Joined: Aug 02, 2005 Posts: 996 Location: In your garden
Posted: Thu 25/Oct/07 10:20am Post subject:
From theonion:
As human beings continue to wreak havoc on the ecosystem, with seemingly no awareness of the long-term effects of our shortsighted actions, we seriously jeopardize the fragile balance of life on this big blue marble we call Spaceship Earth. Now is the time to take steps toward creating a cleaner environment, however insignificant and useless those steps may be. That's why I'm doing my own laughably inconsequential part to end pollution, limit damage to our precious ecosystem, and preserve what remains of our planet's biodiversity for future generations.
Every day, without fail, I meticulously organize my recyclables into five distinct categories, thereby subtracting an eyedropper's worth of garbage from the countless tons of waste that ferment in our landfills. It only takes a few extra minutes, but just think of the impact it totally lacks. I also refuse to use anything but "Earth-friendly" paper products—some of which contain up to 10 percent recycled materials. For me, it's worth shouldering the extra cost, but, unfortunately, only a scant few of us bother to do the same. And growing some of my own organic vegetables in my backyard garden also, to my immense gratification, reduces the use of toxic chemical-based pesticides and herbicides present in corporate farming techniques by as much as 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000001 percent.
These quixotic, Sisyphean efforts are my way of dealing with what is perhaps the most crucial and difficult issue of our time.
Why do I boycott multinational oil and gas corporations that fail to acknowledge and address global-warming issues, resulting in a few less dollars in their swollen coffers? Or participate in demonstrations against local wetland destruction that are attended by as many as a dozen people, before the wetland is eventually drained and cleared for a new Warehouset anyway? Why make the effort? Because I care. And I want these feelings to manifest themselves in barely measurable ways.
By using the bus or riding my bike whenever possible, I may not be able to influence greenhouse-gas emissions standards or reduce mass global addiction to fossil fuels one iota. Nor, by slavishly collecting every banana peel or coffee ground to make my own rich garden compost, will I alter our consumer culture's pathological tendency to devour everything it encounters at an exponentially advancing rate. Restricting my household energy use to non-peak hours does not make me capable of reversing temperature changes in the gulf stream that even now have begun to throw the world's climate out of equilibrium. The question, however, is not "What can't I do?" but rather, "What can I do?"
The answer: next to nothing.
At the very least, I know with absolute certainty that I have done everything I can to nurture and protect the environment, through genuinely well-intentioned albeit minuscule actions, tragically destined to have absolutely no substantive effect. For I sleep better at night knowing that I have as much influence on global environmental policy as I would had I never been born.
Conservation is more urgent than ever. Scientists inform us that the combined effects of fossil-fuel consumption, land clearance, and overfishing the planet's seas have already ushered in a period of "mass global extinction," the sixth so far recorded in Earth's history, and the only one to be entirely man-made. In the next century, between two-thirds and three-fourths of all plant and animal species now in existence could become permanently extinct. But by carefully conserving water with the specially designed low-impact toilet I had installed, I can take comfort in the knowledge that I did what I could do to delay this inevitable global death-age by as many as several nanoseconds.
Won't you join me in this ongoing effort to foster an imperceptible improvement to this doomed and dying planet? You'll be rewarded with the knowledge that, despite the irreversible effects of centuries of sustained environmental abuse by the human race, individuals, working together, can fight this inevitability in a real, concrete, tiny, and totally ineffective show of unity.
Together, we can make an unbelievably negligible difference.
I will accept Battletruck, I would have also accepted its US title.
It starts off with a radio transmitted voice over / news report about the oil fields in the middle east still glowing with radiation and how law and order has broken down as oil supplies dwindle. Could be fairly close to the mark.
Joined: Jul 31, 2006 Posts: 562 Location: Paddling in the Waiwhetu stream, Lower Hutt.
Posted: Fri 26/Oct/07 3:52pm Post subject:
Flyboy wrote:
haHA that looks AWESOME
... and what a name- BATTLETRUCK!!
It is awesome, and full of hippie Kiwi actors and Bruno Lawrence!
Youthful exposure to the sound effects of Battletruck made me love the whine of an aging turbo-diesel. Wheeeee, wheeeeeeee... my wife and I both go "ooh, Battletruck" when driving a vehicle that can make some decent turbine noises.
Joined: Oct 11, 2005 Posts: 134 Location: Auckward
Posted: Mon 29/Oct/07 8:45pm Post subject:
Did anyone go to the lecture by Richard Heinberg at the Akl Uni a couple of weeks ago?
I recently saw the doco "The End Of Suburbia", which he's interviewed in.
If you're wondering about Peak Oil and where we're headed - that's the film to see!
The question I want to know is, when is the media going to pull its collective head out of its esra and start giving this the serious lookover it deserves. Running out of oil is going to make life very difficult way before global warming!
Joined: Oct 11, 2005 Posts: 134 Location: Auckward
Posted: Mon 29/Oct/07 8:55pm Post subject:
BrokenKona...
Hey, you're not alone out there, there are more people waking up! Our household recycles as much as possible, composts, grows our own vegetables, tries to use less power and not use the car when cycling is possible. We hope to get a water tank soon and I'm getting rid of my car.
Although I'm dismayed by the large number of people we know who are ignorant about these issues or don't care, a few are starting to look at their consumerism and alter their habits. You've just gotta keep on their case about it and get them thinking outside of the comfort zone!
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