I am so sorry if you've seen this a million times! just make it a million and one
How come people still don't believe that this is a problem that they can help with?
In class today (in french), we read this little article about the looming famines for the world due to overpopulation, stealing crops to make ethanol and biodiesel, inept husbandry, and storm destructions, and we were asked to come up with ideas on how to stave it off, or stave off the fuel crisis.
Some of them were (in english):
limit the number of births worldwide
set gas prices (we talked in american government why this was a bad idea!)
unify the african countries
SUV ban
mine was 'limit consumption of food'. Even today, I tossed away some pizza crusts that had plenty of calories and starches in them. (and I regret it because I'm starving now) Almost every day at the house I toss something like cantaloup hull (fertilizer), rice/pasta (rice, pasta), meat bones (soup stock), plastics (recyclable, made of crude oil), or any chose like that.
It's not a ton, but I am one person out of 350 million fat greedy guzzlin' americans. (we had a nice exposure to our stereotype today, M. Chokri was surprised that we didn't eat hamburgers every day, but also surprised that some of our families had five cars). My 10 grains of rice multiplied by the population of Arkansas is 20 million grains of rice. How many words on freerice.com is that?
There is consumption of everything that is the matter. Wal*Mart puts a ridiculous amount of packaging on products (also other stores. When you buy a USB key, there's easily more plastic on the package than there is making up the thumbdrive)
The printouts we have in class are a huge use of paper. There's about two dozens sheets of A4 lying on the floor right now that I've gotten from class. When are we getting our flexible paper screens ;.; that would be a good use of our packaging plastic!
There's a big cardboard box from last week's pizza that I'm probably just going to toss in the trash because I don't know if my host family is interested in recycling cardboard.
And of course, wastes of gas. My car, which is formidable in terms of mileage in america, is at the low end here in europe. It still compares, but is nothing to brag about. (my car gets about 33mpg or 7.12 L/100KM where m. chokri said his VW ranged from about 5-7 l/100km. btw europeans, that's a really weird way to have a unitxD I don't think physics will let you move a car without using any initial force, but you could concievably roll forever once you got started, so taking the limit of each of the units means mpg is superior notation 8) or something)
But anyways, we had a short discussion after class, and one of the guys said something like 'I'm not a politician, why should I care about this? even if they come up with something they won't be able to implement it for a long time', to which I replied something like 'if we don't at least try to find something, there's no way we can avoid letting some billions of people die' which might be an exaggeration, I don't know, it'd be hard to measure it over a course of decades. and he still wasn't convinced.
Sustainability was something we've discussed a lot this last year in intro to engineering, but I never thought about it in terms of food sustainability. The one time in calculus Dr. Meek wrote a growth formula for the world's population against the number of people someone had calculated it could conceivably support, I was astounded, but instead of using that fact as fuel to make a change, I just kinda got scared and ran away from it and thinking about it.
We don't think much about riots in the US (and probably canada also) because we simply don't see them in our own towns very often. If you have, then you're in the minority. Our paper-waste handouts listed about a dozen cities in the last six months that had had violent riots, and there were several hundred of people listed as injured and not too few who had died. Chokri ruminated about how the young french love to set cars on fire, and he had actually had his burned. When I thought about my sweet efficient silver cavalier reduced to a charred husk, it brought a queer feeling in my stomach.
As it continued, it was made painfully clear that not only have I never experienced violence in my life, but I've never experienced need or lack. I've always had opportunities obtainable on the horizon, reduced to quibbling about social structure or interpersonal relations, other than any threat of survival.
Chokri said something about a time when one could go to Wal*Mart and not be allowed to buy any more than five bags of rice. I had the weird thought 'what if this recession grows into such a huge monster that we won't have any need for food rationing because we won't be able to afford it?'
I don't mean to be a scaremongerer, even though i'm actually pretty scared at the moment[a gunshot had just gone off], but this is something we should be seriously concerned with. it's not sufficient to put a check in an envelope and mail it off before you run to the bathroom to bulemia up your latest meal. and I don't really have a good conclusion to this because there aren't any really, so uh recycle reduce reuse, guys.
Ways that I try to reduce comsumption(not nearly enough):
be a packrat so I have spare parts to use on future projects;
walking/bus riding when going to school
Not driving over the speed limit/a ridiculous amount over the speed limit/driving slightly under the speed limit
writing small/editing papers so I only have to print out 4 whole sheets rather than four and two lines on a fifth.
using the lowest screen brightness and fan settings as possible on my laptop to make the battery life longer
making dad drive my car instead of his big truck or van or the blazer
split meals with stu so that we save money and don't throw away a bunch of food
recycling:
newspapers and school paperwaste, organics for compost, and aluminum cans.
Reusing:
refilling water bottles instead of buying bottled water (this is a bigone imo)
raiding my parents closet for clothes (not very often)
disposable plastic cup = toothbrush cup (for rinsing and holding toothbrush+paste)
While this is an incredibly paltry list, it's still more than a lot of people think to do, yet it's so easy. well, everything except dragging a box full of newly refilled water bottles up to my room at pomfret xD)
Things I should do in future:
buy new watch batteries or bands instead of just new $5 watch ($4 watch and $1 plastic wrapping)
go back for seconds rather than trying to gauge how much I'll eat at buffets/cafeterias
walk/bike to the fayetteville public library instead of driving (it's a little far, but I won't be walking up and down the freaking hill every day so maybe I'll have more energy for my books xD )
buy/mooch used copies of all my books. less publisher royalties, but one could argue that that's their place in the new economy ;o
not using so much freaking toothpaste on my teeth. I've got a good start on that here in france because I'm about to run out of my little tube of toothpaste xD
get a bag to take to walmart/staples/anywhere I want to shop instead of taking plastic ones. (which I do recycle as trashbags at home)
Can you tell how much easier the second list was to make than the first? and they're all pretty much just as easy to do.
Use your power of supply and demand to reduce demand in our american market, lower prices so that 'les pauvres' can better afford it/donate saved food money
Conserve resources so that when the time comes that we do run out of gas, you'll be ready and able to help people freaking out because their cars won't start anymore
tell other people so they can do the same to make a net effect.
In class today (in french), we read this little article about the looming famines for the world due to overpopulation, stealing crops to make ethanol and biodiesel, inept husbandry, and storm destructions, and we were asked to come up with ideas on how to stave it off, or stave off the fuel crisis.
Some of them were (in english):
limit the number of births worldwide
set gas prices (we talked in american government why this was a bad idea!)
unify the african countries
SUV ban
mine was 'limit consumption of food'. Even today, I tossed away some pizza crusts that had plenty of calories and starches in them. (and I regret it because I'm starving now) Almost every day at the house I toss something like cantaloup hull (fertilizer), rice/pasta (rice, pasta), meat bones (soup stock), plastics (recyclable, made of crude oil), or any chose like that.
It's not a ton, but I am one person out of 350 million fat greedy guzzlin' americans. (we had a nice exposure to our stereotype today, M. Chokri was surprised that we didn't eat hamburgers every day, but also surprised that some of our families had five cars). My 10 grains of rice multiplied by the population of Arkansas is 20 million grains of rice. How many words on freerice.com is that?
There is consumption of everything that is the matter. Wal*Mart puts a ridiculous amount of packaging on products (also other stores. When you buy a USB key, there's easily more plastic on the package than there is making up the thumbdrive)
The printouts we have in class are a huge use of paper. There's about two dozens sheets of A4 lying on the floor right now that I've gotten from class. When are we getting our flexible paper screens ;.; that would be a good use of our packaging plastic!
There's a big cardboard box from last week's pizza that I'm probably just going to toss in the trash because I don't know if my host family is interested in recycling cardboard.
And of course, wastes of gas. My car, which is formidable in terms of mileage in america, is at the low end here in europe. It still compares, but is nothing to brag about. (my car gets about 33mpg or 7.12 L/100KM where m. chokri said his VW ranged from about 5-7 l/100km. btw europeans, that's a really weird way to have a unitxD I don't think physics will let you move a car without using any initial force, but you could concievably roll forever once you got started, so taking the limit of each of the units means mpg is superior notation 8) or something)
But anyways, we had a short discussion after class, and one of the guys said something like 'I'm not a politician, why should I care about this? even if they come up with something they won't be able to implement it for a long time', to which I replied something like 'if we don't at least try to find something, there's no way we can avoid letting some billions of people die' which might be an exaggeration, I don't know, it'd be hard to measure it over a course of decades. and he still wasn't convinced.
Sustainability was something we've discussed a lot this last year in intro to engineering, but I never thought about it in terms of food sustainability. The one time in calculus Dr. Meek wrote a growth formula for the world's population against the number of people someone had calculated it could conceivably support, I was astounded, but instead of using that fact as fuel to make a change, I just kinda got scared and ran away from it and thinking about it.
We don't think much about riots in the US (and probably canada also) because we simply don't see them in our own towns very often. If you have, then you're in the minority. Our paper-waste handouts listed about a dozen cities in the last six months that had had violent riots, and there were several hundred of people listed as injured and not too few who had died. Chokri ruminated about how the young french love to set cars on fire, and he had actually had his burned. When I thought about my sweet efficient silver cavalier reduced to a charred husk, it brought a queer feeling in my stomach.
As it continued, it was made painfully clear that not only have I never experienced violence in my life, but I've never experienced need or lack. I've always had opportunities obtainable on the horizon, reduced to quibbling about social structure or interpersonal relations, other than any threat of survival.
Chokri said something about a time when one could go to Wal*Mart and not be allowed to buy any more than five bags of rice. I had the weird thought 'what if this recession grows into such a huge monster that we won't have any need for food rationing because we won't be able to afford it?'
I don't mean to be a scaremongerer, even though i'm actually pretty scared at the moment[a gunshot had just gone off], but this is something we should be seriously concerned with. it's not sufficient to put a check in an envelope and mail it off before you run to the bathroom to bulemia up your latest meal. and I don't really have a good conclusion to this because there aren't any really, so uh recycle reduce reuse, guys.
Ways that I try to reduce comsumption(not nearly enough):
be a packrat so I have spare parts to use on future projects;
walking/bus riding when going to school
Not driving over the speed limit/a ridiculous amount over the speed limit/driving slightly under the speed limit
writing small/editing papers so I only have to print out 4 whole sheets rather than four and two lines on a fifth.
using the lowest screen brightness and fan settings as possible on my laptop to make the battery life longer
making dad drive my car instead of his big truck or van or the blazer
split meals with stu so that we save money and don't throw away a bunch of food
recycling:
newspapers and school paperwaste, organics for compost, and aluminum cans.
Reusing:
refilling water bottles instead of buying bottled water (this is a bigone imo)
raiding my parents closet for clothes (not very often)
disposable plastic cup = toothbrush cup (for rinsing and holding toothbrush+paste)
While this is an incredibly paltry list, it's still more than a lot of people think to do, yet it's so easy. well, everything except dragging a box full of newly refilled water bottles up to my room at pomfret xD)
Things I should do in future:
buy new watch batteries or bands instead of just new $5 watch ($4 watch and $1 plastic wrapping)
go back for seconds rather than trying to gauge how much I'll eat at buffets/cafeterias
walk/bike to the fayetteville public library instead of driving (it's a little far, but I won't be walking up and down the freaking hill every day so maybe I'll have more energy for my books xD )
buy/mooch used copies of all my books. less publisher royalties, but one could argue that that's their place in the new economy ;o
not using so much freaking toothpaste on my teeth. I've got a good start on that here in france because I'm about to run out of my little tube of toothpaste xD
get a bag to take to walmart/staples/anywhere I want to shop instead of taking plastic ones. (which I do recycle as trashbags at home)
Can you tell how much easier the second list was to make than the first? and they're all pretty much just as easy to do.
Use your power of supply and demand to reduce demand in our american market, lower prices so that 'les pauvres' can better afford it/donate saved food money
Conserve resources so that when the time comes that we do run out of gas, you'll be ready and able to help people freaking out because their cars won't start anymore
tell other people so they can do the same to make a net effect.