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10 Amazing Truths You Already Suspected
Go ahead, pretend you didn't know. Pretend it wasn't obvious. Are you sure?
Let's start out easy. How about a big, dumb, obvious, forehead-slapper of an of-course-you-already-knew, shall we?
1) Let's start with, say, tanning beds. Turns out they cause cancer like a mofo. I mean, as bad as arsenic. As mustard gas. Smoking. Chimney sweeping. The Jonas Brothers. I mean, obviously.
Like you didn't already know. Like you thought it was all healthy fun and games to strip yourself naked and lay on a bed of giant blue light bulbs and have ultraviolet rays blasted into every inch of your skin for hours per week and think, yeah, this can't be all bad, can it? What with my skin turning a bizarre shade of orange and that weird tingling in my brainstem and my genitalia melting like bubblegum in the sun? Like it's not the transdermal equivalent of placing my mouth over the tailpipe of a Chevy Tahoe and gunning the engine? Mmm, stupid.
2) You are green to the core. Organic everything, grey water, solar, Prius, compost your nail clippings and your urine and your condoms, the works. You have a child, maybe two. You are considering having a third, or maybe even a fourth or fifth. You say you care about reducing your carbon footprint? You say you care deeply about your impact on the ecosphere? You might be lying.
Because of course, deep down, you know that you can compost and recycle your eco-friendly butt off for your entire life and still never come close to matching the reduction in carbon footprint you would gift the planet simply by not having that additional child. It's a rather harsh way to look at it, I admit, but there it is. But of course, personal responsibility has its thresholds, right?
3) Oh, but wait. Maybe overpopulation isn't really the most pressing problem after all. Relatively speaking, the U.S. does pretty well in managing birth rates, especially compared to explosive developing nations like China and India, so horribly strained for resources and with such staggering proportions of extreme poverty.
Maybe the real problem is rich Westerners sucking up far, far more than their fair share of, well, just about everything. Did you know 50 percent of all toxic emissions come from just seven percent of the world population? I bet you did. Upshot: Maybe the real solution is a nice combo of the two. Not having too many kids, and buying less stuff you don't actually need. Radical! Or not.
4) One large study has dared come forth to claim that organic food is really no better for you than "regular" food, implying that the organic thing is all a big sham, a multibillion-dollar lie, that the giant, watery, flavorless Safeway tomato doused in chemicals and gene-spliced goodness is really no worse for you than that fragrant, delicious, organic heirloom from Rainbow Grocery, or that the chem-blasted asparagus shipped in from Mexico in November has the same nutritional value as the organic goodness you should be getting in April from the local farm.
Is it tempting to believe? Not in the slightest. For one thing, going organic is only partially about basic, keep-you-alive nutrients. It's just as much about the various toxins, chemicals, refined sugars and hormones slapped all over corporate foodstuffs in general; not to mention the brutal, earth-stabbing, industrial manufacturing and farming practices that go into most crappy mainstream foods.
In other words, yes, in terms of basic nutritional values, maybe some organic foods are no better for you than their "normal" industrial-produced equivalents. Unless you count the viscious environmental impact. And the chemicals. And the cancer. And the death. Otherwise, same.
5) Dammit. Wait a second. It also turns out that "USDA Certified Organic" label is just all sorts of mealy BS, too, and can't really be trusted. Turns out the USDA has been so pressured by various industrial food titans to loosen the definition of "organic," that the label has been rendered, if not meaningless, then more watered down than that same Safeway tomato. Are the USDA's standards still a huge improvement over what came before? Hell yes. But they're far from ideal.
Solution: Learn to read the ingredients yourself. Figure it out. Understand what you eat, and where it really comes from. It's not really very difficult. Or, pretend that it is, that it's too weird and you don't have the time to care and it's just too complicated. You are probably lying. But that's OK.
6) 7) 8) The late infomercial pitchman Billy Mays' OxiClean powdered miracle cleaner? Really just sodium percarbonate. A standard chemical you can buy in bulk right now at your local swimming pool supply shop. Whitening toothpaste? Just regular toothpaste with extra grit. Red Bull? Massive shot of caffeine and a megadose of sugar combined with whatever they can squeeze out of the pituitary gland of dead rats. I might be wrong about the rats. But maybe not.
Oh, and if you buy high-end, thousand-dollar "audiophile-grade" cables to hook up your home theater system? You have achieved true greatness. As a total sucker.
9) Wal-Mart is, apparently, hankering to launch a big initiative to stamp every product it sells with an eco-friendly rating label, some sort of grand, awareness-raising system to inform all Earth-conscious Wal-Mart customers -- I know, I know: oxymoron -- where every product falls on the you-are-destroying-the-planet scale. It's a rather wonderful idea that could radically transform the company's entire supply chain for the better.
Except for one thing: Wal-Mart has no plans to slap a giant label on its own bloated megastores themselves, no plans to reveal the enormous waste and destruction Wal-Mart itself embodies merely by existing, by shipping a million products over from sweatshops in China and Malaysia and India. Nor does it plan to offer a Smiley-Face Local Economy Decimation rating to all those countless small towns it's swooped into and gutted. But hey! That giant tub of HFCS-blasted caramel corn? Not all that bad for the planet. Yay!
10) We could totally do light rail in the United States. We could totally invest in this massive, culture-altering project like it was the next man on the moon and within 20 years have this ridiculously cool, lighting-fast, super-efficient Euro-style train network connecting most major urban hubs like we were Italy and France and Japan and Disneyland all rolled into one, but with better drinks and free Wi-Fi and superlative in-seat movies like they do on Virgin.
We could totally do it. But 50+ years of Big Auto PR bulls--t has slyly convinced us all we really can't, that no one wants it, that big dumb America loves its big dumb open-road freedom far too much, that car culture is so embedded in our road-trippin' nostalgia-thick psyches it can never be extricated.
Of course, Big Auto is full of crap, is now begging for table scraps, handouts, oxygen. Who we thought we were, who we thought we had to be has essentially been a giant lie all along. Didn't you already suspect as much?
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52 Comments so far
Show AllHow to do light rail now that the era of the automobile is over.
Tell people that the era of gridlocked traffic sitting for hours burning gas while going nowhere is over. Tell people the era of vehicles having steering wheels, gas pedals and brake pedals is over. Tell people the era of pneumatic tire on asphalt roadways is over. Tell people the era of vehicles getting less than 80 miles per gallon is over. And best of all; tell people the era of traffic accidents killing 36,000 Americans each year while mangling hundreds of thousands more is over.
How do we achieve this? By placing ultra light vehicles with steel wheels on steel rails and employing modern computing, GPS, wireless communications, and by reducing the weight of vehicles by more than 65% utilizing carbon fiber and other ultra light materials technologies.
Steel wheels on steel rails are far more efficient than pneumatic tires on pavement. The rail road company CSX is currently running ads promoting that they can transport one ton of freight 423 miles on ONE GALLON OF FUEL!!
Automobile transportation is basically a switching problem very similar to routing data across the internet. Given the power of modern computing technology the transportation switching problem for a large metropolitan area could probably be handled by few servers in a closet sized room. This computing system would depend on data from GPS, motion sensors, laser range finders, and the car’s own on-board computer transmitted by wireless communications systems to the transportation network.
This system would virtually eliminate all crashes except those caused by catastrophic mechanical failure or the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. By eliminating crashes the need for massive SUV’s is eliminated so the weight of vehicles can be greatly reduced. Add in the weight savings by using much smaller engines/motors and hi-tech low-weight materials so reducing the weight of the vehicle by 65% is easily obtainable.
When the economy of the United States recovers the price of gas is going to skyrocket leaving no choice other than a conversion to a new transportation system.
Dude - I like the way you think!
But planning rail lines is everything.
Wanna hear a sad tale of light rail? Here in Tacoma, WA they decided to put in light rail. (YEAH!) And it travels a distance of [drum roll]... 1.6 miles (WTF?) I guess maybe they thought it would sound good in tourist brochures.
The good part is that it's free to ride. The bad part is that's because IT DOESN'T GO ANYWHERE!
Seattle put in a rail line... that [wait for it] ended a mile or two from SeaTac airport. I believe they are going to finish it, which means it will finally be, like, useful.
Only in America...
The U.S. should have developed an intercity light rail system five decades ago but the auto companies bought enough politicians to prevent it from happening. Here in Indiana we have the South Shore Line that runs from South Bend to downtown Chicago but it is a traditional sized passenger rail system. While I’m all for an intercity rail system the transportation system I envision would be an intracity rail system to replace automobiles and trucks just as autos and trucks replaced horses.
Nobody rides a horse to work but they still hold the Kentucky Derby and once the auto was replaced as the primary means of transportation they would be relegated to the race tracks and museums. As a Hoosier I wouldn’t want to lose the Indy 500, I first went to the track when I was a third grader as the roadsters were being replaced with the rear engined Lotus.
The US DID develop such a system. Streetcars, fast interurban trolleys, and intercity train service went everywhere several decades ago.
GM then bought up the streetcar manufacturers and the whole system was dismantled between the 1930's and 1950's. One can still find the the remnants of the old interurban rail grades if one knows where to look.
Look here:
www.trolleystop.com/interurban.htm
Sounds like the normal acquisition/sellout of sensible services by the corporate elite to gain market leverage.
San Francisco did theirs (BART) the same way, just finishing the airport extension a couple of years ago, after what--40 years of operation without it? As did St. Louis, held up by the surprise that there were some bodies in a graveyard they wanted to bulldoze their way through. I used to think how appropriate that it went from East St. Louis to the graveyard, but now that they've gotten past the rookie mistakes it turned out it's a great system. As is BART. Not enough, and too expensive for poor people, but otherwise... fantastic systems.
Fully funding the best and most important things might help, as opposed to thinking the solution to every problem is punishment. In November Californians approved a high speed train corridor along the coast (SF to LA plus) and while the involved districts were enough to pass it, virtually every other county in the state voted no. That kind of selfish, short-sighted thinking has to be changed.
Perfect response, Madhossier. If you haven't already, see Jacques Fresco's ideas at the venusproject.com. He has designed a transportation system something along the lines you lay out here. It has "cars" on a rail system available 24/7 on call like calling a taxi. No need for private ownership of vehicles. The rails replace roads and rail transported vehicle could move even into private driveways, up the sides of buildings, etc.. and they could get coupled into trains to be pulled for longer distance travel.
Oooh! I like it.
I think the Danes did something like this in a campus research project.
Solved parking and car payments too. The vehicles are part of the utility system and kept on the tracks, like street cars. Complete concept is a 3-tier system; wide area express, intermediate range with more stops, and neighborhood routes that stop within 2 blocks of every home or business. Each tier has smaller, slower cars but more of them. High rise elevator-type logic adjusts service frequency according to demand.
It's just a modernized version of the street car system used in Baltimore when I was a kid. We lived in an apartment in the center of the city and didn't have or need a car. I could get anywhere in Baltimore, on my own, by the time I was 9 years old. I also walked and ran a lot. Sometimes over the rooftops. I was an ornery kid and we didn't have a television. The old wooden street cars had decorative sills that made good foot and hand holds. In good weather I'd hang on the outside of the car and save the 7-cent fare to buy candy. Candy was a penny.
But then the corporations got involved - google the Great American Street Car Scandal for details.
Rat bastards.
I am so clearly #2 except that I only have one child. But guess what? It doesn't really make a difference because all these little things don't really matter. Asking me and you to conserve...oh let's say water. Pointless. All those years of bricks in toilets and aerators on faucets made almost no dent in water usage because the public only uses about 5%. The other 95% is used by those who waste the most and pay the least amount for it, agriculture - 80%, businesses - 10%, and municipalities - 5%. The Pentagon is the single largest entity on the planet using oil (340,000 barrels/day) and nothing that oil powers is efficient. Think of the M1 Abrams Tank at .6 miles/gallon. I can drive my Prius for 6 months on what that tanks uses in one hour.
Well said. I always try to make the same point. The war profiteers are killing the planet.
I think it depends on the watershed. Residential use plays a large role in some water limited areas with large cities or sprawling suburbs. So don't feel that the brick in your toilet was completely useless.
We definitely need to change how we use resources in our homes but most people stop at just changing their own personal behavior and don't organize for any political change. Without political/ economic incentives in place to reduce resource use, waste and pollution will almost always be the easier way out.
I'm not really a fan of the recent influx of many new "green products," since there are no standards saying what does or does not constitute a green product. It's environmentalism-lite for people who do care, but really don't understand.
Did anyone see the Food, Inc. documentary? The CEO of Stonyfield does make a pretty interesting case for selling his yogurt at Walmart. In any case, I highly recommend you see the documentary. I think food choices are one area where our individual choices may collectively have some effect.
I've been a vegetarian for 9 years and I like to think this has reduced my resource use quite a bit. It's also spared me from eating concentrated animal feed lot Mc-meat. I guess I am proving my own point, about individuals making changes and not pushing for the change we really need. The task seems large and the opposition is well-funded. Did anyone hear that France is encouraging meatless days after the release of another excellent documentary( free on the web!) Home?
Yeah, dude, like, I totally knew that already.
Good point WideofVision! This article was so tongue in cheek fun to read....yet so sadly true! That doesn't mean we should stop being aware of what we use and how we use it. What it does mean is.....Corporations and the Military are reeking havoc....but then, we knew that...right?
I have a 30 mpg compact car that I have to drive 250 miles per week commuting to work. (City bus is 3 hrs each way.) I hate this. I have a poster in my cube. It shows a lady in a little 2-wheeled goat cart. She and the goat are smiling - the caption reads Screw Exxon! Goats aren't allowed in my town - Screw me.
I take diuretics for hypertension. I have to pee a lot. This wastes a lot of water when I'm at work. The urinals flush automatically. Progress? I don't waste water at home. I pee in the backyard. I'm careful about it - not sure if it's covered in the Patriot Act.
Things that happen at work make me grind my teeth. If I didn't have to work, I might not have hypertension. I work for the insurance coverage, to cover doctor & prescription bills. Premiums are way up - coverage is way down.
There's a conjur-woman lives in a nearby state forest. She takes care of some disabled vets who live there too. Cops tried to roust them. Conjur-woman handled it.
Cops never went back. I'm considering changing doctors.
Because I'm too old to emigrate.
"I pee in the backyard. I'm careful about it"
No need use the WC, if its yellow let it mellow if its brown flush it down; unless your wife is squeamish like mine.
What are you "considering" about changing doctors? My God, visit the forest lady as soon as you can. Do what works.
Gail;
Thank you. That was good advice. I went into the woods by the light of the moon to look for the "Forrest Lady". She found me.
She said: You've got an attitude problem caused by the large screw the system has driven into your back." She suggested: "Meditate on this: When the Systems screws, you unscrew."
So I tried it. And realized I can't reach the screw in my back - that's why the system put it there. But... I can reach the screw in my neighbor's back. Success is about recognizing and responding to that opportunity.
When the student is ready, the teacher appears.
Thanks again, and God Bless.
The U.S. has no natural population growth. Europe abolished population growth. Look at where that has got them?
higher living standards and less trouble with transitioning to zpg? is that the where you're talking about? a helthy society with zpg can begin to face the emotional sickness inherent in a growth economy. a healthy society with low or zero population growth feels less pressure to exploit and invade others. of course, that reveals that other pesky problem with the western world, but hey, halfway there is better than nowhere.
Jeevee
Has anybody considered having just one child (if you must) and adopting one?
i've often been asked about this myself:
my answer has always been the same:
even if I could or wanted to have and raise a child - whatever resources i have are better used for SOME child somewhere that still doesn't have enough who is already alive.
it's past time for so-called "enlightened" nations to think about only their "heredity" to pass on as Names for their children to carry on because more than other poor nations for whom having children has become , in poverty, their only "old-age security" or even as a source of added labor to the family unit - because
most other advanced cultures propagate childmaking PURELY as a stamp of their own "Existence" to feed their own egos to be remembered ..and they are just producing more children that - in comparison with five children to a poor person in africa - can be a child that consumes one hundred times more energy of the world than ALL the five children in africa put together.
imo = it is better for nations to take care of the children that are ALREADY here - rather than to make more while so many are YET needing help and sustenance.
a child, after all, so long as it is loved and nurtured and cared for - is a child, regardless of whether it was brought up by its OWN biological parents or someone else.
and what is important is the CHILD - NOT the "name" of the parent transfering his or her own idea of immortality by creating a child, especially at a time when resources are not spread equitably in the world.
The only problem with the adoption idea is that it tends to gloss over WHY the child needs to be adopted. Why is yet another precious resource being transferred from poor to rich?
Is it war or poverty or disease that kept the parents from raising their child? The adoption erases the biological parents and their emotional lives, makes invisible their sacrifice of a precious child. It masks the needs for family planning among poor people, for peace and for fair allocation of resources.
There is usually a sad story behind the joyful and kind act of adoption.
Joe
Joe, thank you for thinking of the child and the "donor family". Last week, kinda randomly on a message board I participate on, one of the regulars posted about a heart becoming available for a young relative of hers. I went, as asked to another board to post best wishes, prayers, support etc.. I don't normally do that kinda stuff but I was moved by the new, young ordained mother's plight whatever. There were many kinds of praise, prayer, best wishes for the surgeons, the family, the patient, her pastoral flock, blah blah blah, I was the 431st poster in this fundy flavored milieu and the first one to remember the donor's family!!!! No wonder 1) I'm non denominational Christian preferring to practice and share those principles out and about living my life, instead of in an artificial building at a designated place and time. 2) I don't normally post online prayer stuff, too much like "praying on the street corner" when Jesus said better to hide in a closet. It is not the patient's fault what her 'supporters' did but it makes one wonder if the new heart will fit in very well with such a selfish crowd.
I agree with your 10 amazing truths but I still think we've come a long way "baby"! Just thinking about consumerism for instance. In the 1950s and 60s cars would change their appearance every year so that the Jonese and everyone that wanted to keep up with them would purchase the latest model style every year if possible. Contrast that with today where cars maintain the same appearance for up to 10 years thereby nullifying that particular concern. We are rapidly moving to electric hopefully renewable energy usage for transportation and in other areas. More and more benign chemical products are being produced to assist farmers in growing their crops and managing pests and the old dangerous products are being removed from the land. While human population growth is a world wide problem, it is mostly in third world countries that it is acute. We must in the first world learn to do without the summer homes or ski chalets or multiple vehicles for a family simply because even if we have our own population growth under control we already consume per individual as much as a number of third world people consume together so our carbon footprint is much larger per individual. That is a personal choice that is open to all of us. It's not quite the same as attempting to forgo having more children.
Outstanding and deadly accurate article - full of little word bullets that blew apart every preconception and lame excuse we the people have deluded ourselves with for the last 30 years. It was brilliant, lethally perceptive, funny AND well-written - I thought it was great. Obviously.
It's pretty much a downer turning into the richest 3rd world banana republic, ain't it?
"10 Amazing Truths You Already Suspected"
...and ONE which is BEYOND BELIEF:
“Collateral Damage” by E. P Heidner, part I and II.
>>> www.scribd.com/people/documents/2169400-ep-heidner <<<
yachtie August 8th, 2009 12:50 am....Good to see you are still doing it! I'm still working the streets, to, but I tell you, 9/11 talk is being toned down...have you noticed?
Oh yes.
Even on the alternative/progressive Net it is neglected.
I believe it is the collective consciousness -or maybe more fitting- unconsciousness which defies realization of inconceivable proportions. People refuse to accept facts, logic and analysis in order to keep their sanity.
yachtie August 8th, 2009 5:13 pm........One thing absolutely sure....there is a concerted effort to keep the very phrase "9/11" out of articles. I have been monitoring pretty carefully and it's been so for the past 1-2 months. Even fellow commentors are want to engage in debate. Many "truthers' are exhausted. I shall continue to raise the issue/truth whenever I see the opportunity. Many of us will not be silenced. Resignation serves no purpose. Those who believe they are keeping their sanity are engaged in "a lie of the mind".
Did not some great being say whatever passion/truth we have inside can give us life if released or kill us if supressed...a poor paraphrase...but I'm sure you get the point.
Yep, we ain't got a chance but use it.
There is no way around addressing 9/11 sooner or later. It's a red herring, a white elephant, a ticking time bomb. It did, does and will meander through system induced events (shock doctrines) with its trail of indictments. The ferocity of actions and reactions will be linked to the severity of supply declines for the masses.
And the elephant sized computer in the room:
90% of all transportation to and from work is redundant and wasteful. Telecommuting would INSTANTLY achieve giantic reductions in the carbon footprint of our country.
But then, big oil wouldn't like that.
Well that's only true for people who don't actually do anything for a living.
you mean people like writers, planners, designers, IT people, scientists, poet, farmers and homesteaders? even most people who need a workplace don't need to be there every day.
i never quite know who you're trying to insult and demean, bs-ist, but what little i can comprehend about your comments make me wonder what kind of talk radio you listen to. how bout if just once you say something clear about what you believe?
No fool, it was an example of reducto ad absurdium applied to AGG's ranting.
Look it up.
Well, first, let me pass on some fool-friendly advice. When you insult someone’s intelligence, it’s more effective if you spell all your words right.
I actually have looked it up, as part of a long and slow self-education in logic, rhetoric and debate. Maybe YOU should look it up. Because your comment really wasn’t r.a.a., either in its original, logician meaning or the sort-of opposite that it’s come to mean to most people. What it was was a confusing, seemingly specific statement that like many of yours doesn’t seem to relate specifically to anything. For example, what was the “No”? Does that mean it’s not writers? Did it mean you wouldn’t once say something clear? (I’d have to guess it’s that one because then you continued to say unclear things.)
What I meant was that if your comment about not doing anything for a living was some confused and confusing attempt to imply that people who don’t do physical work are in some way useless or not working, you might possibly be wrong, and I was trying to point out that there are important tasks done by people who handle pencils as well as shovels. But I’m not sure that’s what you meant, because, well, you confuse me. Could you be more clear, please, so I can at least tell if I agree with you?
J4zonian, LOL, yes, BS-ist, spell it right! But J, don't waste anymore of your time trying to understand BS. S/he just enjoys getting a rise out of people making ignorant comments and wasting the energy we can be directing at educating others instead. You gave it an excellent try, though, and I thank you for that. Now it's time to just let it go. Somebody's yankin' your very intelligent chain. Thanks for your input to this discourse. Your comments have been quite enlightening. Be well!
The population of the planet increases at three people per second.
And it is about time someone mentioned that heterosexuals breeding and consuming is the problem.
It gets really old hearing that homosexuals are destroying the fabric of society when these breeders are out there making more babies and then whining about the environment being ruined.
It might be good for you to remember were it not for a certain set of "breeders" you would not be here sucking up space and resources either.
So save your infantile outrage ,just because the world does not dance to your tune.
Be sensitive to the birth of the next homosexual or does that outrage you as well?
As if YOU aren't a gross waste of resource? Simply living in a country like the USA, even if one is living in a culvert, wastes more resource than most everyone else in the world. We are all in this handbasket to hell together. The SYSTEM forces us to over consume. Of course, if you were a REAL socialist, you would already know this.
1. LMAO, that's what vanity will do for you? I remember an ex-girlfriend who started using one. I thought she looked freaky after that compared to being rather attractive beforehand.
2. I couldn't afford one and the ecology might be less able.
3. Reducing families to two or less children should definitely start in the richer industrialized nations.
4. Cherokee Purples are a pain in the ass to grow considering all the viral and bacterial problems I have but they sure do taste good and they're cheap to reproduce. And the green beans taste better than any I've ever bought.
5. My garden is probably closer to organic than most items labeled organic. I do use artificial fertilizers at times so in my opinion I'm not organic just very light on any petroleum inputs. I've recently noticed my home has become home to hummingbirds and praying mantii (sp?). I found that very pleasing.
6. Thanks for the information on sodium percarbonate. I don't buy any of that crap. Elbow grease, ajax, and palmolive are my cleaners of choice.
9. Unfortunately I frequent Wal Fart every couple of months. My apologies but the products I do get there are probably little to no worse than they'd be anywhere else.
10. Yep! I can never get the idea out of my mind of how much mass transit and alternative energy could have been brought online if the 150,000 soldiers and 150,000 plus mercenaries sent to Iraq had spent the last six years building these types of things in the US instead decimating another country's people and infrastructure. Very sad!
Thanks Mr. Morford. I liked the article.
Number 11: Climate change and peak oil are going to change our lives RADICALLY. And sooner than we think. Get used to it.
Tans will be the last thing on anyone's mind.
The population problem will be nonexistent, although the "solution" (called die-off) won't be nearly as compassionate had we had the foresight to limit our own numbers.
Light rail is a great idea that should have been done many years ago when there was money, time, and energy to do so... too little too late at this point.
As oil dwindles, big Ag will collapse and we'll be forced to depend a great deal on locally grown food...start your garden now and tell your local municipality to stop planting flowers and start planting edible landscaping.
This is not crazy doom talk. If you can find your way past the mainstream (corporately-owned) media pap and delve into the realities of energy and climate change, if you can look past articles about health care, jobs, travel tips, and political analyses (which are just decoys at this point) you'll find the truth. Once you stumble upon the facts, if you don't become very very alarmed to the point of leaving your car in the driveway and hopping on your bike- you are in a serious state of denial.
Precisely.
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday out here in status symbol land
Puhleese tell me what is "my fair share" of resources, income , nookie etc etc: I really wanna know?
High speed rail: Uggh no thanks I don't want to pay for something I'll never use.
but here's a suggestion if you do:
1) don't have people letting passengers drive,
2)don't let your drivers text you to death
3) don't have drivers reading books or falling asleep
and I won't have to giggle at what poses as unionized public service.
do you object to paying for the fire department? police? army? welfare? head start? congress? karl rove? oil coal and nuclear subsidies?
in fact, if we had better rail systems of all types--including high speed--you would use it all the time--you would buy things transported on it, buy things and services made cheaper and better by executives who travelled on it, breathe air less polluted by it than by planes, live longer and without permanent drought and 5 Katrinas a year that will be caused by global climate catastrophe... etc. such shortsightedness needs some eye exercises.
If we had truly "better" rail systems they would pay for themselves by increasing productivity negating the need for govt to extort it from me directly upfront.
In fact, even the far-from-perfect rail systems we have more than pay for themselves, but in the public sector many of the costs are internalized while the benefits are almost all externalized. In fact that's pretty much the definition of public service. The public sector makes the private sector run. Most private companies do everything they can to dump the costs of their business--pollution, poor health, ecological destruction, war, crime, poverty etc.--on someone else, while grabbing all the benefits. In the public sector, of course, it's just the opposite. It spreads benefits all around while absorbing and paying costs (aka spreading costs evenly and proportionally among people who have benefited most.) In a working democracy, anyway. In fascist and oligarchic forms the public sector models itself on the private and becomes a spewer of bads and a third-party accumulator of all goods it can get its paws on. The Cheney-Rove administration was a good example.
The cost of having systems that help everyone is taxes. That is, the cost of civilization is taxes. the cost of having rail and single payer---systems rich people depended on to get rich and poor people depend on to stay alive---is taxes. I'm mystified how intelligent people can survive while only seeing what's so close it's touching their noses. Indirect effects, like the lower pay and lower health care and insurance costs people can live with because of rail, are just as real as direct effects. Or are you selfish, selective and tribal in your demands?
If you truly believe in systems and organizations and people paying for themselves then you support far higher taxes, ecological protections far beyond what we have now, and extreme penalties for corporate crime. You oppose privatization of everything (health, for example).
Again, you are no socialist. If you are black, you discredit all the suffering and struggle people of color still endure. You are a conservative, and a poor example of even this substandard genre. A provocative screen name does not change this fact. Please go the right-wing sites and spew your ignorance and hatred. They will love you and beg for more.
and while I’m at it, here are some things to add to the items on the list:
4) that one large study from London was so flawed in its methodology it’s not to be trusted at all. And besides the excellent reasons you listed to continue eating organic, the chief reason is to make the world a safer, healthier place for people, democracy and other beings. Both inner and outer improvement in one. Not a bad idea.
5) Don’t just read ingredients on (BPA-lined) cans from multinational corporations who have “diversified” by taking over a trusted small organic brand name, but keep pumping out thousands of times that of chemically fertilized, pesticided feedlotted and monocultured food product under other brand names. Look around you; even in urban areas now so many people have gardens and tiny fruit orchards, and chickens, and goats, that there are all sorts of deals and trades to be made with someone you know and trust. (you sure you don’t want to be one of those window box gardeners and chicken wranglers yourself?) Did you expect anything different from the wholly-owned corporate subsidiary USDA?
9) You think Wal-Mart is actually going to tell the truth and use the best available, most inclusive life-cycle externality-intermalizing accounting method for rating the greenity of their products? Seriously?
Use your sense. Trust the trustworthy and stop paying the others to be un-.