Sustainability
That is one of if not THE smartest posts i have read in a long time. Good work.
well done groundswell for being able to read it, I couldn't
Ha, maybe groundswell thinks it's smart because it's incomprehensible... Damn, and I was encouraged before reading your post Shaun, lol!
We are taught to write in a way politicians can read (without technical terms or with technical terms explained) and I guess stuff like "ecological services" (such as tree's converting carbon dioxide to oxygen, or bee's pollinating crops) and "trophic structures" (AKA food webs, spider eats fly, bird eats spider, bigger bird eats bird, bird dies, fly lays eggs in bird, etc.) should've been explained. But I was ranting.
May as well keep regurgitating gripes on society though.
Combustion engines should've been outlawed decades ago, yet car companies advocate alternative fuels as uneconomical or volatile. Vegie patches and community gardens should be mandatory (rainwater tanks are, finally), on top of this growing food should be taught as part of primary to secondary curriculum, it's absurd kids learn dogmatic history without learning to grow food. Some schools do but the four I went to didn't.
I was gonna post on the "weed" thread but it wasn't appropriate. Hemp foods must be legalised for commercial use. The viability of hemp farms would be greatly increased by this. Hemp is three or four times better value than cotton, it requires less water, requires less nutrients in the ground, does not require pesticides or herbicides like cotton, produces up to 200% more biomass per hectare, is much more durable than cotton, easier to manufacture than cotton and represents a fraction of the farming market in Australia compared to cotton. It is ridiculous.
Children of tomorrow
I apologize to you
On behalf of those in my time
For the things we didn't do
We didn't stop the tyrants
So your fate could be prevented
We watched them steal our freedom
By our silence we consented
We didn't choose to circumvent
The doom you've not escaped
While the Bill of Rights was murdered
And the Constitution raped
Some of us were lazy
Others too afraid
To think about our children
The ones we have betrayed
I guess we were too busy
To be concerned or care
To try to ease the burden
Of the chains we made you wear
We could have been good shepherds
When the wolf got in the fold
But we watched the flame of freedom die instead
And left you cold
I'm sorry we were timid
My selfish generation
We left you but a remnant
Of a free and prosperous nation
I'm sorry for our actions
Like cowards we behaved
We could have left you freedom
Instead you are enslaved
Children of tomorrow
Descendants of our land
I'm sorry we allowed this
The fate you now with stand
I've plagiarized this information from a popular person's podcast I listen to but it I agree with this particular theory he talks about.
If you talk about evolution of life and it's origin, the start of all life originated as bacteria, from single cell organisms to multi cell.
Now if you look at current day evolution of the creatures of the earth specifically humans nothing has changed at it's core.
We are still bacteria and were all connected into one big piece of cancerous bacteria.
Breeding, spreading and consuming everything even sucking the life out of the core of the earth for all it's minerals and resources.
Why is every single person obsessed with moving forward, purchasing as much crap as possible and having more kids even though there's already billions of other people here?
Building these mega concrete cities and destroying nature and no matter what you do to them blow them up, burn them or have an earthquake they spring right back up and keep getting bigger and bigger .
Everyone should strive, scratch and claw for sustainability but I think something bigger is driving it all and our purpose here is to fuck shit up
It doesn't help when our government (liberal or labour) encourages population growth with hand outs and our whole society is then obsessed with consuming and having everything new and big and better, just look at the houses there building these days, huge and use lots of resources to be built then cost a fortune to heat and cool with a city worth of down lights, then look on the road everyones obsessed with having a new car.
I don't mean to be negative but to be honest i think we are screwed, think back to when you were a kid and how much things have changed where you live, things in Australia at least are just out of control, changing and growing way to fast, maybe? we are still the lucky country but if we are i don't think we will be in another ten or twenty years.
IMO Population growth in Australia is the main problem and also the fact our resources are being dug up and sold often by foreign owned companies, not to mention were selling off our land to countries that are planning ahead or have already having problems with not having enough land to provide food from.
Although I agree with much of what you are saying... Combustion engines should have been outlawed decades ago? What were you going to replace them with? Alternative technology is only just becoming viable now.
Yeah, air travel would have never... yet. Or even space. Without an alternative, we've had technological advances beyond what we dreamed of, the whole time the principle movement of expansion/combustion shapes what we can economically carry out in terms of industrial or commercial activity.
Show me an example I can reasonably afford.
Spewin'.
Just my rolling thought's anyway man, invest in them what you will.
Take it as you will, but in my opinion this does not bode well for the immediacy of the Australian political outlook on climate change and, in the long term, a sustainable future.
Link doesn't work.
I don't get the linking on this site, when pasting it throws in a smiley just after the http, what's the go?
Anyway, just copy and past it for now.
tgf, thats done it to me as well, but my one worked for some reason. :)
Ben sorted one out by taking of the last 2or 3 letters in the pasted link?.... Not so techy on that side tgf.
Anyways an interesting thread about sustainability Zeph, how come phosphorous levels are at a decline!
We live on acreage in the hinterland, own water tanks from storm water off the roof, biocycle that feeds the bananas, and the banana trees are probably 25-30ft tall and absolutely crank nice fruit.( from our own phosphorous in our piss)?...
The main thing for us would be to get solar panels to save extra on the never ending power bill increases. I have been reluctant on getting them as of yet, hoping they develop higher tech ones which also hopefully will become cheaper to purchase.
We don't get full on sun in the winter due to facing west and tall 130ft+ gums shading the North aspect.
Does anyone know of solar panels that work well?.. are they getting a lot more advanced?
That was amazing!
I wanted to share this link to reinforce in people's minds that our society is fucked and we need to change from grass roots to the lower house (throw that fucken house and west minster system out I say). It's not a matter of species evolution, where one goes extinct for another, more adapted species to take it's place. It's a matter of mass extinction and the loss of ecological services that allow life on Earth. Humans have always been ecosystem architects but the scale of our species and its misguided modification of the planet is resulting in trophic structure collapses, as well as the desensitized term 'climate change'. As a student of environmental science, some of my learning is fucking heartbreaking and shocking, intertwined with miraculous stories of life on Earth. One of the biggest concerns to many of my lecturers (apart from CSG mining which we don't hear much about in SA) is the dwindling resource of phosphorus. Phosphorus is one of the main ingredients of human food, in the form of fertilizer and we're running out quick. Peak phosphorus was reached decades ago and as phosphate rock become un-viable to mine, fertilizer companies have turned to seabird and bat manure usually sourced in SE Asia. My waste technology lecturer advocates a relatively simple but confronting solution; we harvest our piss. Human urine contains high levels of phosphorus and extraction is relatively simple. Which meanders me onto composting toilets, and why the fuck are we flushing good nutrients and phosphorus down the drain with precious water? Arrrgh!
Anyways I needed a vent and society's gotta change. hopefully I influence your view a little towards giving up luxury in favour of sustainability. I highly recommend reading through this fact based page and exploring the website a little.
http://theconversation.com/our-sustainability-crisis-didnt-start-and-doe...