Does the new popularity of the enviromental movement make you angry or bitter?

Question

I have a friend who has been an environmentalist for years. We are both active in the movement and have been for a while. Ever since the new wave of popularity, she seems very bitter. She is always complaining about people "jumping on the bandwagon" or "being hypocrites" and I'm having a hard time seeing where she's coming from.

Isn't this what we were waiting for? Isn't it a positive thing that so many people are interested in working together to save the environment?

I realize that a lot of people who are "new to this" might not be as hardcore as the rest of us. Maybe they still drive their big SUV but at least they have started recycling their water bottles. Doesn't every small effort make a big difference in the long run?

My friend is starting to frustrate me. I feel like she is only upset because she feels less unique. I need help understanding where she is coming from.

Answer 1

I completely understand where she is coming from.  My husband and I live an extremely earth friendly life on our permaculture farm.  Growing our own food, even the fuel to run our trucks and tractors.

The amount of work we do is titanic.  Then comes along some newbie suddenly save-the-earth-greenie-person, and they make a post that states something like, "I just replaced all the bulbs in my house with CFL bulbs...how many polar bears did I save?"

This new movement makes me shudder.  It's all about SELLING and MARKETING brand spanking new "green" items to consumers so they can feel good about themselves.

Or the people who have jumped on the bandwagon, by buying a brand new electric car.  That's "special."  Does the electric for you home come from coal plants, oil, nuclear plants, hydro, wind or solar?  Your car runs on electric, but exactly HOW was that electric produced, and what is your car REALLY running on?  Also what countries were the minerals for the huge battery for the electric car mined from? (Hint:U.S.A., Russia, Canada, Chile, Gabon, Australia, and Mexico. You also have eliments from Norway, and Finland )

So is the brand new electric car the suddenly enviromentally aware person buys better than our Ford truck made in 1968, which runs on fuel we grow here on our farm?  The truck we drive had it's manufacturing environmental damage done 40 years ago.  The modern ones fill with plastics.....well you get the point.

It also drives me nuts, when someone reads a well written magazine article, and decides that it is absolutely 100% correct, and there is no other way to do things.  They suddenly leap on some bandwagon, and thump their chest shouting about how everyone needs to "do it this way."

Maybe....maybe I've already been doing "that" for 20 years.  Or perhaps I found it was not such a good idea, and found a different earth friendly way of doing things.

Differences only make a difference if they are TRUE differences.  Or to put it another way, just because someone is doing a something new and different, it does not mean it's actually better.  People need to research and make sure it's actually a better way, and not just run out and buy new products, because they are labled "green."

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Answer 2

Nothing we do can overcome the effects of entropy. We can slow down the effects, but that is it. There certain physical laws in the universe that cannot be broken. Simply put, first you have the main Laws of Thermodynamics - they are;

     1) You can't win

     2) You can't even break even

     3) You can't get out of the game

Then there are the physical paradoxes that appear. The main 3 are;

     1) You can't catch up

     2) You can't even start

     3) You can't even move

We have ignored these basic laws for so long we are doomed. We are already using 20% more energy than the earth and produce. In other words, we 'owe' energy. That is impossible to do. We are living on borrowed time. Just think, the next time the population doubles, like in the next 15 years, we will be using 40% more energy than the earth can produce. How long do you really think we can sustain that kind of living?

While the masses wait for the Engineers and Scientists (or the Messiah, tsk-tsk) to save the world with a “by the time I get cancer there will be a cure for it” attitude, this is an example of what is;

Nobel chemist Frederick Soddy pointed out over 70 years ago: “Debts are subject to the laws of mathematics rather than physics. Unlike wealth, which is subject to the laws of thermodynamics, debts do not rot away with old age and are not consumed in the process of living. On the contrary, they grow at so much per cent per annum, by the well known mathematical laws of simple and compound interest”

Economist Herman Daly explains the inevitable consequences that result when society pits the mathematical notions of compound interest against the physical reality of thermodynamics. He says that while debt can grow at compound interest forever, real physical wealth cannot continue to grow at the same speed “because its physical dimension is subject to the destructive forces of entropy.” He concludes: “Since wealth cannot continually grow as fast as debt, the one to one relation between the two will at some point in time be broken- i.e. there must be some repudiation or cancellation of debt. The positive feedback of compound interest must be offset by counter acting forces of debt repudiation, such as inflation, bankruptcy, or confiscatory taxation, all of which breed violence.”

At every step in the entire production and exchange process, work is done; namely, energy is expended by both humans and machines. Part of that energy is absorbed into the product and part is wasted. This means that the more stages in the economic process, the more energy is lost. The same principle is at work in the production process as in the simple food chain. In highly industrial societies the stages of the economic process continue to proliferate, meaning more and more energy is dissipated all along the line; and the resultant disorders create even greater long-range problems for society.