41–50 of 81 posts
Meanwhile even a country normally viewed as responsible is cutting down ancient forest to get to the coal beneath. Bit of a double whammy. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/09/berlin-startup...
Meanwhile even a country normally viewed as responsible is cutting down ancient forest to get to the coal beneath. Bit of a double whammy. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/09/berlin-startup...
Man, the arguments I've had with Germans about getting rid of nuclear. It's ridiculous. Instead, now we're incredibly reliant on coal and gas because there's no way we can cover our base load, much less 100% of our energy needs, with renewables. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/l... https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/l... This is incredibly depressing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> using drones to plant 1 billion trees? sigh , more tech. Personally I think humans owe a debt of a little elbow grease here and sitting on the sidelines with a remote control seems a bit soulless and detached. Dirt under your fingernails will teach you a lot. > a country largely devoid of trees. Forests need to bootstrap entire ecosystems, a process that can take thousands of years. It'd be like trying to load an O…
Dirt under your fingernails doesn't scale. If it did, it'd have happened already. We need solutions, not attachment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dirt under your fingernails doesn't scale. If it did, it'd have happened already. We need solutions, not attachment.
Clearly de forestation scaled. We need people to realize they are part of this and it is not some videogame.
Yes, exactly my point. How do you want to fight something that clearly scales with something that doesn't scale?
> We need people to realize they are part of this and it is not some videogame.
Clearly that doesn't happen. Thinking it somehow magically will happen now is IMO foolish. Instead of hoping and arguing for emotional attachment with planting trees, we should be thinking of real solutions, like drones.
Standing in the way of technology is exactly what will kill us, relying on humans has never worked out. Just like with German nuclear power plants (or their lack of, which caused another deforestation in pursuit of coal).
Number one cause for amazon deforestation is cattle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_ra... All the more reason to go vegan.
Meanwhile even a country normally viewed as responsible is cutting down ancient forest to get to the coal beneath. Bit of a double whammy. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/09/berlin-startup...
George Monbiot opines that Germany has never been particularly responsible: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/19/world-...
On the other hand, I'm from East Germany, and the area was a huge dump. very dirty rivers, ash mountains, it was really bad. A few decades later: Mostly paid for by West Germany (due to their still being far less industrial power in the Eat) rivers are actually wonderful. The river through Nuremberg, where I live now, (still?) is dirty and stinks (probably runoff from agriculture) - but the two rivers in East Germany where I used to grow up now have wonderful clean water. The ash mountains were removed, which took thousands of trucks and a few years, there now is new industry in that spot. It is much, MUCH cleaner than before. Similar efforts took place in West Germany in areas where there had been lots of dirty industry and mining. As a student I got to be on an educational tour and was shown a lot of projects, they had achieved incredible improvements in formerly devastated areas.
Also, courts and cities are starting to try to fight pollution by cars, e.g. by placing bans and restrictions on Diesel powered cars, at this point often against the federal government which fears loss of jobs (the great thread from the car industry whenever they are asked to build cleaner cars).
So, good as well as bad in Germany. I think we are way too dependent on the car industry. It's not just the known manufacturers themselves, the amount of directly dependent industry is even bigger. One in seven jobs and ~14% of GDP is in or depends on the car industry (https://www.thelocal.de/20150924/what-the-vw-scandal-means-f...).
Number one cause for amazon deforestation is cattle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_ra... All the more reason to go vegan.
Or don't keep cattle in the rainforest. Not every problem with cattle has to be solved by making an impractical and enormous swing in your life.
Whatever happened with the idea of using drones to plant 1 billion trees? I was in Iceland earlier this year - a country largely devoid of trees. There aren’t any because the Vikings chopped them all down. Despite the cold - however - they do grow there albeit much slower then elsewhere. In any case, it seems to me we could be seeding a lot of barren locations so they’ll become forests within 20 years.