on saving the world - from ourselves (rant ahead, feel free to skip)
Which I'm not cutting, dammit, because this is *MY* journal!
I really really really should be working on my final speech, but I really really have no motivation to do so. I mean, I was all psyched about my last speech (it was on Maya and the important of Astronomy in their culture) cause it was all interesting and stuff (even if I did only get a B- on it), but that was just a "Speech to Teach" kinda thing. This final speech is a persuasive speech - worth a good portion of our grade - that I'm doing on the necessity to start depending on renewable resources (such as wind/solar/geothermal/etc) NOW rather than 10, 20, 50 years in the future.
Currently, there is almost *nothing* (and I mean nothing) that isn't effected in some way, shape, or form by our dependance on petroleum and oil - and, guess what? If we keep using the stuff at the rate we're going, our oil reserves will likely run out before the end of the century (don't quote me on that, it's only a guess at the moment, but it's kinda hard to believe how we *couldn't* run out when we consider that every damn thing we make, use, and do leads back to oil and coal. The paper we write on? Created in factories, where the machines require oil to function properly, and than transported all over the country using trucks/trains/and other forms of transportation, which run on gas and/or coal and also require quite a bit of oil to keep them working properly. Buying a bottle of soda? Plastic bottles, which require oil to make (I think?) and, even if they're recycled, oil to fill as they're stuck on those little conveyer belts thingies at the factory which are run by oil or some byproduct of oil and require oil to keep all the bearings and stuff lubricated... I could go on, but I think you get the point.
Anyhoo, while I may know a bit about this kinda thing, and I am quite passionate about it, it's so damn hard to find evidence that would be *solid* enough to use this in a speech to convince people. And, I know you're thinking that dude, you an find tons of stuff on global warming and over use of fossil fuels out there - and yes, you're right... there's tons of stuff, but most if it is by people like me and their opinions. I mean, who the fuck knows who Mark Lynas is and why the hell should they care what the fuck he thinks on the ideas of global warming? In reality, he's the son of a geologists who traveled around the world for *three years* looking for evidence that can be seen *today* of the effect of global warming, and who found enough of it that he wrote a friggin *book* on what he saw! But, to the audience? He's a nobody; someone who they've never heard of, just one of the hundreds of thousands geologists or sons of geologists out there. What about Paul Tolme? Jessica Warden? Timothy Hey? Ring any bells? I doubt it. They're just more nobodies who wrote articles on the energy crisis/renewable energy options at one point or another.
It would be so much easier talking about ancient culture or how astronomy set the foundation for their cultures a subject that we can see, now, in the awesome monuments they left behind - than talking about global warming and all this stuff happening because of it (and all the bloody stupid people who are trying to claim that its not happening, and if it is, it's only a natural shift in the Earth's climate that happens all the time through out history - at least there are and equal or more number of smart people/scientists who have the same "WTF is the matter with you?!" attitude I do. :D ), but which no one wants to believe because we're not the ones who are going to have to deal with the consequences. It will be our children, and our children's children, and I don't want them to grow up in a world where the air is toxic to breath and there are people being killed over oil (sounds entirely too sci-fi and Road Warrior, right? Think back a few years toDesert Storm and the oil wells burning, and it might not be as far fetched you think), but again... that's all in the future; people don't want to start worrying about it now. And, while there are plenty of other energy sources available to us this day and age, money still talks and people will only look to the short-term expenses rather than the long-term benefits and no matter what the fuck I say I know it's only for a grade and I won't be making a fucking difference because MONEY IS THE EVILEST CREATION OF MAN KIND AND WE'RE ALL TO STUCK UP ON HOW MUCH IT WILL COST!
::takes a breath:: ::counts to ten::
Right, yeah... so this is a bit of a sore spot with me. And, I know I'm a hypocrite because, in a few hours, I'm gonna get dressed in my factory-made clothing, get in my gas-guzzling car (well, not really gas guzzler - 1992 Dodge? Colt that gets about 20 to 23 miles per gallon, which is pretty good for a 4-wheel drive car) and drive the 15 miles into town, where I'll go buy me some lunch at a fast food restaurant who put enough grease in their food to keep a diesel truck running for a week (seriously... I saw this on some TV special a few years ago - these two people bought this diesel truck (van?) and go around to the fast food places and use their left over deep fryer grease as 'gas' - and it actually *works*) and than I'll wander off to school and write on all that factory-created paper made from all those trees with my factory-created pencil, reading from books made from paper made from more of those trees, and yada yada, because that's all we *can* do in this day and age because it's what is available to us and how we've learned to live for the past 30 years.
At least I can say we've made a good start in the whole "Saving the World" (from ourselves) thing... I'm proud to say that it's basically illegal to *not* recycle where I live, and plenty of other places around the mid-west as well. We're seeing more recycling bins scattered around schools and places of work (though more would be nice, seeing as the human race is a chronically lazy species who won't often walk the additional 100 feet down the hall to put their plastic bottles in the nearest recycling bin). More trees are being planted to replace those that were cut down 50 years ago, cars are becoming more energy efficient, and gas stations around the country have switched to a useable gasoline source made from corn rather than oil, and - in my family's case, at least - more wood is being used to heat homes (which is a very handy thing to have when the power is knocked out by one of the Midwest's famous ice storms).
So yes, people are taking the first steps. But, dammit, it's not enough, and I know for a fact how helpless we are to try and change that because I've been in this "business" since I was born because my father is one of those people who tried to *sell* the alternate energy sources (mostly wood stoves and propane (which, while still kind a 'fossil fuel', is slightly better for the environment), though he also did the 'energy saving' stuff like window quilt and better insulated windows and stuff. He also tried to spread awareness on alternate sources of energy, like solar and wind, though we never sold any of the systems) - and we had to close our business in town because we didn't have enough customers, which is evidence that not enough people cared or were willing to *listening* to what we had to say. Yes, there were a few... but how can having two customers a day (sometimes 4 if we were lucky) compare to the thousands of people who every day went to other sources for their energy needs? We're just so incredibly outnumbered, and even if people pretend to listen, how often will they actually follow through?
Money talks... And, unfortunately, the alternate sources of energy cost thousands of dollars off hand to buy and install; even if they *are* more energy efficient and will likely pay for themselves within 2 to 5 years, people want *immediate* results, screw the cost differences over time. And often times, my self included, people simply just can't *afford* to give up three to ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat to pay for these things. And it sucks.
And this thing ended up way longer than I planned. Koodos if you made it through the whole thing. I've also wasted an hour and a half of valuable homework time... Damn me and my tendency to talk too much. :)
I'll shut up now.
I really really really should be working on my final speech, but I really really have no motivation to do so. I mean, I was all psyched about my last speech (it was on Maya and the important of Astronomy in their culture) cause it was all interesting and stuff (even if I did only get a B- on it), but that was just a "Speech to Teach" kinda thing. This final speech is a persuasive speech - worth a good portion of our grade - that I'm doing on the necessity to start depending on renewable resources (such as wind/solar/geothermal/etc) NOW rather than 10, 20, 50 years in the future.
Currently, there is almost *nothing* (and I mean nothing) that isn't effected in some way, shape, or form by our dependance on petroleum and oil - and, guess what? If we keep using the stuff at the rate we're going, our oil reserves will likely run out before the end of the century (don't quote me on that, it's only a guess at the moment, but it's kinda hard to believe how we *couldn't* run out when we consider that every damn thing we make, use, and do leads back to oil and coal. The paper we write on? Created in factories, where the machines require oil to function properly, and than transported all over the country using trucks/trains/and other forms of transportation, which run on gas and/or coal and also require quite a bit of oil to keep them working properly. Buying a bottle of soda? Plastic bottles, which require oil to make (I think?) and, even if they're recycled, oil to fill as they're stuck on those little conveyer belts thingies at the factory which are run by oil or some byproduct of oil and require oil to keep all the bearings and stuff lubricated... I could go on, but I think you get the point.
Anyhoo, while I may know a bit about this kinda thing, and I am quite passionate about it, it's so damn hard to find evidence that would be *solid* enough to use this in a speech to convince people. And, I know you're thinking that dude, you an find tons of stuff on global warming and over use of fossil fuels out there - and yes, you're right... there's tons of stuff, but most if it is by people like me and their opinions. I mean, who the fuck knows who Mark Lynas is and why the hell should they care what the fuck he thinks on the ideas of global warming? In reality, he's the son of a geologists who traveled around the world for *three years* looking for evidence that can be seen *today* of the effect of global warming, and who found enough of it that he wrote a friggin *book* on what he saw! But, to the audience? He's a nobody; someone who they've never heard of, just one of the hundreds of thousands geologists or sons of geologists out there. What about Paul Tolme? Jessica Warden? Timothy Hey? Ring any bells? I doubt it. They're just more nobodies who wrote articles on the energy crisis/renewable energy options at one point or another.
It would be so much easier talking about ancient culture or how astronomy set the foundation for their cultures a subject that we can see, now, in the awesome monuments they left behind - than talking about global warming and all this stuff happening because of it (and all the bloody stupid people who are trying to claim that its not happening, and if it is, it's only a natural shift in the Earth's climate that happens all the time through out history - at least there are and equal or more number of smart people/scientists who have the same "WTF is the matter with you?!" attitude I do. :D ), but which no one wants to believe because we're not the ones who are going to have to deal with the consequences. It will be our children, and our children's children, and I don't want them to grow up in a world where the air is toxic to breath and there are people being killed over oil (sounds entirely too sci-fi and Road Warrior, right? Think back a few years toDesert Storm and the oil wells burning, and it might not be as far fetched you think), but again... that's all in the future; people don't want to start worrying about it now. And, while there are plenty of other energy sources available to us this day and age, money still talks and people will only look to the short-term expenses rather than the long-term benefits and no matter what the fuck I say I know it's only for a grade and I won't be making a fucking difference because MONEY IS THE EVILEST CREATION OF MAN KIND AND WE'RE ALL TO STUCK UP ON HOW MUCH IT WILL COST!
::takes a breath:: ::counts to ten::
Right, yeah... so this is a bit of a sore spot with me. And, I know I'm a hypocrite because, in a few hours, I'm gonna get dressed in my factory-made clothing, get in my gas-guzzling car (well, not really gas guzzler - 1992 Dodge? Colt that gets about 20 to 23 miles per gallon, which is pretty good for a 4-wheel drive car) and drive the 15 miles into town, where I'll go buy me some lunch at a fast food restaurant who put enough grease in their food to keep a diesel truck running for a week (seriously... I saw this on some TV special a few years ago - these two people bought this diesel truck (van?) and go around to the fast food places and use their left over deep fryer grease as 'gas' - and it actually *works*) and than I'll wander off to school and write on all that factory-created paper made from all those trees with my factory-created pencil, reading from books made from paper made from more of those trees, and yada yada, because that's all we *can* do in this day and age because it's what is available to us and how we've learned to live for the past 30 years.
At least I can say we've made a good start in the whole "Saving the World" (from ourselves) thing... I'm proud to say that it's basically illegal to *not* recycle where I live, and plenty of other places around the mid-west as well. We're seeing more recycling bins scattered around schools and places of work (though more would be nice, seeing as the human race is a chronically lazy species who won't often walk the additional 100 feet down the hall to put their plastic bottles in the nearest recycling bin). More trees are being planted to replace those that were cut down 50 years ago, cars are becoming more energy efficient, and gas stations around the country have switched to a useable gasoline source made from corn rather than oil, and - in my family's case, at least - more wood is being used to heat homes (which is a very handy thing to have when the power is knocked out by one of the Midwest's famous ice storms).
So yes, people are taking the first steps. But, dammit, it's not enough, and I know for a fact how helpless we are to try and change that because I've been in this "business" since I was born because my father is one of those people who tried to *sell* the alternate energy sources (mostly wood stoves and propane (which, while still kind a 'fossil fuel', is slightly better for the environment), though he also did the 'energy saving' stuff like window quilt and better insulated windows and stuff. He also tried to spread awareness on alternate sources of energy, like solar and wind, though we never sold any of the systems) - and we had to close our business in town because we didn't have enough customers, which is evidence that not enough people cared or were willing to *listening* to what we had to say. Yes, there were a few... but how can having two customers a day (sometimes 4 if we were lucky) compare to the thousands of people who every day went to other sources for their energy needs? We're just so incredibly outnumbered, and even if people pretend to listen, how often will they actually follow through?
Money talks... And, unfortunately, the alternate sources of energy cost thousands of dollars off hand to buy and install; even if they *are* more energy efficient and will likely pay for themselves within 2 to 5 years, people want *immediate* results, screw the cost differences over time. And often times, my self included, people simply just can't *afford* to give up three to ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat to pay for these things. And it sucks.
And this thing ended up way longer than I planned. Koodos if you made it through the whole thing. I've also wasted an hour and a half of valuable homework time... Damn me and my tendency to talk too much. :)
I'll shut up now.