, did you know that I just happen to live in Oregon, too?) You DO NOT LIVE WHERE THESE THINGS ARE GOING ON. No, you live far, far away, and don't give a damn about the hurt you cause untold people. After all, you're righteous and can post whole paragraphs praising your own love of the fine wonderful fantasies you portray about restored salmon and wolves and all those other sleeptime images you cling to.

It's okay for herons and ducks to have some wetlands, instead of Federally subsidized alfalfa growers.

You have absolutely NO idea what you're talking about.

It's odd that you, who comes across as a conservative, are so set against actually conserving. It's even odder that you as a Christian apparently despise so much of God's creation, things that you think provoke wet dreams, such as elk and mountain goats.

Oh, look at that. You can make up all kinds of nonsense and post it, pretending wisdom and knowledge of everyone's thoughts and beliefs and ideals.

Now, let me explain something. I have actually LIVED where the elk are. Where the mountain goats are. Where the wolves are. Where the salmon spawn. Where the ducks summer over. Where the deer and moose and elk wander my front yard, and the geese and ducks live in my back yard. I actually KNOW something about all of them, and not the selective bits of tripe that political organizations filter out to you to make you sit, dreamy eyed, fawning over yourself and your oh-so-superior Visa card as you raise money to empower them to live like kings and then wreak havoc on other people's lives, while having not a freaking clue how to accomplish a damn thing worth doing, but yet telling you how righteous and perfect you are for having given them money.

You really don't mind the raised electricity rates that have arrived with the advent of the "stakeholder" tax on all things good. You even tax yourself some more so those "green" guys can live with massive salaries and in places you can only dream about.

And, because people like those you so indifferently and self-righteously want to suffer needlessly have worked and built and created things, you have all you need to continue exploiting and destroying without a second thought. Oh, and posting about how wonderful and righteous you are for having done so.

Somehow I rather doubt you think that I "despise" all of Creation. Or that I don't consider being a steward of God's world a serious obligation. But, maybe you do. Doesn't really matter to me. The fact is, you've decided that YOU are the superior being, ensconced in your little mecca of liberal hell on the west side of Oregon, and that you, by virtue of your own judgement about yourself, have the right to impose your will on everone else, no matter what it does to them, and how utterly without results your plans will be.

That's the WHOLE problem with the "green" movement. And why it made no progress at all. Because it sought to "educate" those close in to the issues raised. And getting laughed at for being wrong, stupid, and ignorant. Now, they have a new approach. Raise money in New York for 'wolves in Montana' and raise money in DC and California for "water for suckers" in Klamath Lake. This way, there is no and never will be ANY accountability laid at the feet of the environmentalists for the massive harm and wrongs they have committed against both people and the land they so dishonestly claim to care about.

Raise votes in Tri-Met for a mountain in Malheur county. Lobby the I-5 corridor from Salem to Troutdale to destroy logging in Joseph. Wipe out the businesses and lives of 20 thousand people? Who cares? They were evil loggers and miners anyway, and you can justify your actions by just saying "I really LIKE clean air and water and trees!".

Did anything good happen? Well, no. But you are never called to account for your actions, nor the harm you caused others in your self righteous quest. You're insulated by a self generated cloud of fantasy virtue.

May God be the one to judge. Because I'm ready to jail the lot of you - for life, at hard labor.

Snoozer, I live in Oregon as well, and do know what I am talking about. Have lived in Montana, too. If you want to engage in respectful discusssion, fine. Otherwise, find another hobby. Rod began with a thoughtful post, and we need to respond in kind.