Satireday on Eco-Crap

Monday Moaning

What is it with man?

Must we destroy everything?

It seems that we must. Man is hell bent on destroying everything in nature.

We are literally shitting in our own nest!

Here’s just one more pathetic example.

A nightingale sings – but not for much longer if housebuilding drive wipes out its haven

Campaigners fear disaster for the endangered songbirds if a plan to build 5,000 homes on a breeding site in Kent is given green light

The nightingale has suffered a 90% reduction in numbers. Photograph: Alamy

It is revered for the beauty of its song and is a beloved adornment to the British countryside. But the nightingale – hailed by Keats as a “light-winged Dryad of the trees” – is now in trouble, having suffered a catastrophic drop in numbers in recent years.

Even worse, say ornithologists, the best site in Britain for protecting the songbird – at Lodge Hill in Medway, Kent – is under threat of destruction. Its loss, they say, could deal an irreparable blow to the nightingale in this country. It could also open the floodgates to commercial exploitation of hundreds of other protected environmental sites across the country.

“Lodge Hill is the only Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in the UK that is specifically set up to protect nightingales,” said Sarah Lee, of the RSPB. “It is the most important site for the birds in the UK. Yet the local council want to build 5,000 homes there. It would absolutely destroy the site and the birds’ homes – and send a very worrying signal about the prospects of protecting other critically important sites in the UK.”

According to ornithologists, the nightingale has suffered a 90% reduction in numbers over the past 40 years. Factors involved in this population crash include the intensification of UK farming that has destroyed swaths of sandy scrubland on which nightingales like to breed, while the spread of human populations in West Africa, where the nightingale spends the winter, has also affected numbers. In 2012, a survey revealed there were only 3,300 breeding pairs left in the UK. The bird is now on the amber list of species of “conservation concern”.

In an attempt to protect the nightingale, the Lodge Hill site – a piece of land once owned by the Ministry of Defence – was named as an SSSI, a place where local species are given special protection against human interference.

However, three years ago, Medway council prepared plans to build 5,000 homes at Lodge Hill, a proposal that was approved by its planning committee in September.

Source: TheGuardian Read more

Opinion:

We are at fault; yes, you and me because we vote for these stupid people. We often vote without thinking, we don’t know enough about the candidates, we believe all the pre-election bullshit that pours from their filthy mouths.

Voting should be taken more seriously. We should investigate the candidates thoroughly.

Councils and other governemtn bodies are too keen to rubber stamp projects without considering the ramifications.

Change the World Wednesday – 20th Aug

Water

Water has often been the subject on CTWW, it is a valuable commodity, one that we need to survive; without water any man, community or country has three days before they are dead. That makes it a tad more than important.

The first world take it for granted, you turn on the tap and cool clear water comes out; right?

Well, I have always subscribed to this theory, and even though I have spent the last 22 years in third world countries that has generally been true in urban areas aslo.

Until now.

In the last two months I have suffered two serious bouts of Montezuma’s Revenge.

Not funny. In fact, it’s enought to give you the shits.

Both bouts stretched over eight days, with terrible cramps and diarrhea.

The common denominator, drinking tap water from my kitchen tap. There is obviously a problem with my roof tank that I have to get seen to.

Now I am pretty ‘water conscious’. I conserve water (three-minute showers, etc), I save water (rain), I reuse water (grey water).

I drink sparkling mineral water in place of soft drinks (soda) and commercial fruit juice. I won’t have them in the house because they pure poison and one of the greatest causes of obesity. Here’s a thought, did you know that Zero Coke is more fattening that normal Coke?

20 litre (5 gal) carrafes

To combat this problem, I have had to restort to buying my water.  I hate the thought of buying a comodity that should be free.

I have always been against buying water, unless it is sparkling mineral water.

But recently, with my own experience of swtiching to sparkling mineral water, I have begun to wonder that water may well be a healthier buy than soft drinks full of poison.

I am buying 20 litre carrafes that are returnable, rather than single serve or 1.5 litre bottles. So even with my current dire needs, I am looking out for what is best for the planet.

Hopefully, I can resolve this problem in short time.

This is an abomination!

I am, however, totally against water being bottled, trucked, shipped and flown from far flung places around the globe like Fiji Islands to satisfy the need for consumer sales.

“The natural artesian water from FIJI Water comes to you straight from the isolated and idyllic Fiji Islands without ever being touched by man.” – advertising blurb.

This commerce needs to be banned. It is an abomination. Especially when you know that Fijians from Viti Levu (the second largest of the Fiji Is) are denied this water for themselves. The source for this water is guarded by barbed wire and heavy security.

A note for Americans… Obama drinks it. So where is his commitment to water?

Now the good news. Since I have switched from soft drinks to sparkling mineral water, I have dropped 15kgs (30lbs +/-), two jeans sizes and added two new holes to my belt. So if you are serious about losing weight, stop drinking soda and commercial fruit juice!

Click the banner for the full post

This week’s CTWW is a stinker thinker, Population.

This week, let’s open up the discussion on population as it affects the environment. Please leave a comment and/or write a post about your feelings on the topic. You might discuss if, in your opinion, our growing population is a concern. Perhaps talk about such things as the earth’s ability to support growing numbers of people, or if the number of children we have should be regulated (and if so, by whom). While religious considerations are often a factor in a person’s decision to have children, let’s keep this discussion environmental in nature. Let’s take an honest look at the environmental affects of population growth.

 Oh boy, does this open a can of worms.

The world’s escalating population has been among my thoughts for many years.

First of all we have to realise that our dirtball planet does not have infinte resources.

Since the advent of the industrial revolution, we have adopted an attitude of dig & destroy. The more people there are on Earth the more we dig deeper and destroy more.

We have become a consumer society, the more people, the more we consume.

This is a big problem!

More than a year ago I read, link to source is long lost, that the planet has the resources to support a constant population of 500 million people.

But the population is not constant, it is ever increasingly growing, and currently stands a 7 billion.

Now, you do the math. That’s 14 times the population than the planet can support.

We are exhausting planetary resources like never before; and something’s got to give.

And, it won’t be the planet, it’ll be us!

So what’s the problem?

Births – no. Mother Nature designed life that way. She knows what she’s doing.

So don’t talk about controlling the number of births.

The problem is US!

We have medicine.

That’s the problem!

Not enough people are dying.

People are living longer, longer by many years than Mother Nature intended.

Australopithicus

Let’s go back in history a little… okay, a lot.

Stone Age man, Neanderthals, Australopithicus. They didn’t live much past 20 years. In the ensuing years we have got religion, life became sacred, we learned how to improve our lot and have extended life to 70+ years. That’s 50 more years than we were designed to live. That’s 50 more years of using the planet’s resources. Each person is using 2½ times his allotted resources.

Ancient civilisations knew that populations had to be controlled. Think of the mass sacrifices of peoples like the Maya and Aztecs. Prehistory shows us that people who didn’t contribute to the tribe were eliminated; remote Eskimos still do this, “Oops, he fell in front of a polar bear.” For how much longer? We are running out of polar bears.

In our hankering for longevity/eternal life, we have created a problem. It’s a problem that has no solution. At least not with our current technology.

This planet is too small.

We need to get off it, and go somewhere else. But that’s not feasible. Only a few selected will ever get off this planet, if ever. The problem will still be here.

Can you imagine what the Earth’s population would be if we didn’t have natural disasters, man-made disasters, famines, epidemics and the like?

The numbers become absolutely staggering.

We would have made ourselves extinct years ago. We wouldn’t be here! The planet would have already exhausted itself.

Most of you, especially those who are afflicted by religion, will find some of these ideas unpalatable, but the truth is often a bitter pill; our social conditioning makes it so. We can’t see outside the box of our upbringing. As long as this is the case there is no solution and the problem just gets worse.

Sometime ago I posted a satirically glib comment. “Legalise all drugs and let natural selection take over.” Now that sounds terrible. We are intent on saving people. Maybe we need to think about that some more.

Deforestation on a grand scale for more crops

Meanwhile, we’ll continue to dig more holes in the planet, to mine more minerals; we’ll keep pumping hot house gases into the atmosphere as we burn fossil fuels; we’ll continue to reduce the forests to create more pasture and farmland for crops; we’ll continue to pollute the waterways, we’ll continue to deplete and damage the oceans; we’ll continue to poison the land with chemicals from agriculture and fracking until there is nothing left.

I hear people shouting “become vegetarian, save the planet!” But the outcome is the same.

Then what?

WE are making US extinct, a long suffering extinction.

How long before we begin to fight our neighbours for, or to protect our food and water?

The social consquences for humanity are dire. We need to think outside the box, to put practicalities first and our fragile sensibilities on the back-burner, however distasteful that may seem.

I am just glad that I won’t be here to see it. In all probability, neither will you. But what legacy are we leaving our children and our children’s children? Will there, in fact, be a legacy?

Pandora’s Box

I did say that this was a stinker.

Pandora’s Box has been opened, even though historically it was an urn, and the evils of the world are afoot.

Can we ever put them back?

Meanwhile, I will continue to do my little bit in the ever frustrating hope that the planet can be saved. I’m not doing it for me, my time is nearly over; but I have raised 13 of the next generation, and they have started with seven of the next and one of them is ripe to begin the next.

I shudder to think. Will their choices be even more difficult? While I am talking about letting people die naturally which is repugnant; will they be talking about culling?

The horrors are unimaginable.

Satireday on Eco-Crap

Bipedicus Destructicus

Reblog from: Violet’s Veg*n Isn’t that Earth?

Click on the above link and follow the subsequent posts… A good story.

Satireday on Eco-Crap

Brazil President Rousseff vetoes parts of forest law

Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said the vetoes would protect the environment

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has vetoed parts of a controversial bill which regulates how much land farmers must preserve as forest.

Among the 12 articles which President Rousseff rejected is an amnesty for illegal loggers.

Brazil’s farmers’ lobby had argued that an easing of environmental restrictions would promote food production.

Environmentalists oppose the law, which the say will lead to further destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

The bill was approved by the Brazilian Congress a month ago. Environmentalists had urged President Rousseff to veto the entire bill.

President Rousseff rejected 12 articles from the bill and made 32 modifications to the text.

The exact details of the revised document have not yet been made public, but Brazilian Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said the government wanted to avoid diminishing protected areas of the Amazon and other sensitive ecosystems.

The version of the bill passed by the Brazilian Congress last month would have allowed for huge areas of the country, which had been illegally logged before July 2008, to be opened up to farming.

It would also have allowed farming closer to riverbanks, which are especially vulnerable to erosion if trees are chopped down.

Officials said Ms Rousseff had rejected the article dealing with the riverbanks, ensuring their continued protection.

At a news conference, the ministers for the environment, agriculture and development said the president had struck a balance between preservation and sustainable development.

Source: BBC News Read more

Opinion:

Dilma Rousseff has shown a presence of mind over this matter. The proposed legislation was indeed dangerous, totally flawed, totally unreasonable. There were many direct threats contained it that endangered the Amazon. The destroyers must be held accountable.

Hopefully, the revised law will be accepted by the government.

The battle is not over yet.

Change the World Wednesday – 14th Mar

This challenge cannot wait for my round up next Wednesday. But, having said that, I am not sure that I can do justice to what I have to say.

War has been with us since the dawn of mankind

War – is surely the greatest blight on humanity that exists, there is none greater.

War is, without doubt, the most resource hungry, wasteful and polluting activity that mankind indulges in.

I’m going to ignore the political machinations of war, the reasons behind wars, the people who declare war and the minions that are sent to fight them because much has already been written by better people than I. I feel I could hardly add anything new, relevant or further; so I won’t even try.

But in all our talk of the environment, ecology and the ‘greening’ of the world, we continue to ignore war.

We are like the ostrich, we bury our heads in the sand and say “What?” as though we have absolutely no idea what the question was.

Reduce Footprints’ Lenten CTWW series has done a great service simply by adding this challenge.

War is harmful, costly and opposed to life in so many ways that its obviousness as a threat to a sustainable Eco-system makes it at once redundant to state and easy to overlook. Advocate for peace today by any life-affirming means which feels right to you. To learn more about the specific harm to the Eco-system caused by war, please see http://www.lenntech.com/environmental-effects-war.htm and http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/588.php

Most people are insulated from the war/s. They are something that happens over…. there. They are not a part of our repertoire, unless we have family who are militarily involved. The government deals with wars, we the people do not. We do not see the waste, the spending, the pollution and the death involved in wars. We do not see the raw materials that we waste simply so we can blow the other man further towards hell than he can blow us.

Most of us have seen films, Good Morning Vietnam (yes, war does have humour) and Full Metal Jacket (yes, war has pathos). We see these spectacles and laugh or cry along with the clowns and the heroes, but we do not see the cost of war.

The cost of war, historically, has always been measured in human lives. But while death is a terrible aspect of war, we do not see the real physical costs. The current round of conflicts in the Middle East are the first that we have really seen war monetarised in billions and trillions of dollars. But this is still not the real cost of war. The real costs are the resources that we are stealing from the planet, the pollution that we create and the carbon footprint of war.

How does that measure against a cow fart?

Greenhouse gases; we complain about the fact that cows burp and fart when we raise them for meat; that our cars emits carbon monoxide as we drive to work and the supermarket; we complain about coal-fired power stations and industry belching these gases into the atmosphere. But has anyone bothered to complain about the gases produced every time an infantryman fires his rifle, every time a hand-grenade explodes or a tank fires its murderous cannon? Do we complain about the jet exhaust of the fighters overhead, or the exhaust of the supply tucks that rumble along the war zone highways to take more gas producing weaponry to the front line? Do we complain about the need for air conditioning/furnaces on bases to keep the troops cool or hot? Has any one ever suggested to the military turn down your air conditioning/furnaces a notch to save power?

These are the costs of war. They don’t only affect the military, they affect every living being on the planet; whether they are at war or not.

Most discerning people declare themselves to be green, to some or other degree. We see some excellent examples of people really trying, you only have to browse amongst those that visit Reduce Footprints leaving their Meet & Greet Monday and blogs of a similar ilk; they are there, you can see them.

But we all sit back in our recliners, with our air conditioning/furnaces turned down a notch and the clean air filters, we look at the world through our double glazed windows, admire our ‘green car’ on the drive way, that we drive to the farmers’s markets for organic produce, knowing that we don’t have wasteful and poisonous products in our cleaning armoury and our rubbish is all nicely separated for kerbside recycling, we gloat over our beautiful gardens made all the more beautiful because we compost and produce our household veges. The world is wonderful, we are ‘green.’

But how green really?

Answer this question:

What have you done to prevent/avoid/diminish/eliminate war?

If you answer a meek “nothing!” Then you’re not as green as you thought you were. Your silence, your apathy makes you implicit in allowing war to continue;makes you implicit in adding to the greatest destroying, polluting, wasting activity of mankind.

Does that hurt?

I hope it does. Have you ever heard the saying “The truth hurts”? Well, it does.

How can you help? Write to your congressman, blog, make people aware of the true cost of war. A simple act can relieve your conscience and help make the world a better place. I post, or repost information on the world’s military infractions almost daily, not here, but I do it to make people aware of the insidious side of our world, it’s what I can do, so I do it; and you can too.

If you haven’t read the links in the original challenge, go and read them now, they will open your eyes.