Who Cares About the Environement?

[Leonardo17]

Here are some happy images from a zoo in Florida:
 
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cooling-down-...p_deeplink
 
It is good to know that we are able to still cool ourselves, our kids and our animals despite the fact that our summers are becoming hotter every year.
 
But there are times when I am more pessimistic about the whole issue. In this neighborhood of Ankara, we sort of have recycling bins since 20 years or so. These are regularly being stolen (to be recycled themselves) the only problem is me having to walk to recycling bins that are firmly attached to the floor beneath it but is located at a 15 minutes walking distance from my home.  
 
I know the situation is far from being perfect even in countries with better recycling policies. But here I can tell you that “recycling” bin in shopping malls and supermarkets are being used as ordinary trash (despite the appearance of being designed to separate and recycle all types of trash). Ordinary trash is usually being thrown into “recycling” bins. If you talk to people about why they do such a thing they will look at you with an empty expression on their face. And other more “functional” recycling bins do get completely filled and are being emptied for months in some places.
 
Yet the main issue that, despite single use plastics are being banned in some countries like the UK, people here are still living the legendary 80’s. Most educated people will just go a local Starbucks get their drinks in single-use cups and not even think of what happens to the trash afterward. Most people don’t even know that plastic remains in nature for at least 500 years after you throw it away.
 
So that’s one of the main issues why I chose to be a spiritual person. In time I learned to develop a sense of enhanced patience toward more “ordinary” fellow human beings. Back as a teenager I used to be angry on these issues. Now I learned to look at this more as “this level of intelligence was given to me for a reason and I am probably supposed to use it for the good of all”.
 
This approach helps me a lot, especially in all of these small changes I am making on myself. Because there is also those who are simply saying “What the heck? Why do I produce this effort if the government or the ordinary citizen simply doesn’t care?”
 
- True. But it has to start to change from some place right?

[Alan V]

Luckily we have regular recycling pickups every Wednesday in our area of southeast Pennsylvania, with our own yellow trash cans for recycling only. I'm just not sure how much of that material really gets recycled.

Oh, and we sometimes see the same problem with people dumping trash in with their recycling.

[Fake Messiah]

Yeah, people are recycling their trash and buying hybrid cars and are thus caring for the environment.

However, to save this planet from cooking us, we would most likely need a global mobilisation of people similar to that seen during the COVID pandemic: people should travel less (especially by airplanes), change their diet to free up land for new forests, buy less stuff so that there is less production and garbage, end all wars, and stop traveling by yachts.

But I guess the gambit is now on some new technology that will clean up the planet.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Factories are typically (but not universally) built near waterways. A definite plus for the environment would be to require factories to place their intake immediate downstream from their discharge. If the associated fines are heavy enough - I can dream, can’t I? - they’ll clean their waste as a matter of self interest.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

I wouldn't feel too bad, most of the stuff in the recycling bins ends up in regular trash even if people followed the rules.

@Fake Messiah

We don't have to do any of that to save the planet from cooking us, and most of it wouldn't matter a jot ( a global mobilization would be swell, no doubt). I can tell you this, as long as we're given choices between the ineffective, the absurd, or pre-emptive surrender to doom.... we're not going to solve any of our climate problems. I wish people would let environmentalism be environmentalism. Being choke tied to various warring political ideologies with additional demands and aims is killing it, both literally and figuratively. Mind you, it's not that I disagree or dislike those other things - just pointing out that they don't have any particular ownership over environmentalism and environmentalism benefits everyone no matter what other political angles they come at it from. Even the rape and pillaging set need a place to rape and pillage.

[Leonardo17]

I wouldn't feel too bad, most of the stuff in the recycling bins ends up in regular trash even if people followed the rules.

@Fake Messiah

We don't have to do any of that to save the planet from cooking us, and most of it wouldn't matter a jot ( a global mobilization would be swell, no doubt).  I can tell you this, as long as we're given choices between the ineffective, the absurd,  or pre-emptive surrender to doom.... we're not going to solve any of our climate problems.  I wish people would let environmentalism be environmentalism.  Being choke tied to various warring political ideologies with additional demands and aims is killing it, both literally and figuratively.  Mind you, it's not that I disagree or dislike those other things - just pointing out that they don't have any particular ownership over environmentalism and environmentalism benefits everyone no matter what other political angles they come at it from.  Even the rape and pillaging set need a place to rape and pillage.

I am sort of addicted to informative TV programs on these issues. In the 90’s people would say that we need to make sacrifices, consume less, use public transportation more often (which is still true) the focus today is more different:
- In Africa people are collecting plastic bottles to make chairs, tables, construction material out of them.
- In the UK they are using Chinese solar panels as fences because they are available at such a low price. And in Germany people are installing them to their condominiums as a way of reducing electricity bills.
- There are also new farming methods with crops being grown next to trees so that these trees collect more water and allow more microorganisms to live on the top soil (which drastically reduces the need for water because the soil becomes able to hold more water and CO2).
 
Finally: The cost of doing nothing is higher than the cost of investing into solutions that will limit the impact of climate change. When you go above 86 degree Fahrenheit (depending on the work that is being done) you already lose 30% on the productivity of you workers. If you go above 104, that percentage can go to 60% and more.
 
In last week’s heat episode in Europe they had to shut down schools. No one wanted to eat anything. People didn’t go out. They consumed less. Tourist attractions were shot in some places. So the overall impact on the economy isn’t very positive.
 
You know Al Gore has a book called “The Assault on reason”. That’s what this is. People who care about and know about the economy want us to invest on clean energies. It’s the irrational components of our societies who want to keep doing things the old fashion (even though they know that the negative impacts of climate change is going to hit them as well).

[Rizen]

I've found people have trouble grasping abstract concepts. It's a lot easier to see that a gallon of milk costs $4 than that we're slowly killing ourselves and everything else on the planet. People, enough people that is, don't vote for the environment and never have. Apparently "wokeness" and transexuals are bigger problems than preserving our planet and democracy. We're in an age of rampant anti-intellectualism.

[The Grand Nudger]

 It’s the irrational components of our societies who want to keep doing things the old fashion (even though they know that the negative impacts of climate change is going to hit them as well).

They're not irrational, they're just heavily invested.  The global petrostate, where the most important thing from money's point of view is one more decade of money.  One more year.  One more month.  One more day.  Absolutely whatever it takes to keep the money flowing for as long as it can.

[Leonardo17]

I've found people have trouble grasping abstract concepts. It's a lot easier to see that a gallon of milk costs $4 than that we're slowly killing ourselves and everything else on the planet. People, enough people that is, don't vote for the environment and never have. Apparently "wokeness" and transexuals are bigger problems than preserving our planet and democracy. We're in an age of rampant anti-intellectualism.

This is also true but mankind is evolving. In the 1980’s it was cool to smoke a cigarette. If you were a boy you were “tough”, if you were a girl you were “modern” and “grown up” for smoking. Today teenagers are reduced to smoking electro-cigarettes that are very bad for the environment but not so bad for the teenies that smoke them.
 
    And most of the Gen X people are currently reconsidering their alcohol consumption. It’s no longer “cool” for people of our generation to offer good quality Whisky to our guests. Most people will be more impressed if you offer them more healthy alternatives and you will also socialize better if you go to the gym and exercise more regularly in some way. We are nothing like the grownups in the series “Dallas” who smoke cigars all the time and compulsively act in a domineering fashion to the opposite sex.
 
   So that’s what has kept me separating my trash for some 20 years or so, even though I know that the local municipality does not really care about the issue.
 
Their time will come I guess

[Ahriman]

Luckily we have regular recycling pickups every Wednesday in our area of southeast Pennsylvania, with our own yellow trash cans for recycling only.  I'm just not sure how much of that material really gets recycled.

Oh, and we sometimes see the same problem with people dumping trash in with their recycling.

Every little bit helps.