81–90 of 168 posts
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Remember fireflies? They've all but disappeared in cities because of mosquito spraying.
I just moved from California to Tennessee and only recently got to experience fireflies for the first time in my life. They're incredible :) I don't see them in the city, but that doesnt surprise me... there are tons once you leave downtown, though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like growth. I want to be wealthier or be able to work less (which is really just an aspect of being wealthier). I want everybody else to be wealthier too. I want my children to be better off than I am. The problem is growth without care for the consequences. Making some people wealthier at the expense of killing the planet is a bad plan. But I think that it goes too far the other way to turn around and say that gr…
Sustainable growth is an oxymoron. The economy is a dissipative system. It consumes energy/creates entropy to sustain itself. In its current state it already consumes more than the earth/sun can supply. Having it grow even more means consuming ever more energy (fossil and nuclear fuel is finite, the sun light is constant), and generating ever more entropy (i.e. pollution, heat, and ecosystems destruction). Edit: also…
Life is a dissipative system too. It consumes energy and generates entropy. This can’t go on forever, but I wouldn’t take that as an argument against life.
I think nothing will change as long as economic growth is understood as economic Good . Current economy can't work if there's no economic growth. Banks are among the biggest culprits. If banks lend money at a 5% interest rate, their customers must grow their businesses by 5%. A new, sustainable economy is needed. I think about it each time I see the Race for the Galaxy card. I've seen a radical example of this among…
That is the dark side of going back to some mythic close to nature society. It will make inequality many times worse than it is now.
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If the original post had said that population growth needed to be stopped, I'd have agreed with it. But that's not what it said. The whole thrust of that comment and the ensuing conversation is the nature of economic growth. That's not "semantic games," that's a different topic.
I re-read just now and yes, you're right. Sorry about that.
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I just moved from California to Tennessee and only recently got to experience fireflies for the first time in my life. They're incredible :) I don't see them in the city, but that doesnt surprise me... there are tons once you leave downtown, though.
we like to call them "lighting bugs" back here on the east coast ;)
Years ago when I lived in suburban Texas with a typical suburban house with a back yard that had open space behind it I had a terrible insect problem. Exposed skin would get a mosquito bite-per-minute, the dogs were coming inside covered in fleas, etc. So I went to Home Depot and bought this yard spray that promised to kill mosquitos, fleas, ticks, etc. and I hosed down the back yard in a desperate attempt to reclaim…
Remember fireflies? They've all but disappeared in cities because of mosquito spraying.
Years ago when I lived in suburban Texas with a typical suburban house with a back yard that had open space behind it I had a terrible insect problem. Exposed skin would get a mosquito bite-per-minute, the dogs were coming inside covered in fleas, etc. So I went to Home Depot and bought this yard spray that promised to kill mosquitos, fleas, ticks, etc. and I hosed down the back yard in a desperate attempt to reclaim…
Remember fireflies? They've all but disappeared in cities because of mosquito spraying.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like growth. I want to be wealthier or be able to work less (which is really just an aspect of being wealthier). I want everybody else to be wealthier too. I want my children to be better off than I am. The problem is growth without care for the consequences. Making some people wealthier at the expense of killing the planet is a bad plan. But I think that it goes too far the other way to turn around and say that gr…
Sustainable growth is an oxymoron. The economy is a dissipative system. It consumes energy/creates entropy to sustain itself. In its current state it already consumes more than the earth/sun can supply. Having it grow even more means consuming ever more energy (fossil and nuclear fuel is finite, the sun light is constant), and generating ever more entropy (i.e. pollution, heat, and ecosystems destruction). Edit: also…
Years ago when I lived in suburban Texas with a typical suburban house with a back yard that had open space behind it I had a terrible insect problem. Exposed skin would get a mosquito bite-per-minute, the dogs were coming inside covered in fleas, etc. So I went to Home Depot and bought this yard spray that promised to kill mosquitos, fleas, ticks, etc. and I hosed down the back yard in a desperate attempt to reclaim…
We do know how to control insects in ways that only target the insects we actually want to get rid of, and leave everything else alone, but we aren't willing to put in the effort. There are two major categories of ways to kill an insect. 1. Attack it with chemicals that interfere with its biologically processes in such a way that it dies. 2. Physically attack its body causing sufficient damage to kill it, such as by…
For all my insect sympathy and conservation values, I'm absolutely in favor of eradicating the few species of mosquito that bite and carry disease. But every time a pilot springs up to test a method of doing that people get freaked out about releasing "genetically modified mosquitos" into the wild and it never happens. So instead of micro-targeting the pest at the species level we spray toxic chemicals everywhere that 1) don't eliminate the problem and 2) result in a lot of collateral damage.
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