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Pedaling Fool
07-10-2010, 11:45
You know when you look out at some sections of the trail and see all the agricultural land. Why is that there....to support all of us. And "us" is growing quickly. But does our hobby, activity, whatever you want to call it actually cause an increase in those friuitful, but otherwise, barren croplands?

Look at this article, you can easily replace the term "cycling" with "hiking". http://www.terrapass.com/blog/posts/everything-good

In a working paper entitled “The Environmental Paradox of Bicycling (http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~ulrich/documents/ulrich-cycling-enviro-jul06.pdf)”, Karl Ulrich at the University of Pennslyvania reports that shifting people from their cars to bicycles offers almost no benefit to the environment.

We’ll dig into this paradox in just a second, but first a little background. Ulrich is the man behind TerraPass (http://www.terrapass.com/ourstory.html), the Wharton professor who challenged his students to bulid a viable business around consumer carbon offsets. Ulrich is also an avid cyclist himself and creator of a number of human-powered personal transportation products, including the Xootr Scooter (http://xootr.com/xootr/nscooters.shtml) and Xootr Swift (http://xootr.com/xootr/swift/bikes.shtml) folding bicycle.

Bicycles do have large first-order environmental benefits over cars as a means of transportation. Ulrich’s analysis considers the case in which a formerly sedentary person begins bicycling 10 km per day, 5 days per week. In this scenario, about one ton of CO2 is spared every year in the form of reduced fuel consumption.

This reduction in fuel use is partially offset by the increased food consumption of a cyclist. Although typically we think of food as carbon neutral — because the plants at the bottom of our food chain regrow after we harvest them — this view overlooks the fact that most of us don’t feed ourselves by hunting and gathering.

The energy required to grow, harvest, process, package, and transport food to your nearest Whole Foods significantly outweighs the actual caloric content of your meal, by a factor of almost six. In other words, only about 15% of the energy we consume when we eat is actually in our food. The rest is contained in the fossil fuels used to bring our food to us.

But increased food consumption is a relatively minor effect when compared to the overall gas savings of cycling over driving. The real culprit in Ulrich’s analysis is the increased lifespan of people who ride bikes. Regular exercise helps you live longer, which points to an unsettling fact. One of the single best things you can do for the planet is to limit your time here.

Population is one of the primary drivers of energy consumption. And there are only two ways to increase the rate of global population growth: bump up the birth rate, or bump down the death rate. In effect, cycling does the latter. (If we look at the population of individual countries rather than the entire planet, immigration is a third way to affect population growth. We’ve previously discussed some of the energy implications of immigration (http://www.terrapass.com/terrablog/posts/000249.html).)

Ulrich estimates that every year of sustained bicycle use adds about 10.6 days to the average person’s lifespan, even accounting for the increased accident risk that cyclists face.

The result, in Ulrich’s analysis, is basically a wash. Each of us, simply by participating in the economy, uses a significant amount of energy. Bicycling rather than driving causes a large first-order decrease in the amount of energy a person uses, but the increased longevity of that person almost entirely negates the savings.
Interesting. But how well does theory map to reality? Personally, I have strong doubts about the practical implications of this analysis.

The first issue is that most people who opt to cycle rather than drive cars are likely to be fairly fit already. These cyclists will see less health benefits on the margin than the hypothetical sedentary person, and therefore the first order CO2 reductions will dominate.

The second issue is subtler but possibly far more important. In Ulrich’s analysis, the population effects of cycling occur immediately (which is mathematically accurate in his hypothetical example).

But I strongly suspect that the actual demographics of bicycle usage mean that the population bump from improved fitness won’t be seen for a number of years. In effect, riding a bicycle shifts energy consumption from today to an unspecified point in the future.

In private communication, Ulrich ballparks the delay in the population bump as maybe ten years, which he points out is an insignificant amount of time when compared to the climactic changes that are already underway. True enough, but ten years could be long enough for highly significant changes to occur in the energy intensity of our lifestyles. If, for example, in ten years all of our electricity is produced by wind (yea!) or coal (boo!), shifting our consumption into the future will have real consequences for our rate of carbon emissions.

My advice: keep cycling, certainly for your health, and for the environment too.

Update: Ulrich’s paper got picked up in Andrew Leonard’s How the World Works (http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2006/07/18/bikers/index.html) column in Salon. Fun read, although Leonard’s main complaint seems to be that he doesn’t really like the conclusion of the paper.



And then you got the fossil fuel use and not just from farming. An area that this doesn't really address is the amount of driving that cyclist do in support of their hobby, the same could be said of hiking, especially sectioning the trail and slackpacking.


Then again it's probably just us cyclists that are screwing everything up.







:sun

Pedaling Fool
07-10-2010, 11:48
BTW, let me apologize in advance for all cyclists if the farm lands encroach further on the views of the AT...And all the windturbines...As an active rider I do eat a lot of food :D

Spokes
07-10-2010, 11:53
Hell, on a micro scale you could claim the act of breathing itself is bad for the environment.......... right?

I say more hyper-environmentalists should switch to dacaf.

garlic08
07-10-2010, 11:55
This is a good, thought-provoking start to the day. Well-written and balanced, too. Thank you.

johnnybgood
07-10-2010, 12:21
I believe the term "Ecotourism" is the phrase used to address the environmental impact humans have on fragile soil.
As people have becme more endeared to outdoor leisurely activities over the past quarter century , the impact as become more evident.
Irreresponsibility from a few hikers every week on the trail adds up after a while and the consquences are manifested .

Cookerhiker
07-10-2010, 13:17
There are many ways to eat healthy and maintain fit, active, aerobically-enhancing lifestyles other than hiking and cycling. Even stipulating that all hikers and cyclists are fit, eat healthy, and burn more calories, this stipulation does not mean that all non-hikers/cyclers including those who drive to work every day are fat out-of-shape junk-food addicts.

So does his study's calculations, such that they are, consider that non-hikers/cyclists run marathons, play tennis, work out on fitness equipment, swim, play basketball etc. etc.? No, of course not all do but you can't ignore it.

And I question the methodology of his 10.6 days calculation - how in the world can you isolate cycling alone from the myriad of factors making up longevity - genes, diet, environment, other fitness efforts as I mentioned about or lack thereof. Heck, even "cycling" runs a hug gamut from leisurely lolling along a flat stretch vs. difficult uphills every day. When I lived in Western MD, I cycled every day April-November uphill on the Great Allegheny Passage and got a good workout. There's no way I can replicate that cycling the same miles here in Lexington.

kayak karl
07-10-2010, 14:35
http://environment.about.com/od/greenlivingdesign/a/livingalone.htm i can't win:D

TallShark
07-10-2010, 16:07
Hell, on a micro scale you could claim the act of breathing itself is bad for the environment.......... right?

I say more hyper-environmentalists should switch to dacaf.

Amen... same ole' song and dance brother, respect nature and that's all, dont over anaylze. "Hyper-environmentalists"...haha

Gray Blazer
07-10-2010, 19:50
Our only hope is to encourage more euthanasia, suicides, and abortions. Alternatively, we could ration health care. Wait we are already going there. We're screwed. Dammit I can't find my bullets.

LOL I was gonna say those people who truly believe that should kill themselves.

boarstone
07-10-2010, 20:11
What the hay does this have to do w/the hiking community?

DapperD
07-10-2010, 23:00
There was another thread on here awhile back where someone was saying something to the effect like in this thread where they did not want to section hike because they felt having to drive their car to and from their starting and ending points were not environmentally responsible things to do, or something to that effect. I think the advice given was to buy a more fuel efficient vehicle or to move somewhere close to hiking trails and their workplace and give up driving completely if they felt so strongly about it. I don't think a few hiker's taking their cars to get to trailheads, etc...is going to compare to say the Gulf Oil Disaster or all the factories bilching their filthy pollution, especially the ones going full throttle in China, etc...:rolleyes:

Danielsen
07-11-2010, 11:55
"Ulrich is the man behind TerraPass (http://www.terrapass.com/ourstory.html), the Wharton professor who challenged his students to bulid a viable business around consumer carbon offsets."

I'm sorry, I just don't have a whole lot of faith in the reality-connectedness of a guy who sounds heavily invested in the whole carbon trading idea. Shuffling around carbon credits and offsets is an incredibly inefficient and roundabout way of helping out the environment (if it does so at all). Real-world practical solutions are based around increasing efficiency (less waste) and reducing consumption.

A major issue I see with the data is an assumption of the status quo in regards to how food is obtained. We managed to produce and transport food before we had fossil fuels, and the means are becoming more widespread to produce and transport food without fossil fuels once again (thanks to more efficient crops, more efficient farming practices, non-petroleum based fertilizers, and alternative energy sources) and "local foods" movements are on the rise. These will greatly reduce the fossil-fuel requirements of feeding cyclists.

On the other hand, using a several-ton vehicle to transport a couple people around all the time is going to require considerably more energy, whether from fossil fuels (the only widely practical method right now) or alternative energy sources. Cycling is simply more efficient for short trips (and public transportation is more efficient for long trips, but the infrastructure here in the USA makes that difficult).

The assumption of cyclists eating more food is questionable to me as well. I know plenty of highly sedentary people who eat considerably more food than I do as a cyclist (and much of it is fast food, which has a high energy cost). A cyclist's body uses energy more efficiently than a sedentary body, however, so there is less waste.

And then the assumption, as some have pointed out, that non-cyclists are sedentary. Many motorists are people who engage in other activities with similar caloric requirements and similar life-extending health benefits as cyclists.

Even beyond that, when cycling the individual is actually out in the world they live in, breathing the air and seeing the sights at a speed where you can't not see things like trash. It raises the cyclist's awareness of the air quality and levels of pollution, and since those things have a negative impact on the quality of their ride, it makes them care about reducing those things. A car encapsulates you, removing you from all but the worst fumes, speeds you past the gone-in-a-flash litter by the road, and gives you a sense of separation from ugly damaged areas.

Of course, it's hard to mathematically chart effects like that, so I guess we should just pretend they don't exist. :p

I just see no way you can legitimately argue that a future society where more people cycle and fewer drive cars will definitively have an equal or greater strain on the environment than our current society where most drive cars that guzzle fossil fuels.

My arguments generally apply to hiking as well.

Lemni Skate
07-11-2010, 13:00
The bottom line is that man doesn't change what's on earth. We might change it's form and where it's located, but we don't change how much carbon is on the planet. Now, if we start going to go to other planets and import stuff...

Johnny Thunder
07-11-2010, 13:14
I find more problems with the mass-consumption of overly packaged (and often single serving foods) associated with long-distance hiking to be more consumptive than the net increase in calories consumed.

Re-use those zips...

Cookerhiker
07-11-2010, 13:31
Danielsen - good post with sound insights and more connectivity to the real world than the theorist whose "analysis" is the subject of this thread.

JT - good points - first example I can think of is packaged oatmeal. Besides being more resource-intensive, it's far less nutritious than if you make your own. Which I do - and send to myself via maildrops. Same thing with rice & pasta dishes. I always make them up at home and send them.

Wait a minute - maildrops? Aren't they using fossil fuels for tranporting plus packaging resources? What am I putting my meals in - ziplock bags! Aaaughh!:-? Actually, I do wash and reuse plastic bags at home but not always on the Trail.

Also, I've only done section hikes - thruhikes involving maildrops entail much more planning, preparation, and up-front cash outlays.

So the ideal and far-from-clearcut answer is - and I'll resist the temptation to "should" on people:

1. It would be nice if all stores including those along the AT corridor had more items available in bulk.

2. It would be nice if more hikers would resupply from said bulk food. Even now, hikers can buy a canister of oats instead of packaged oatmeal.

3. When you hitchhike, find a time to tactfully point out to your benefactor that by hitching, you've saved carbon emissions riding with him/her as opposed to a taxi or shuttle.

Danielsen
07-11-2010, 14:45
The bottom line is that man doesn't change what's on earth. We might change it's form and where it's located, but we don't change how much carbon is on the planet. Now, if we start going to go to other planets and import stuff...

It's worth remembering that while we don't have a real way to change what's here in terms of the basic elements, we do do a lot to change their forms and locations, and for a long time we've been doing so in a manner that's detrimental to the biological systems we depend on. But we didn't really know it back then. Now that we know and understand (at least for the most part) many of those effects, it makes sense to change to methods that benefit the environment (and therefore us). The earth and its materials, of course, are unable to give a rip about our usage because they're inanimate objects (I tend to think that the personification of nature in the public mind does almost as much harm as industry, as it ends up obscuring the whole matter).

Note I'm mainly talking about pollution, not so much global warming (which my jury is still out on). The harmful effects of pollution are right there for everyone to see.

I also must admit that I reuse my ziplocks until they get holes in them, though often it's as much due to laziness. :rolleyes: Why go to the store and buy new bags when I can just rinse these off instead?

Better bulk-food availability would be great.

Miner
07-11-2010, 15:56
The point I got from reading it is if we live shorter lives, its better for the environment. Trying to live healthy to reach 120 is evil. Perhaps we should do what they did in the movie, Logan's Run, and kill people off when they reach 30. Or embrace Soylent Green as the future of our food supply.

I would think that the extreme environmentalists would be pleased when I'm doing a section or thru-hike since I'm no longer communting to work daily in my SUV (unlike most, mine has actually left the paved road). Oh wait, I forgot the beans! Methane production can often increase while on the trail. We are doomed! ;)

Danielsen
07-11-2010, 17:11
The point I got from reading it is if we live shorter lives, its better for the environment. Trying to live healthy to reach 120 is evil. Perhaps we should do what they did in the movie, Logan's Run, and kill people off when they reach 30. Or embrace Soylent Green as the future of our food supply.

I would think that the extreme environmentalists would be pleased when I'm doing a section or thru-hike since I'm no longer communting to work daily in my SUV (unlike most, mine has actually left the paved road). Oh wait, I forgot the beans! Methane production can often increase while on the trail. We are doomed! ;)

*GASP* Beans!?!

How irresponsible.

Maybe you better contact the author of the article about buying some carbon offsets to compensate for all the carbon you've been... err... aerosolizing!

;):o

garlic08
07-11-2010, 17:13
I also read somewhere, someone did a study that proved that cigarettes are actually good for the economy, and they should be subsidized, not taxed. The data showed that since smokers tend to die younger, they take fewer resources than a longer-lived person. I guess that's the converse of the argument in the OP.

Just goes to show you can prove anything with a spreadsheet. Wrestle those data into submission!

flemdawg1
07-13-2010, 13:34
LOL I was gonna say those people who truly believe that should kill themselves.

But you have to use a hemp rope with a suicide note on recycled paper written in soy ink that the rope is to be buried with you in an environmentally friendly memorial garden so it (and you) can compost.

Or jump off a cliff at such an altitude that you liquify on impact. Or just swim into some shark infested water barking like a wounded seal (instantly recycling yourself). :eek:

One thing the author forgot was that the longer life span comes after retirement, no commuting.

sevensixtwo187
07-13-2010, 13:56
I think that the folks who are this worried about our impact on the environment could make a wonderful and selfless contribution to help lessen that impact by voluntarily terminating themselves. I find it rather funny how we have many people who stand on the pulpit and preach to all of us about these issues {some of which are based on poor or junk science, some on outright lies} and yet I would wager that few, if any of them would readily volunteer to be part of the "solution" ....

sevensixtwo187
07-13-2010, 13:57
I think that the folks who are this worried about our impact on the environment could make a wonderful and selfless contribution to help lessen that impact by voluntarily terminating themselves. I find it rather funny how we have many people who stand on the pulpit and preach to all of us about these issues {some of which are based on poor or junk science, some on outright lies} and yet I would wager that few, if any of them would readily volunteer to be part of the "solution" ....


Just sayn' .... :D

Mags
07-13-2010, 14:29
Just goes to show you can prove anything with a spreadsheet. Wrestle those data into submission!

Lies. Damned lies. Statistics. ;)

Spokes
07-13-2010, 21:58
The bottom line is that man doesn't change what's on earth. We might change it's form and where it's located, but we don't change how much carbon is on the planet....

Hare Krsna my friend..........

Pedaling Fool
07-14-2010, 08:54
What the hay does this have to do w/the hiking community?
It really boils down to how civiilization is encroaching on to the trail. I personally think that this encroachment can be slowed down, but not stopped. And it's not an us vs them thing we all require and use various services which require much more land use than just our house.

It's just a topic I'm kind of obsessed with -- land use vs. population.

I don't know the historic hiking experience of the trail like some, because I haven't been around the trail that long. However, I did SOBO Maine in 1981 and back then the 100-mile wilderness seemed very much like wilderness. In contrast to 2006, I was taken aback when I saw hoards of tourists visiting Gulf of Hagas.

That makes me wonder how other sections of the trail changed from '81 to '06 and how it will change as our population increases at a very quick pace.

This forum is Trail Concerns, Issues & History.

JAK
07-14-2010, 10:27
This is interesting stuff to think about.

I think quality of life must be considered. Of course quality is subjective. To some, quality is 100 billion people pecking away at keyboards in an cubicle/condos, like legless factory chickens, only bred for brains instead of breasts. Perhaps not even brains. Perhaps in the future our only purpose will be to pay consume little, and pay attention lots. Not even sure if that will be needed. Perhaps in the future a comma will be induced at birth.

I prefer the other extreme. 10,000 maniacs, living inthe wild. Perhaps a million.
Maybe they will genetically engineer us first, to the size of pixies, then let us loose.
Of course some of those wild pixies will still insist on driving their pixie-SUVs.

JAK
07-14-2010, 10:32
... but the pixie-highways will be much lower impact. We could even run one right down the AT. Maybe 4 lanes, each 1" wide, with freedom loving pixies racing up and down the trail. No speed limits. Maybe spruce gum for fuel.

flemdawg1
07-15-2010, 10:56
The greatest benefit of hiking the AT is raising environmental awareness. Its why the Sierra Club hosts so many hikes also. A person that spends their whole life locked in concrete and asphalt has no idea of the wonderful treasure that are out there or how they need protection. Hopefully my sharing of my passion for hiking has led freinds and family to be more respectful of Creation.

ebandlam
07-15-2010, 14:32
Okay, I am by no means a Wharton professor and based on the logic in Mr. Ulrich’s analysis don’t ever want to be one.

In essence, Mr. Ulrich’s point is that by being alive we are doing harm to the planet since we consume food. The closest analogy that I can come up with is: I have a house, but don’t want to live in it because by living in it, it may become dirty and potentially lose value through my use. But isn’t the purpose of the house to provide me shelter from the elements? So if I take away its purpose, why have a house? Mr. Ulrich’s stance, in essence, is for me to keep my house in a hermetically sealed container where it does not become dirty, soiled or lose value.

I am as green as the next guy. I recycle, I turn off the lights when I walk out of the room, I try my best to keep my house clean. But there is a limit to my environmental friendliness. Planet Earth is our home not by choice – but by some sort of divine providence. Yes, I am viewing the universe from the perspective of homo sapiens.

If the end goal of Mr. Ulrich is that we eliminate ourselves so we can save our home, please lead the way. Once we leave our home, will it be a home?

sbhikes
07-15-2010, 14:57
I am aware that hiking can be a resource-intensive thing to do and it does bother me a bit. The use of plastic polymers troubles me. Driving to and from the trailhead, especially now that I do mostly day hiking, is troubling.

I think the issue of eating is sort of a false one. You could hike the trail with locally-grown and minimally packaged foods if desired. Even easier to be a commuter cyclist and do this because you're at home where it's easier to control where your food is coming from. The issue of eating in the future as an older person than you might have been is interesting. Easy way to deal with that is to NOT HAVE CHILDREN!

Pedaling Fool
07-15-2010, 15:09
Easy way to deal with that is to NOT HAVE CHILDREN!
Our birth rate in the U.S. is actually pretty small, probably has a lot to do with women rights and them infiltrating the workforce. Our population is growing so fast because we are and have always been the number one destination for immigrants -- not talking about illegal immigration, legal immigrants.

Just something that doesn't get a lot of attention when people talk about urban sprawl.

sbhikes
07-15-2010, 16:40
One of our American children is equivalent to something like 17 Indian children or 34 African children as far as resources used and waste produced over a lifetime. Might even be higher than that.

Tuckahoe
07-15-2010, 18:16
And you know, I really dont have a problem with that.

Father Dragon
07-15-2010, 21:22
Wrestle those data into submission!


:D
Yeah those pesky data ... you know it would be so much easier if we just drew conclusions first and then just found the data that backed up those conclusions.... someone find me some index numbers and coefficients quick ... my pseudo-thesis is acting up again.

chief
07-15-2010, 23:05
One of our American children is equivalent to something like 17 Indian children or 34 African children as far as resources used and waste produced over a lifetime. Might even be higher than that.Yeah, if it weren't for the resources used by American children, those poor Indian and African children wouldn't have jobs!

JAK
07-16-2010, 08:04
Yeah, if it weren't for the resources used by American children, those poor Indian and African children wouldn't have jobs!So that's how we won WWII, by being so freaking wasteful???

JAK
07-16-2010, 08:10
You can mess with the laws of economics, and politics, and even ecology,
but sooner or later the laws of mathematics are going to catch up with you.

sevensixtwo187
07-16-2010, 09:40
Okay, I am by no means a Wharton professor and based on the logic in Mr. Ulrich’s analysis don’t ever want to be one.

In essence, Mr. Ulrich’s point is that by being alive we are doing harm to the planet since we consume food. The closest analogy that I can come up with is: I have a house, but don’t want to live in it because by living in it, it may become dirty and potentially lose value through my use. But isn’t the purpose of the house to provide me shelter from the elements? So if I take away its purpose, why have a house? Mr. Ulrich’s stance, in essence, is for me to keep my house in a hermetically sealed container where it does not become dirty, soiled or lose value.

I am as green as the next guy. I recycle, I turn off the lights when I walk out of the room, I try my best to keep my house clean. But there is a limit to my environmental friendliness. Planet Earth is our home not by choice – but by some sort of divine providence. Yes, I am viewing the universe from the perspective of homo sapiens.

If the end goal of Mr. Ulrich is that we eliminate ourselves so we can save our home, please lead the way. Once we leave our home, will it be a home?

That sir, was an outstanding post! I wish I could have said it that way. Point very well made. I hope some will think about what you have said.

JAK
07-16-2010, 10:03
I think we definitelty need to live simpler, but we have to live. I agree that the article steers in a dangerous direction, but I don't agree with alot of alternatives either.

1. We have to live as efficiently as possible!
- If this means living in crowded cities, like chickens in a factory, this is dangerous nonsense, yet many environmentalists including this fellow seem to point us in that direction. No thanks.

2. We have to live free, and that means big cars and big houses and big spending!
- This is also dangerous nonsense, but no more dangerous than the above.

3. We have to live free, in natural settings, within our means.
- To me this is the only logical answer. It means different things to different people, and it means limiting the human population at some level, by some means, but both of the other options above, and all options, eventually reach their finite limit. How we manage our population, or have it managed for us, will have to be dealt with at some point, but the other issues are much simpler. We have to live free. We have to live with nature. We have to live sustainably.

Gray Blazer
07-16-2010, 10:38
But you have to use a hemp rope with a suicide note on recycled paper written in soy ink that the rope is to be buried with you in an environmentally friendly memorial garden so it (and you) can compost.



That's beautiful. :sun

JAK
07-16-2010, 11:12
I think it has become much more complicated today than environmentalism vs mainstream. Most people in the mainstream are environmentally conscious, even if they say and act otherwise much of the time. Similarly, most people that consider themselves to be environmentalists, and talk much, do not act much different than the mainstream, of at all.

But it has become even more complicated than that. Alot of things being done in the name of the environment are actually counter-productive. Many small scale solar cells and wind turbines are good examples. Heat pumps are often less efficient, in terms of energy return on energy invested, than simpler measures. Industry tends to do a better job at making improvements, because they are less likely to spend money when it doesn't make sense. If something doesn't make economic sense, there is a good chance that it doesn't make environmental sense either. Many environmentalists don't get this.

Where industry and government still get things wrong, as wrong as consumers, or worse, is when they do environmental projects for the wrong reasons. Perhaps for public relations. Perhaps to create jobs or get elected. This is the real irony of the environmental movement. It isn't that climate change and resource depletion and habitat destruction are not happening. It's that we continue to do so much harm. It's all business as usual. The environmental movement, as we are currently going about it, is just the latest way to carry on with the destruction.

weary
07-16-2010, 12:03
I think it has become much more complicated today than environmentalism vs mainstream. Most people in the mainstream are environmentally conscious, even if they say and act otherwise much of the time. Similarly, most people that consider themselves to be environmentalists, and talk much, do not act much different than the mainstream, of at all.

But it has become even more complicated than that. Alot of things being done in the name of the environment are actually counter-productive. Many small scale solar cells and wind turbines are good examples. Heat pumps are often less efficient, in terms of energy return on energy invested, than simpler measures. Industry tends to do a better job at making improvements, because they are less likely to spend money when it doesn't make sense. If something doesn't make economic sense, there is a good chance that it doesn't make environmental sense either. Many environmentalists don't get this.

Where industry and government still get things wrong, as wrong as consumers, or worse, is when they do environmental projects for the wrong reasons. Perhaps for public relations. Perhaps to create jobs or get elected. This is the real irony of the environmental movement. It isn't that climate change and resource depletion and habitat destruction are not happening. It's that we continue to do so much harm. It's all business as usual. The environmental movement, as we are currently going about it, is just the latest way to carry on with the destruction.
There are fads among environmentalists, just as their are fads among all people.

But environmentalism has absolutely been a positive force over my somewhat long lifetime. It's easy for people to forget the woeful conditions of our lakes, rivers, streams, and coastal waters in the decades through the 60s and 70s.

The cleanup remains far from perfect, but the contrast with earlier years is astounding. I paid $2,900 for a house with frontage on a tidal estuary in 1962 because the marsh and mudflats so stunk from industrial pollution that no one wanted to live near them.

Since the clean up got seriously underway with the water cleanup laws pushed by then, as now, hated and derided environmentalists, the shore flats and waters have become so clean that the land commands premium prices and is increasingly clustered with million dollar homes.

More importantly, these tidal flats near my home now support 40 families who harvest the shellfish growing there. The flats had been closed for three decades because of the raw sewage that once flowed over them.

Environmental organizations are not too rigid and inflexible. Just the opposite. They are too willing to compromise. Only a tiny minority of environmentalists did most of the serious water cleanup agitation.

When I was battling for the recovery of 400,000 acres of public land, not a single major environmental group in Maine would support the effort. None were willing to do battle with the paper companies and large land owning families that claimed the public lands.

A tiny handful of individuals, public officials, and politicians carried the battle to the courts, where we won.

Who was it that said, "never doubt the power of committed individuals to change the world, they are the only ones who ever have," or words to that effect?

Weary

Danielsen
07-16-2010, 12:52
1. We have to live as efficiently as possible!
- If this means living in crowded cities, like chickens in a factory, this is dangerous nonsense, yet many environmentalists including this fellow seem to point us in that direction. No thanks.

I have to admit that I really don't think that's what they generally mean. Efficiency means using fewer resources to meet the same needs. For example, designing homes to minimize heating needs while using the most available materials (rather than, say, carting exotic stone or wood types from faraway places). A spread-out community of efficiency-minded homes is far more efficient than a huge building of apartments even just due to the steel required for the apartment building (which must be mined and transported and refined from ore and transported again). Another example is food: rather than energy-intensive industrialized megafarms, which tend to utilize resources like water and soil nutrients inefficiently, if people were more dependent on the abundant food sources surrounding them (I can walk into my backyard and gather a heaping salad and some nice root vegetables. We westerners ignore most food because our idea of "food' involves packaging and grocery stores and spending money) we could let things just grow as they always have and only use enough energy to transport them from our surrounding neighborhoods to our front doors. Again, this type of efficiency is most conducive to a more spread-out population, since highly concentrated populations will quickly deplete the resources in their immediate area whereas a spread-out population allows the area it occupies to maintain growth and abundance. More efficient technologies and infrastructure also play a part.

Environmentalists pointing us towards more concentrated living conditions are usually the anti-human-life variety and should no be listened to. :rolleyes:



2. We have to live free, and that means big cars and big houses and big spending!
- This is also dangerous nonsense, but no more dangerous than the above.

Well that is an unfortunate mentality that really needs work in our society. Big cars and big houses require lots of money, and spending lots of time making that money. It makes you dependent on your job and the state of the economy and the abstract concept of money, rather than being dependent directly on the earth that's been supporting us since the dawn of life on earth. That's as far from being "free" as I can imagine.



3. We have to live free, in natural settings, within our means.
- To me this is the only logical answer. It means different things to different people, and it means limiting the human population at some level, by some means, but both of the other options above, and all options, eventually reach their finite limit. How we manage our population, or have it managed for us, will have to be dealt with at some point, but the other issues are much simpler. We have to live free. We have to live with nature. We have to live sustainably.

I certainly agree with that, and while it's not nice to think about, populations run rampant in environments without predators and increasing to exceed their available resources always self-regulate, generally through catastrophic population crashes. That means mass migrations for lemmings that lead to their unwitting suicide (the instinct is to find more territory, not kill themselves), and it means plagues in excessive rabbit populations, and it leads to starvation in overgrown deer populations. I wonder what the self-regulating factor will be for humans?

Of course, sanity is an option, always there, for humanity to come together and evaluate their resource usage and population dynamics and come up with a way to transition into a sustainable society. But sadly we do not act as a group like the logical, sane beings we like to think of ourselves as; as a larger superorganism we behave like any animal running on blind instinct. The planet could support our current population, maybe even more, but not in our current lifestyles. Unfortunately, individual lifestyle choices aren't really going to change that fact either. The wheels will go on turning until they spin right off their axles, and who knows what will happen after that. Maybe we'll learn something.

JAK
07-16-2010, 15:52
Thanks guys.
I was being a bit overly cynical and pessimistic there.
It is important to maintain some perspective and optimism.

jbenson
07-16-2010, 18:57
As someone who lives on Hatteras Island on the NC outerbanks and is watching the "environmentalists" at work to close our beaches I find it very easy to see them one day closing the AT to hiking. I have come to believe that there is a large group out there with no other purpose than to eliminate all activities that people enjoy doing, except, of course, those they like to do.

weary
07-16-2010, 19:25
....I have come to believe that there is a large group out there with no other purpose than to eliminate all activities that people enjoy doing, except, of course, those they like to do.
Most likely you have come to believe a myth. I run into similar beliefs in Maine, which has even more stringent beach construction restrictions than North Carolina.

No serious group in Maine or in North Carolina, I suspect, wants to eliminate all activities that people enjoy doing. Quite a few of us want to eliminate activities that threaten natural places, so that millions of people can continue to enjoy visiting and recreating there.

I say this based on considerable experience with North Carolina. My inlaws, who held similar beliefs as you, lived in North Carolina for a quarter century. We visited regularly. They visited us for two or three months every summer. I saw no truth to their complaints. You'll need to supply more details before I believe yours.

Weary

Pedaling Fool
07-18-2010, 20:18
Pretty interesting show about energy use on now -- The Discovery Channel.