Oil Spill Outrage

[Clevis Hitch]

am I green: let me count the ways.

My only home is a "recycled" FEMA trailer. I use less than #10 propane a month. I commute 180 miles instead of 380. All of my lights are L.E.D.s. I have a garden that supplies all of my vegetables and we are currently dehydrating zuccini( its with this hot rub and it is so delicious!) Next week we start on the tomatoes. I have sweet corn,Cucumbers,green beans,carrots,summer squash,jalapenoes,habanjeros,bell and bannana peppers. Eggplant and pumpkins. We are looking at starting a micro-brewery and I just traded some of my guns for a bow. I have canned deerburger left from last year and last year when I went hunting I harvested,slaughtered out and preserved/canned/jerkied 4 deer.

This week I am hunting groundhogs. My Memaw says they make the smoothest gravy. You parboil the meat then pan fry it and one of them dressed out looks,"just like a hog". Gotta love Memaw.....

[anticlmber]

damn dude, my mouth is waterin.

[Clevis Hitch]

you wanna try some groundhog gravy?

[pigsteak]

anti, that is my issue..I am not pointing fingers at others, but trying to collect ideas...

I go the Red every chance I get..I KNOW I am not taking this serious. I would rather climb than give up something. I know that about myself..I feel bad and selfish, but not enough to make real change. I recycle at home, but to me that seems like tokenism...

I turn off lights, brush my teeth with salt, etc....

but are we only cutting out the things that are convenient, and not really sacrificing? Tell me one major thing any of you have sacrificed in the past year to reduce oil useage...major in that it hurt your lifestyle.

For me, I have nothing. That makes me guilty. Call it black and white, but with out absolutes people are going to continue to abuse without real change.

It is like social security..the thing is going bankrupt, but everyone has the "get mine"mentailty...sadly, it will be gone in 20-25 years from now, and most of us will never see a dime....

I am not out to make folks feel bad....I honestly want to hear if you are making a difference, and if not, why? I am not because I am selfish and love my "stuff"...

[lena_chita]

Am I willing to give up climbing in order to reduce oil consumption -- NO. But I am willing to pay more for the priviledge of climbing if doing so woud help the environment.

As far as a small reduction in consumption "not counting" because it is small and not a painful sacrifice -- I don't agree with that. Small things add up.

I do a lot of small things. Yes, recycling, bringing my own bags to store, using energy-efficient lights and appliances, clothesline instead of a drier whenever possible, using hand-me-downs instead of buying new, reusing plastic bags when I do get them from somewhere, minimizing the use of paper towels, ziplock bags and other disposables, keeping the thermostat low in winter and high in summer, carpooling, combining trips, living close to work, buying local and organic food directly from farmers whenever possible, composting, etc, etc.

It may be all small stuff, but when I look around on garbage pickup day, most people around me have the trash cans overflowing every week, and often more than one of them full, while I can go for several weeks and not fill up one modestly-sized garbage can. It does add up, for sure.

[bcombs]

3, it's a magic number. Yes it is. It's a magic number.

My son loves that song.

[Izzy]

The alternative to fossil fuels is out there, in the mind of some future genius and hero of our generation. It's like buggy whips and whale oil: no matter the size of the industry and infrastructure, superior technology always overcomes. In the mid eighteen hundreds the industrial revolution would've sounded like science fiction. Carnegie and Rockefellar were the Bill Gates' of their time, revolutionizing and inventing technology as they went along, building a new world (and making billions of dollars in the process).

The same thing will happen again, but only when the tech is, in reality, superior. Wind and solar are not, hydro-electric isn't either. Nuclear is, but not on a small, mass production scale. When a real alternative comes along, there will be no stopping it whatsoever.

[Clevis Hitch]

The problem with what you are saying is , " The law of conservation of matter"

You can't get more out of something than what there is. And for the record. That is what the definition of IS is.

Petroleum is a huge "bank ccount" of energy that the world has saved up over billions of years. All conventional energy on earth can be directlylinked to the sun. We can call one of these energy units a "solar year". So we have billlions of solar years saved up in our non-renewable natural resources i.e. coal/oil. We are burning through this bank account like drunken sailors(apologies to the Navy).
I think this is where all of the inarticulable "hippy guilt" come from. The "hippies" don't know where to go but they definatly know we are going in the wrong direction. The smarter of the lot have realized how local grown food and non-GMO (Thats some scary shit...You should read up on it!) is just a smarter way to conduct business.

Given all this about the value of a "solar year" you should realize that you aren't going to be able to create a more efficient battery or "solar energy collector" than what is already present( no need to recreate the wheel). Totally renewable, Organic, Carbon negative wood/vegetable matter. Think of it like this.You grow a bean in 1988. You store that dried bean for 20 years. You then take that bean.Rehydrate it and cook it and eat it. Your body will harvest the same amount of energy from the stored bean as fom the dehydrated/rehydrated bean. Now thats effieciency!
Rebuttal:

[Izzy]

Interesting, and very good point. My response is more of a question than a rebuttal: How does nuclear energy fit into your formula? You can run a nuclear aircraft carrier off a pick up truck full of uranium for roughly 20 years without giving off any atmospheric pollutants. Seeing as how said aircraft carrier uses roughly the same amount of electricity as a city like... Seattle, how does that figure into your solar year equation? I'm no expert, but I don't think you could do the same thing with a de-hydrated bean.

I'm not big on the premise that we're "going in the wrong direction" with fossil fuel, but if there is going to be an alternative that takes hold, it will be because we've found a cheaper, more efficient way of harnessing the energy around us.

[Clevis Hitch]

In the future, landfills will become goldmines.

The big problem with plastics is this; misuse. I'm not necessarily against plastics. They have their place. What I'm against is ephemeral plastics. Single use plastics are a gross misuse of a limited resource. Ropes and climbing gear don't fall under this definition. They are multiple use plastics that in the end can be recycled, I think patagonia has a recyclye program for underwear.
Single use plastics like walmart sacks and plastic spoons. All of the packaging products that are used to overwrap and present a product.
Plastics have their place but they are seriously misused by comsumers and industry.
Now a big thing I would like to see happen is some sort of uniform container program. Like mayonaise jars that you can actually use to home can with.
Imagine how much energy we could save if we made it mandatory for industries that fabricate a product to pack it in uniform containers. These containers can be reused. No more energy needs to be used to remelt and refabricate a packaged container.
This could be worked out. easy. Imagine the energy we'd save.