"I assume that we have enough people studying genetics these days to figure out how to make stuff grow..."

Arrg! This is a prime example of the egoism that has lead us to an environmental crisis. We are not the only living creatures who inhabit this planet. The earth does not exist solely to serve us, contrary to popular belief. Further, it does not exist solely to serve affluent white males, which seems to also be the common misconception.

But I'm just going to assume that anyone who drives a crotch rocket is posting this just to piss off people like me and move on. I'll just wait for p-man's next post about hot geek girls or something.

the fun part about having Evil I as a guest-blogger is that you never know when he's being serious or when he's totally BSing. better yet, sometimes he does both at the same time.

my guess is that he is calling the environmentalists' bluff about the severity of global warming, and that he simply wants it to stop raining so he can ride his stupid motorcycle and get run over by soccer moms in their 10 MPG Supercharged Land Rovers driving to Williams Sonoma.

but i could be wrong. he could be totally serious.

Heather,
First off, I'm not white, I am a proud, affluent, educated, and legal Hispanic who drives a cruiser, not a crotch rocket. Secondly, geneticists are brilliant individuals who have managed to make plants that are resistant to drought and infestations of bugs. As a consequence, world population has I think quadrupled in the last 100 years because people live longer healthier lives, and the use of environmentally unfriendly fertilizers and pest repellents has significantly been reduced. What is even better is that there is enough food to go around that some non-affluent white males eat too now. In fact, most starvation in the world today can be more quickly attributed to politics than to the harshness of mother earth which used to be the primary force in population control.

My point is this, to say that we should all eat granola and ride bikes for the environment is dumb. We should instead quit wasting so much money on posters, hemp bracelets, and Live Earth concerts to create a generation of people to whine about the environment and instead inspire a new generation of scientists to solve our energy problems so everyone can drive at 130 miles per hour on pretty non-rainy days. I'm not greedy, I can share the road, and signal too.

Finally, P-man is right, sometimes I say things to inflame, sometimes I'm serious, and sometimes its both. I cant tell you which one this is, but its only cause its more fun that way. You seem like a lot of fun Heather, I would definitely love to get a beer with you someday, It'll be on me and I am sure it will be a good time to be had by all.

Okay, I apologize if I made assumptions about you, Evil I. I really didn't mean to attack you personally, but that sentence struck me as embodying part of the ego that seems to exist & has put us in the position we are in today. I shouldn't have assumed you drove a crotch rocket. Frankly, I just like saying crotch rocket. I get that you were being facetious & I trust that anyone p-man would let guest blog here is a good person. I'm sorry.

I suppose there are 2 things going on here. First, I'm super-touchy these days because of exam stress, and I really think I need to escape Texas, which seems to be way too full of Hummer driving douchebags who don't give a rat's ass about anything except themselves and maintaining their bloated, consumerist lifestyles.

But also, I don't have much patience when it comes to the environment lately. And no, I'm not some nutty earth first, granola munchin', vegan, hemp-wearin' hippie. At all. But lately global warming has hit me personally & I think it's something everyone should try & take at least a little more seriously. As a kid, I really wanted to go to the Caribbean & see beautiful coral reefs. In May, I finally got the chance, and guess what I got to see? Dead, calcified reefs. And just recently I heard about how the Great Barrier Reef is threatened. That really sucks.

I've been fortunate to get out in the world & see some cool shit over the past 10 years or so, but I still have lots more to see & I'm really starting to be afraid that much of it won't be there in even as little as 10 years. 10 years ago I walked on a glacier in Alaska that is shrinking fast. 10 years ago I'm sure the reefs I saw in Puerto Rico were vibrant and beautiful.

And I have to disagree with you about the frankenfoods as a solution. Sure, it's a good thing to use fewer pesticides, but I've read articles about the environmental impact of these frankenfoods as well. I spent most of my undergrad years (when I was admittedly much more hippy-ish than I am now) studying indigenous peoples and one of the things that struck a cord with me was how our modern society is so out of sync with nature, how far we've moved from being part of the natural world to exploiting and abusing it. Not that I could give up my air conditioning and my car and go live in a mud hut in the woods and eat berries or anything. I don't have a solution, but I think there are things we can do to start making things right again, even if they are small steps. Hold industry accountable for polluting (and none of this voluntary crap). Support companies that are more ecologically conscious. Switch to renewable energy plans, etc.

And, you know, only drive your big engine fancy car on special occasions.

And if you're ever in Austin, I'll be happy to take you up on the beer.

irritable particleman says: ugh. do i hear someone singing kumbaya? ew. why don't you go hold hands or something. i'm gonna go hurl on my stack of Bar books.

normal particleman says: we're building bridges here, people. bridges.

Fair enough about global warming maybe being kinda real but I think if we are going to be honest about the problem we have to realize its much bigger than just big companies and SUV's.

The last hundred years has made the world population go from 1.6B to 6.6B. This has had a lot to do with the industrial revolution and medicine. Life expectancy is up, number of infant mortalities is down, and the whole world is starting to catch on about how they can do it too.

What you have to ask yourself is how "in tune" with nature should we get. If nature says there should be a famine, should millions of people die like what was going on in Somalia or should they be fed? Once fed they will continue to reproduce and their population will increase quite possibly beyond what their land could have ever supported anyways, and then what?

Today there are 5 billion more people in the world that need to eat, move, and poop than there were before. This has many side effects associated with it from all the agriculture needed to feed them to what you do with their waste products because organic food and septic systems won't cut it anymore. The truth is that the only way to go back to being in tune with earth is to once again become it's victims, and that is a very tough sales pitch.

This is not meant to be argumentative or to show you your place or anything of the sort, it's I guess just putting out there the other side to the story that seems to always get ignored.

what's up with this "life expectancy is up" business. Noah lived to like 950. even Moses got to 120. if we can't even get that far, we should just starve ourselves.

I agree that the surge in population/industrial revolution, etc. has lead us to where we are, but I still think there are ways we can try & keep it in check. 5 billion more people driving cars isn't the answer. 5 billion people eating McDonald's? Even worse. Maybe at the heart of our problem is our fear of death. We try to cheat it as long as we can, failing to realize that it's inevitable, a part of life. The ironic thing is that in doing so, we're destroying everything.

Oh, fuck it (just trying to help get your rating out of the PG range, p-man). With the jackasses we have in charge these days, we're all going to bite it in some nuclear fallout anyway. Bring on the Hummers and the Big Macs! Long live Halliburton! I'm switching to an all-coal energy plan. Woo!

I can report that the Americans are trying. The Copenhagen stockmarket is up, because the Americans keep buying our windmills. Natural and lasting energy people.... Stop talking about what some people should do, and do something yourselves. Go buy an actual windmill...

Hmmm, a windmill. I don't have a place to put it. But I do create demand for them by using all-wind energy at home. Or at least I did til I moved back to Austin, to a house that already had the electricity set up through my roommate. I totally want a house with solar panels someday, mostly so I don't have to pay the electric company as much!

I actually looked into solar and wind before and realized both tend to be prohibitively expensive. I think the best solution I have found so far is to just get used to a fan and open windows in summer and a good duvet in the winter. Haven't had a bill over 150 dollars in a long long time despite my all wind plan.

The more realistic thing to look at is solar for water heating, sky lights, LED lighting with solar to power that, and all propane or gas appliances including the fridge.

Considering the amount of decaying stuff we seem to be so good at creating we could even power stuff on methane pretty soon.

Propane fridges are really freaking cool, but Im also a nerdy engineering type.

Wow, I went on vacation for a few days and missed all of this eh? Too bad. Sadly I agree with a little bit of everything here (how judicious of me).

I think Evil I makes a good point (in a round about way) that alot more sacrifice is needed than just buying a Prius to change the path of environmental destruction.

But that said, I agree with Heather's earlier post in that if you want to appreciate conservation you probably need to get the fuck out of Dallas and actually see something worth conserving. Then you might not find it such an inconvenience to practice a little restraint. While Evil I made a good point in some respects, simply chalking the planet up as a loss and moving on probably isn't the most prudent strategy. There is certainly an arguement for practicing that conservation which is feasible and saving what we can.

Since getting everybody on board to preserve things they may not know or care about is impracticle, I think the ultimate solution is to take away the economic incentive to pollute, maim, and rape the planet. Perhaps we can all agree that it comes down to economics, and in the case of the environment, it gets left out of the economic equation. If we had all the costs associated with environmental degradation wrapped into the costs of oil, gas, coal, trash disposal, etc, we'd probably be a little more environmentally concious by necessity. The simple fact is that we as a society just write off a lot of the costs that should go into the equation. The environmental costs end up being spread out across the population as increased health care costs, treatment costs, etc. I say now that we have the knowledge and accounting to do so, we put them into the equation.