Over the past few months I have been trying to figure out a solution for environmental issues in developing countries (like India where I'm from). Conclusion is, because of the democracy, the change is not possible from inside, some external force has to be there. Here governments take decision for the short term because they have to please the common (& uneducated) men for the next election. Hence the agenda of envi…
I find it insane that the top comment is focused on India. 1) this is a global issue and 2) the US created the template from which other countries are pushing forward. Blaming this in one region or country without calling out the contributions to the problem by the US is nuts.
Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
91–100 of 166 posts
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I say all of this as a thought experiment. But: > Sad thing is, the vast majority of people are oblivious or flat out don't care. I mean, if we're making mental jumps to wiping out billions of people - I'd argue that, does it even matter? Ie, in your example human life largely doesn't matter. Human survival maybe, but clearly not billions of lives. I'm not saying this negatively either, just acknowledging what topic…
> Regardless, I struggle to be emotionally invested in a situation where I decide 6 billion people die. 6 billion people will die. Heck, 7.5 billion will die. Everyone dies. The question is not when, but how, and how do they live their lives. I think we should pursue a solution not of genocide, but one of mass sterilization. We should choose about 100 million people from all over the Earth that will represent the gen…
Jesus, absolutely not.
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#93Callum Roberts wrote
“The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea” in 2013.
Everyone should read it. This article is discussing issues that are not at all new. That we treat it as new information is a symptom of the problem.
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#94If you can't convince Indians not to shit on the streets, good luck explaining to them what throwing plastic bags in the river does to the planet as a whole. With this I'm not saying that Indians will always be dirty, but a loooong time will pass until reeducation is successful, so we have to think of other, more direct (and aggressive) ways.
To anyone reading this, no a billion people don't shit on the streets of India. India is a young democracy bursting at the seams, education is probably the most important challenge it faces right now and my hope is that it alleviates a lot of these issues. To your point about plastic bags, many many people are cognizant of the ill-effects of plastic bags in India. Many of my friends actively try to avoid it. It's jus…
What does being a young democracy have to do with how clean people are? Are you arguing that only people who have lived under a democracy for hundreds of years recognise how important it is not to shit on the streets or fill rivers with rotting corpses and plastic?
Also, I'm not even sure education can fix this. Nature made turds foul-looking and smelly so everybody knows to stay away from them. If Indians can't even act under their most inner urges, that's a whole different problem.
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Coming from someone who agrees with supports environmental initiatives on e.g. plastic management and climate change, I always find it condescending and insensitive when people assume political differences will be resolved by "educating" the other side. It's difficult to know how Indians would behave in an alternate universe where environmental awareness was a higher priority, but I don't find it hard to believe at a…
One of the first things you notice upon visiting developing countries is that household waste is often dumped in very visible places where it tends to spread naturally and easily, including near watercourses used for drinking. With consumer waste it's less the gains of industrialisation (after all, they consume a lot less than us) and more a lack of interest in ensuring it's dumped further away from their homes and w…
[deleted]
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#96We need to get our heads out of our asses. I don't want to be that guy but... we either need to radically change the way we live or 90% of us just need to immediately cease to exist although I'm sure the remaining 750 million people would still find ways to sabotage our planet. 'SHTF' fiction and science fiction often turns to a pandemic wiping out large chunks of the population... that would be bad for you, for me,…
> throw away enough spoiled food to feed every hungry mouth on the planet
In Somalia, we shipped containers full of rice and much of it was stolen by warlords. Yet, if we send troops, you'd scream anti-war. If we don't send troops, the rice gets stolen and people starve.
Perhaps inconsistently, you complain that there are too many people, but then decry us for not feeding all of those people. You complain about carbon footprints, yet somehow, excess food in San Francisco needs to be sent to people in Bangladesh. How does that happen? On a ship perhaps? Maybe sailboats? We'll need refrigeration. Solar? We could shanghai a battalion of fat people to row it across the ocean?
> 90% of us just need to immediately cease to exist
Other than mass murder, what do you propose we do? You're anti-war, so we can't use that to reduce the population. You complain about people starving, so clearly that isn't a means to handle the issue. I'm at a loss. Perhaps mass sterilization of undesirables? I think we tried that a while back and that didn't turn out too well. Birth control? Maybe, but most humans actually want to reproduce and have families.
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I say all of this as a thought experiment. But: > Sad thing is, the vast majority of people are oblivious or flat out don't care. I mean, if we're making mental jumps to wiping out billions of people - I'd argue that, does it even matter? Ie, in your example human life largely doesn't matter. Human survival maybe, but clearly not billions of lives. I'm not saying this negatively either, just acknowledging what topic…
> Regardless, I struggle to be emotionally invested in a situation where I decide 6 billion people die. 6 billion people will die. Heck, 7.5 billion will die. Everyone dies. The question is not when, but how, and how do they live their lives. I think we should pursue a solution not of genocide, but one of mass sterilization. We should choose about 100 million people from all over the Earth that will represent the gen…
You don't think that a forced, mass sterilization is morally horrendous?
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Regardless, I struggle to be emotionally invested in a situation where I decide 6 billion people die. 6 billion people will die. Heck, 7.5 billion will die. Everyone dies. The question is not when, but how, and how do they live their lives. I think we should pursue a solution not of genocide, but one of mass sterilization. We should choose about 100 million people from all over the Earth that will represent the gen…
You don't think that a forced, mass sterilization is morally horrendous?
[deleted]
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#99This is something I have been thinking about (and mindfully being unattached to either side). We know what it's like for society to go through an economic depression and how poverty effects developing countries, and I think it's pretty clear if we start wiping out the economy (which is the core of the problem besides over population) the save the planet, we will create one.
How many jobs exist/created from engineering, manufacturing, selling, marketing, transporting, and managing crap that we don't need? What would the world look like if we wiped out all of those jobs? How will developing countries be affected when their income from manufacturing these products is drastically reduced?
What do we have that replaces plastic for transporting and storing goods/food? Sand (silica?) is expected to become low in supply (e.g. for glass). How many trees would we have to cut down to replace plastic?
Part of me is wondering if the route we are currently taking is the best one, because change will happen gradually, giving us time to adapt. A sudden kick to the balls of our the global economy, on the other hand, would have an immediate, devastating impact; especially on developing countries.
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it insane that the top comment is focused on India. 1) this is a global issue and 2) the US created the template from which other countries are pushing forward. Blaming this in one region or country without calling out the contributions to the problem by the US is nuts.
https://www.dw.com/en/almost-all-plastic-in-the-ocean-comes-...
I’m not disagreeing about the source of the plastic. I’m suggesting that talking about the source of the plastic without also discussing issues such as western oil and chemical companies operating in the regions this plastic is generated ignores fundamental issues such as the undermining of regulatory regimes by these same companies to keep costs down. CO2 has a similar story. India didn’t wake up and come up with this technology on their own. The infrastructure to produce this plastic is in place to supply more than just their demand. This is geopolitical and not purely technical.
Edit: if it was purely technical then god help us given Silicon Valley’s view on regulation.