On climate change

Off Topic
#241

I think you have framed the problem correctly. When did we start to measure the value of our lives and our world in terms of profit and loss? When corporations began to exercise their coup, took over the media, bought government, and taught society to evaluate themselves and every other thing in the world as a corporate venture.

It has the air of 1984, Orwell would have been
appalled to see that if anything he had underestimated the depth of the changes, the intrusion, the way in which the system calls itself upright, moral and reliable. Why do we have disbelief in the news, when the same talking heads who couldnā€™t recognize their own complicity peddling the claims of 6 month nuclear launch capability, and mobile germ weapons laboratories are presenting the new truth?

Corporations have no moral compass, they are just piles of money bent on perpetual growth, an obviously insane proposition. That could also be the mission statement of cancer. Immune systems keep cell growth in check. Government used to do that for corporations. We live in a post moral, post regulation world.

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#242

Very well written Garry! LetĀ“s see if SU can make heads and tails (up/down) of this one :wink:

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#243

Unfortunately this is nothing new. It is a case of failure to learn from history. All you have to do is look back to the super fund clean ups of the 80s and 90s in the usa to see how companies didnā€™t value anything besides profits in the recent past. To go back further look at the business tycoons from the 1920 s that through their greed caused the great depression. If you go back to the civil war era it is even worse for labor. The romantic view of history we have today saids the north fought to end slavery in the south. The reality is that indentured servants in the north where not much, if any, better off then the salves in the south. The revolutionary war was as much about fighting back against extortion, of the American colonies, by companies including the Dutch East India Company. And those are just a few examples of corporate greed over the history of the United States.
The problem in our times has gotten bigger in scale as we have allowed companies to become large multi national corporations. But It is the same old story of greed and the concentration of wealth at any cost.
And now in the USA we have a government that convinced people over regulation of business is the issue. I am still bewildered by how they pulled that off. I guess the super fund clean ups are just far enough behind us to be forgotten or belittled in everyoneā€™s minds. Thus the EPA is now the target of deregulation. I have this gut feeling we will look back on the last 30 years as the era of pushing out industrial pollution from the first world to the third world in the quest for profits.
Now we are at the point where we need to make a choice. Do we bring that pollution and greed back to the first world countries? Attempting to employ our own people while maintaining the same big business greed based economy. Or do we build green environmental sound industries which also protect the rights and wellbeing of the employees. Unfortunately i think the current gutting of the EPA shows that the 1% at the top have managed to come out of the election here in the usa with a government focused on protection of the status quo, protection of big business and greed. I donā€™t mean that as a political attack on any one party if the presidential election had gone the other way I think that government would still be beholden to the same 1% of our population.
So to me it comes back to what can we do to not be part of the problem. Each time one of us supports small local businesses or farmers instead of big corporate enterprises it takes away a small part of their power. Each time we use our own wood, grows our own food or goes off the power grid, it removes wealth from their greed system. This is how we put it back in our own hands. It took decades to build the systrm we have today we wont correct it over night. We have a class economic system in the modern world we just deny and hide it better then in the past.
I personally feel the revolution of our timed against big business and the 1% In power is won not with guns but with a return to small local towns with neighbors who support each others businesses. With a return to self reliance and a reduction of dependence on big business products. We need to learn a hard lesson world wide. Just because a life might be physically easier doesnā€™t make it better.

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#245

I donā€™t want to be a sourpuss, but I feel like thereā€™s an awful lot of talking going on here and not a whole lot of doing things. Nothing wrong with talking about these issues, and this is the off-topic section which is appropriate, but stillā€¦ you guys are preaching to the choir. I think weā€™re all pretty familiar with whatā€™s being discussed.

In the time it took to write this thread Iā€™m sure at least one gasifier couldā€™ve been built.

Not shutting you down, just being a wet blanket. Kind of my job. :slight_smile:

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#246

Building whilst i am reading the talks of others :grin:

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#247

Chunking and DOW-ing while IĀ“m readingā€¦ :grin:

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#248

Donā€™t want to meet you on the road:slight_smile:
Distracted driver

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#249

Boy do I feel schooled. :sweat_smile:
I am designing a CHP (combined heat and power) system that I can build myself this summer as part of going off grid does that get me off the hook a little?
I actually have 2 stirling engine designs I am working on 1 is powered by hot water. The other would be in a specially designed wood stove. Both systems would double for home heating.
I am going to start with the hot water system as I have stuff to start prototyping it with kicking around. If this works I will be putting solar hot water heaters on the barn roof. With a bulk storage tank in the barn. Probably back that up with a wood boiler. I have enough of a plan to actually start prototyping tomorrow. This system wonā€™t be small but I am designing for a 1kw genorator with a design that can easily be scaled up as needed.
Sorry I donā€™t have anything I can really try a gasificer on right now my two gas tractors are just to tight on power to the load I am running. :disappointed:

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#250

Please understand that wasnā€™t aimed at you in particular, it was for everybody on this thread.

Look forward to hearing about your upcoming projects! Going off-grid is a very worthy project.

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#251

I was just teasing in good fun. :smiley:

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#252

2 posts were split to a new topic: Wood Vinegar as fuel

#253

With a nod to Chris, I will try to be brief and not redundant. I have a different take on industry, I think self sufficiency is the best way to go. I think itā€™s a shame that thereā€™s hardly a pair of shoes, cast iron piece, or yard of cloth made in North America any more. Who said concentrating industry in slave countries was efficient? Corporations.

I see dignity in hard work. If the work is dirty, should we export it to places where itā€™s hidden, the public and workforce have no rights, or clean it up and pay properly for doing it right? And if it canā€™t be done cleanly and acceptably, maybe put a stop to it instead of exporting the mess.

Dignity and sufficiency make nations great. Skilled men doing meaningful work should be valued. Without those who make the wheels turn, no amount of boardroom strategizing is worth more than a talk around the bonfire.

Brief example to consider. Vancouver Canada is rated as one of the greenest cities in the world. Almost none of the industry, or wealth generating activity that makes it that way is done there. The city is a notorious Chinese money laundering destination through the stratospheric real estate market, and much of the prosperity and material abundance originates in the dirtiest Chinese factories. So are they green? They made a playground for the rich by externalizing the real consequences of their lifestyle. We are all playing at that game to some degree.

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#254

Well I for one stopped following, reading this topic awhile back.
It bores me.
Just fellows advocating the best way of Top-Down aā€™changingā€™needed.
Screw that approach. Never works. Just flips from one group of earnest Believers to the other. Ha! Like the American two main political parties. Each insisting on you ā€˜afore me - or aā€™gainā€™ me miopia. Ignoring the 3-5 other registered parties. Painting us true hard core Independents as ā€œundecidedā€.

I did decide decades ago to as much as possible to Independently, issue by issue, decide for myself.
Of course human activity is making an impact on the planet. Been doing that long before dug-up, drilled pumped up fossil fuels. Make the Egyptians, Chinese, Greeks, Romans, Gauls/Norse war-makers put all of the trees back they used up and did not replace! Aintaā€™gonna happen. Man impacting climate goes back that far.

Anyone not seeing that this current carbons-hating social/politicalā€™s is not just another power-grabbing ploy is delusional.

The only rational response to the grabbers in your life is to as much as possible, Opt Out!
Here is your line,
ā€œNo Sir. No Maā€™am. Did not ask for this. Donā€™t want it. Donā€™t need it. And couldā€™t afford it if I did.ā€
Raise your own eggs means you optā€™ed out of all of the Big-Agra spin games. Side stepped State ā€œorganicā€ regulators.
Growing,harvesting your own annual heating fuel means you optā€™ed out of the whole Big-Oil, Nuke-electric, green-green Not-natural gas spin game.
Buy used cars, trucks for cash. Opt out of the whole Top-Down financiers spin games.
Use a credit card only as a point of purchase debit card. Always pay off monthly. Better. Just buy pre-paid cards for those Net purchases.
If you have ā€œinvestmentsā€ keeping you trapped stock-markets following distracted, scared. Cash out. I did. Any paper losses you see are just honey traps to keep you stuck in.
ONLY buy into insurances that are ceasar mandated. Insurances are assurances of your bought-in slavery. And if you have to slave away a bit supporting Urban Towers of Power. Slave as slowing as possible, giving them the least input validations.

This means instead of jabber scheming how not to use one single drop of gasoline . . .now, today use less. Tomorrow, use even less yet. I use 1/4 of the gasoline I used just ten years ago. Use 1/2 the Grid electricity I used ten years ago.
Incremental, every week, every year, step by step freeing progress is how you ween yourself to effective Opt-out of Them. And Opt-In for yourself.

Anything else is just crying, bitching, moaning, grandstanding. Furies with no positive results applied to yourself and those daily depending on you.
And if you are not doing all of this for daily use for yourself and yours . . . .you ainā€™t worth spit. Certainly not worth reading.

J-I-C Steve Unruh

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#255

Which is why you want to make the new technology both cleaner and cheaper then what we have. It means you donā€™t have to export the mess, because the cheapest thing to do is also the cleanest. It also means you donā€™t need expensive things like the EPA regulations and superfund sites down the road because the problem has been eliminated. Which is how it results in less taxpayer burden.

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#256

Steve, I for one appreciate your opinions especially because they lack sugar coating. We can spend our days discussing the world problems or we can can put our money where our mouth is. My money only goes to places that are a necessity or locally owned businesses. No more store bought presents from me anymore. I quit that 2 years ago.
We can talk for years that we are going to build a gasifier or we can cut and weld metal and make some mistakes so we actually learn.

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#257

I wish we lived in that ideal world. I see more that we pass off the responsibility to business, who promptly seek the cheapest, least regulated environment in which to carry on their industrial processes, and trade deals to allow them complete access to the rich markets. Generally the deals defer all supervision and regulation to the third world nation, all other parties have to accept their accounts that no bribery or illegal acts or unlawful practices were permitted. Obviously thatā€™s all a farce.

Thatā€™s why I say itā€™s better to recognize the dignity of manufacturing and other so called blue collar jobs. I think people in developed countries can manage so called dirty industries far better than in China, or El Salvador. If they are truly too dirty, stop it, donā€™t export it to places where people and governments canā€™t defend themselves or the planet.

Our technological world is based on heavy industrial processes. There isnā€™t going to be any survivable future in which most folks sit at computer screens designing lithium batteries and the like.

Just on economic principles, communities or countries that do for themselves build wealth and resilience. The neoliberals disagree, because the system they support makes them fabulously wealthy and powerful, but destroys the middle and working classes that made the wealth to start with and gave them the security and opportunities to grow.

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#258

Its not about what we want or what others thinkā€¦

Its all about what we DOā€¦

DOW

The buddhist way of living: Think good, Talk good, but above allā€¦ DO good

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#259

Before we can change the climate, we first have to change ourselvesā€¦

as the Thai say;ā€¦ donā€™t talk, just do itā€¦

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#260

You are right, this has been too much theoretical talk for a site dedicated to doing. But sometimes I think that in order to set out to do effective things you have to first establish which direction to go.

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#261

Ironically, you keep stating the issue, then questioning what to do. One problem is industry makes a mess with cheap industrial processes then they export those processes out to other countries so they have the mess. The -best- solution is to find industrial processes that are cost effective and cleaner. Not an -easy- task but a number of industrial processes have been around for 100 years. We have improved our knowledge in the last 100 years, so it doesnā€™t hurt to try to improve those processes. It isnā€™t an instant fix, but if no one is working towards the goal, it will never get it done.

Now we need to be less reliant on corporations. I donā€™t know if -that- is true as much as we need to have more corporations with products aligned to what we need.

The ā€œneo-liberalsā€ arenā€™t getting rich by sitting on their butts doing nothingā€¦ They are getting rich, because the conservatives want to protect their investments in 100 year old processes, which has opened up a huge opportunities in the market.

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