Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Saving the world
Pope Francis warned in his Christmas message against "environmental decline". Francis has always been an advocate for the environment. Some good Christmas news in this area: A Historic Gift of Pristine Land to Inspire Tech's Elite
Given Trump's antipathy to the environment, it's time we, like David and Laura Dangermond, take steps to preserve it.
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This article discusses 7 trends which give reasons for hope on the environment. Briefly, they are: better and more price competitive plant based meat, the renewable energy revolution (for instance the cost of solar energy has plunged up to 90%); coal is dead or dying; the rapid rise of electric cars; better and cheaper battery storage, linked to smarter digital power grids; boost in energy efficiency in homes; better land management and re-growing forests. The article is worth reading.
ReplyDeleteI saw a segment on the PBS NewsHour a while ago about the veggie-meat industry. It's really taking off with many scientists involved. I already don't eat meat, but I do buy veggie burgers sometimes. If everyone became vegetarian, it would really make a difference for the environment.
ReplyDeleteI eat veggie burgers too sometimes. But I would feel disloyal to my fami!y if I went total vegan, since I grew up on a cattle ranch and have family still in the business. I do think that if people went more to grass fed meat it would be better for the environment and also would be a more natural state for the animals. FWIW my family's cattle are grass fed.
DeleteI've been a vegetarian since I was in college, my sister too. It wasn't the environment that made us decide but wanting to not be responsible for animals being killed.
DeleteWorking in a hospital surgery made that even more of a thing for me. Cut up animals and cut up people are pretty much the same. look the same, smell the same. Hyfrecating a person's fat smells like bacon cooking. Eeeeeek!
Eating more mindfully is good. So is looking at your energy consumption and how much useless crap you buy.
ReplyDeleteAlso, how much medication you're taking probably poses environmental problems. Cancer patients are now told to use condoms to protect partners from unwanted doses (we excrete about 40 percent of the drug). Those of us taking these meds for the rest of our lives are basically walking, talking toxic hazards.
It will be interesting to see when or if some meds are banned or limited because the damage they do to the environment outweigh the lives they prolong. That's gonna be a tough sell to Americans, whose medical care focuses on quantity rather than quality of life.
I have heard the same environmental argument being made about hormonal drugs such as birth control pills and also antibiotics. Actually most medicines end up getting excreted eventually. What I think will happen is that additional steps will be added to cities's water and sewage treatment plans which either break down the drugs or filter them out. Too many people benefit from medications of one sort and another to ban them, at least that is my take on it.
DeleteYeah, I think the water treatment plants will eventually take care of that stuff. The argument about birth control pills being peed into the environment is one often made by Catholics against contraception, but we don't realize that everyone's urine, including animals, is full of stuff .... pregnant women pee out hormones, meat animals pee out antibiotics, etc.
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ReplyDeleteYou folks are more sanguine than me. Over here by Flint, as we see cities struggle to provide water and sewer systems in the face of crumbling infrastructure, I can't imagine anything happening on this front very quickly.
ReplyDeleteAs the EPA gets eviscerated, who's going to require that medications are added to the list of contaminants and set limits for them? And who's going to pay for the new filtration systems now that we've lowered everyone's taxes?
Carpooling and giving up burgers assuages consciences, but water quality problems are more insidious and potentially expensive to fix than people want to acknowledge.
NPR reported antidepressants are found in high levels in fish. Studies show that those fish are less alert. So they get caught more easily and enter the food chain quicker. Even a small, limited study shows how the problem can get away from us very quickly.
I do think all this stuff should matter. I sign untold petitions for environmental groups that want to clean up the waterr. In my state there are a lot of groups who work for this. Maybe in your state too?
ReplyDeleteInteresting problem you bring up, Jean, the maintenance drugs polluting the environment. Haven't heard of it brought up much except for the birth control hormone problem and I don't have a feel for it at all. Are some drug versions more biodegradable than others? Because my stuff goes into a septic system, is that better or worse? When the pharmaceutical industry, which we know has great power, develops a new drug, would an environmental impact study be required. Under President Bozo and slime-face Pruitt, I'm assured these questions will never be addressed.
ReplyDeleteFDA doesn't look at environmental impact on drugs in excreta. Up to EPA to track water quality. And with an increasing old population needing maintenance drugs, the problem will get worse.
DeleteAt the recent family Christmas meeting, one of the young couples brought their baby boy. I thought that he will be 83 in the year 2100. He may see southern Florida disappear under water, the inundation of all coastal cities, mass migrations, abandonment of California and the Southeast US due to drought, destructive storms, the end of the American Empire, though we may be seeing that right now. What a brave and terrible thing to throw a human into existence at this time. Makes me think that, before I vote, I should put aside elderly cynicism about the young, and consult them about their wants and fears about the future. After all, they will be impacted for a longer time than I will.
ReplyDeleteThis is a real fear for the kiddies. At The Boy's birthday dinner, the kids expressed real fear of climate change. I think we have the notion that after Bernie didn't win, they just went back to the cat videos on their phones. Up to us to keep them engaged.
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