The Whole Picture

[Earth Hart]

Please forgive me if I've posted this before, I've had a look & can't see it anywhere, maybe I need glasses.

The Whole Picture


When I'm moving around the on-line forums of Environmental, Wildlife, Climate Change & Earth Sciences websites, I find folks analysing a particular theme, and never looking at the whole picture. How everything is connected. You may think this is strange but I often visit Stock Exchange sites, to see how global currencies are doing, checking the price of wheat & rice, oil & fertilizer, how's the Yen behaving with the $, all because I'm interested in Earth & Her environments. And I like to know what's making it all work. Or not.

Keeping my eyes & ears open to conflicts around the world. How they are being used by the adversaries on the media & political stage. In all of these conflicts there is starvation & lack of fresh water, & it's going to get worse. For a long time now, I've been saying that with Climate Change there'll be more & more conflicts over food & water.

With food prices rising dramatically around the world because of failed harvests & grain being grown for biofuel & not food, we will see the poor suffer even more than they do now, and with rainfall patterns changing, more drought & floods, making food production even harder for the poor. Now, at long last, the US Intelligence Agencies have done a major assessment on Climate Change, and how it will effect US security. They say that action has to be taken or the security of the USA will be put under severe pressure, as nations around the globe become unstable because of conflicts & environmental disasters. It's a pity no one listened in the '80s, when this was first put forward to the governments of the world. At the time the US government said it wasn't a problem for them. Some joke. A case of “I'm alright Jack”.

Now they're not all right and they know it, but will they get their fingers & heads out & act now, because if they don't, the rest of the world won't either. Sadly, we need the US to take the lead in really cutting back on CO2 emissions & changing their energy production & policies away from fossil fuels. As I've said before, sod the shareholders it's the common people that count, for without their buying power profits will fall.

It is up to us, the Common People, to bring about the change. Hit them were it hurts, their profits. Look at how you shop. Where does the product come, is it local, national, or does it come from half way round the world. Use energy-saving light bulbs & other white goods, sod the dish-washer, you've got hands, do it yourself or get the kids to do it. When not in use, switch off all appliances, don't leave them on stand-by. Every little thing you can do, matters. In journals before, I have mentioned Prof. Eugene Odum, & my meeting with him. Gods rest him. His quote, when being interviewed by a US PBS station journalist who asked him what was the worse case scenario with regards the environment, was...

“He Who Could Do Little, Did NOTHING.”

[Jez]

Holy moly I just watched the zeitgeist movie on Youtube. What an awakening to what is actually going on in the world today, I think everyone should watch this!!

[Hedge Witch]

Well said, Earth Hart. We do all we can in our house. We may have done little, but we've done SOMETHING.

Jez - can you post the link?

[Jez]

YouTube - Zeitgeist - The Movie - 1 of 13 (Introduction)

YouTube - Zeitgeist - The Movie - 2 of 13 (Part 1 of 3 on Religion)

& so on.

[PMG]

Hmmmm....... I've spent the best part of today watching the whole thing and diverting off onto other parts of the debate........... its a frightening subject and it frightens me more to realise that what I suspected happens but could not explain in words - just a vague feeling of wrongness - is actually spot on - particularly with regard to money......... and making it out of thin air or as is now the case making it in computers - just like this one by typing some figures in - any figures and passing it round - astounding

I've particularly watched film and comment on 9/11 too and stealed myself to do it and it also bears thinking about........

I'm not saying that I swallow or believe everything I see, hear or read anymore and I'm not saying that the things I've watched today are not the product of a different kind of indoctrination but its worth dipping into and thinking about ...............

Pauline

[ellen h]

Originally Posted by Jez

Holy moly I just watched the zeitgeist movie on Youtube. What an awakening to what is actually going on in the world today, I think everyone should watch this!!

Agree with you there!
Very thought provoking.....
ellen

[pressld2]

You make some interesting points, Earth Hart, but there are a couple of things I'd like to take issue with...

Originally Posted by Earth Hart

As I've said before, sod the shareholders it's the common people that count

The common people ARE the shareholders. It's not an "us and them" situation, it's just us. This was true even before Thatcherism and the "share-owning democracy". By far the biggest owners of shares are pension funds, banks and insurance companies, and government (both local and national). So anyone with a pension, anyone with an insurance policy, anyone with any savings of any sort (except stuffed under the matress!) and anyone who pays tax IS a shareholder. We all benefit from a healthy economy and we all suffer from an unhealthy one. It's true that some people, mainly the ones who own shares directly, benefit more than others in the good times but they also tend to suffer more in the bad times. It all evens out in the end.

Originally Posted by Earth Hart

sod the dish-washer, you've got hands, do it yourself or get the kids to do it.

That's just plain bad advice. When used properly, i.e. only run when full which is what I do, a dishwasher uses less clean water, less energy and less detergent than washing up by hand.

Dave P.

[badgerwatcher]

As a family who recycle everything, we notice that we use quite a lot of water washing out dog food cans and plastic trays and bottles, so using one resource to save another. Is recycling just a salve to make us feel better?
When I was young, many many years ago, we shopped at butcher's and meat was wrapped in a piece of paper, as was fish from the fishmonger, the grocer wrapped cheese in greaseproof paper, put eggs into the boxes we took back from last week, children took bottles back to the shop to get the coppers for returning them, we took jugs for some things. Vegetables were bought from a greengrocer, and all put into the shopping bags you took with you, muddiest things first.
We respected everything we bought, meat bones were made into soups, kitchen scraps were given to the 'pig-man' or put on the compost heap, even to the dog.
I could go on, I know everyone's sighing, but THAT's what we ought to be doing, instead of putting out bags and bags of rubbish, all neatly sorted into different bags, scrubbed clean.
AND we didn't have disposeable nappies for our babies.
Yes, I know, I'll shut up now.

[Jez]

Originally Posted by badgerwatcher

As a family who recycle everything, we notice that we use quite a lot of water washing out dog food cans and plastic trays and bottles, so using one resource to save another. Is recycling just a salve to make us feel better?
When I was young, many many years ago, we shopped at butcher's and meat was wrapped in a piece of paper, as was fish from the fishmonger, the grocer wrapped cheese in greaseproof paper, put eggs into the boxes we took back from last week, children took bottles back to the shop to get the coppers for returning them, we took jugs for some things. Vegetables were bought from a greengrocer, and all put into the shopping bags you took with you, muddiest things first.
We respected everything we bought, meat bones were made into soups, kitchen scraps were given to the 'pig-man' or put on the compost heap, even to the dog.
I could go on, I know everyone's sighing, but THAT's what we ought to be doing, instead of putting out bags and bags of rubbish, all neatly sorted into different bags, scrubbed clean.
AND we didn't have disposeable nappies for our babies.
Yes, I know, I'll shut up now.

Not sighing at all badgerwatcher! After watching Zeitgeist, I'm left wondering how self sufficient I can be. If alls true, the new world order wouldn't want that.

[svenrufus]

Originally Posted by pressld2

That's just plain bad advice. When used properly, i.e. only run when full which is what I do, a dishwasher uses less clean water, less energy and less detergent than washing up by hand.

This is a bit of an urban myth, the research that came to this conclusion and is widely quoted was done by Bonn university sponsored by..... dishwasher manufacturers!

One key assumption it is based on includes doing three hand washes a day (I do one every day or two), and running a full machine (which many peple don't).

It fails to take into account the embedded energy in extracting the materials to make a dishwasher, its fabrication, transport and disposal. It doesn't take into account the more damaging environmental problems caused by the majority of dishwasher detergents. It doesn't take into account that the water in a dishwasher is heated to much higher temperatures that I would use in a hand wash, so energy use is more comprable than assumed.

The other thing that has a big impact is the way people use things - not jsut running a load half full, but stuff like rinsing stuff before it goes in, and bad stacking leading to stuff coming out dirty and needing rewashing. All these issues need to be factored in for a real world like for like comparison. They weren't so the validity of the findings is highly doubtful to say the least. I am not saying the result was wrong, as there are other issues about the way people do hand washing that need factoring in, but there is no way of knowing on the basis of the research that has been done which is best.

However, this is all a bit of a distraction from the issues that Earth Hart raised at the start of this thread, looking at a holistic vision of the world and the way we live in it. What dishwashers are about, notwithstanding the argument over whether they are better or worse than handwashing, is the drive towards a consumer based society, increasing growth, increasing demands on our environment that eventually it won't be able to support. Hand washing (as a symbol of ones approach to life) is more about slowing down, making less demands of the world around us, dealing with our own messes rather than wanting someone else to sort out the problems we create. Its about taking responsibility, which, with the way things are now, is what we all need to prioritise.