Saving the planet

[ardcarp]

I’d rather they’d kept the mutuals going to be honest

So do I. Nationwide stuck it out. Good for them , but all their accounts begin with 'Flex-' , so navigating their website means stumbling over the Flexes.

Conifer plantations are often virtually devoid of significant levels of life.

Crossbills like them.....

[oddoneout]

That’s a bit oversimplified. Plantations of mixed deciduous trees develop biodiversity quite quickly. Conifer plantations are often virtually devoid of significant levels of life.

There is also a time scale difference. Conifer plantations are short-term crops, exploiting their quick growth, which is where the claims of higher carbon sequestration come in. Bio-diversity and long term gains are different issues in that context. And no, I am not an apologist for conifer plantations as a means of carbon sequestration. I regard that argument as another bit of the greenwashing industry.

[ahinton]

No. The problem is not too many people - rather, too many rich people, who have a far bigger carbon footprint than the poorest. https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/con...y-consumption/

Also capitalism, which is predicated on continual exponential growth. We need a global socialist revolution whose priorities are strongly green and as vinteuil points out, feminist. It is only in this context that population rise can be seen.

But without massive capitral growth how will all the necessary eco measures be implemented?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

But without massive capital growth how will all the necessary eco measures be implemented?

Yes - agreed, and attempting to deflect the blame will do nothing to solve the problem of ever-increasing population growth. Simple mathematics indicates that this is unsustainable, even with a more just distribution of wealth.

[Joseph K]

But without massive capitral growth how will all the necessary eco measures be implemented?

Struggling to make sense of this question - I can't imagine how the necessary eco measures could be implemented to their fullest extent without a halt in growth. A different economic model is required that breaks from seeing massive capitral growth as a prerequisite for getting anything done.

[Joseph K]

Yes - agreed, and attempting to deflect the blame will do nothing to solve the problem of ever-increasing population growth. Simple mathematics indicates that this is unsustainable, even with a more just distribution of wealth.

I'm interested - just who do you think is to blame for the ever increasing population growth, which as I've already pointed out, is a red herring.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I'm interested - just who do you think is to blame for the ever increasing population growth, which as I've already pointed out, is a red herring.

Anyone who has more than 2 children (though those who have 3 are probably balanced by those who have 0 or 1).

[Serial_Apologist]

But without massive capitral growth how will all the necessary eco measures be implemented?

The fact that large numbers of volunteers are prepared to give of their time to the various conservation bodies to participate in tree planting, patrolling river pollution and clearing debris demonstrates the relatively low costs involved. Taxing companies and fining those that pollute should be made policy. Once trees and shrubs are re-introduced, replacing non-native or otherwise imcompatible and invasive species, ecological management involves low-maintenance and therefore low labour time costs, since it tends to look after itself, only requiring tending for coppicing or pollarding purposes and clearing spaces to allow sunlight penetration to ground levels. Some commercial growers are in the business of cultivating new food crops suitable for conjunction with wild species-rich meadows; farmers are becoming more adaptable to sustainable agricultural practices than the 1960s stereotype of the agribusiness person bent on monocultural prairisation, once encouraged with subsidies and affordable payments from supermarket chains. There is then the matter of "greening the cities" - Detroit being one good example of working class community-based initiatives in edgelands and inner districts long immiserated by statutory neglect and de-industrialisation. These are initiatives providing transitional steps towards developing sustainable production and distribution networks that are less dependent on cross-oceanic import and export trade, along with the re-alignment of global food production to domestic ends congruent with economic self-determination, sufficiency and reduced dependence on western banks and the shareholding merry-go-round. What proportion of GDP has to go towards funding recycling, for example? One would like to know. None of these initiatives would suffer under-investment as a consequence of the shrinking of unnecessary growth directed towards purely money-making, with all the associated artificial surpluses and shortages used to police labour discipline at the expense of meeting primary social and ecological needs.

[Joseph K]

Anyone who has more than 2 children (though those who have 3 are probably balanced by those who have 0 or 1).

See SA's #32, for a reason why people have large families. You accuse me of 'deflecting blame' but as far as I can see you offer no practical solution to nor analysis of this problem beyond repeating the mantra of there being too many people.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

See SA's #32, for a reason why people have large families. You accuse me of 'deflecting blame' but as far as I can see you offer no practical solution to nor analysis of this problem beyond repeating the mantra of there being too many people.

That’s because there are too many people. I’m fully aware of SA’s reasoning. The causes are very real indeed in third world countries. Yet the population of the US has increased massively in my lifetime, and there are so many in the more affluent countries who see having a large family as a badge of honour.

[smittims]

I should say the increasing population-growth is a result of not enough people dying. Death has become such a taboo that efforts have been made to ban it. News media talk of 'saving lives' when really they mean delaying death.

If we hadn't fought coronavirus so successsfully it would have done its job, just as the Black Death did, and the surviving, smaller human race would have been stronger as a result and better able to save the planet.

[Joseph K]

That’s because there are too many people. I’m fully aware of SA’s reasoning. The causes are very real indeed in third world countries. Yet the population of the US has increased massively in my lifetime, and there are so many in the more affluent countries who see having a large family as a badge of honour.

I'm afraid simply repeating something over and over is not enough to convince me of its veracity.

[oddoneout]

The fact that large numbers of volunteers are prepared to give of their time to the various conservation bodies to participate in tree planting, patrolling river pollution and clearing debris demonstrates the relatively low costs involved. Taxing companies and fining those that pollute should be made policy. Once trees and shrubs are re-introduced, replacing non-native or otherwise imcompatible and invasive species, ecological management involves low-maintenance and therefore low labour time costs, since it tends to look after itself, only requiring tending for coppicing or pollarding purposes and clearing spaces to allow sunlight penetration to ground levels. Some commercial growers are in the business of cultivating new food crops suitable for conjunction with wild species-rich meadows; farmers are becoming more adaptable to sustainable agricultural practices than the 1960s stereotype of the agribusiness person bent on monocultural prairisation, once encouraged with subsidies and affordable payments from supermarket chains. There is then the matter of "greening the cities" - Detroit being one good example of working class community-based initiatives in edgelands and inner districts long immiserated by statutory neglect and de-industrialisation. These are initiatives providing transitional steps towards developing sustainable production and distribution networks that are less dependent on cross-oceanic import and export trade, along with the re-alignment of global food production to domestic ends congruent with economic self-determination, sufficiency and reduced dependence on western banks and the shareholding merry-go-round. What proportion of GDP has to go towards funding recycling, for example? One would like to know. None of these initiatives would suffer under-investment as a consequence of the shrinking of unnecessary growth directed towards purely money-making, with all the associated artificial surpluses and shortages used to police labour discipline at the expense of meeting primary social and ecological needs.

There are indeed ways and means and plenty of examples of success.
Then you get the Pacific Trade Deal https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...onomic-benefit at which point I feel completely defeated and overwhelmed again at such a blatant example of "economic" interests over-riding absolutely everything, regardless of harm.

[Joseph K]

I should say the increasing population-growth is a result of not enough people dying. Death has become such a taboo that efforts have been made to ban it. News media talk of 'saving lives' when really they mean delaying death.

If we hadn't fought coronavirus so successsfully it would have done its job, just as the Black Death did, and the surviving, smaller human race would have been stronger as a result and better able to save the planet.

What an unfortunately social-Darwinian world-view. A not dissimilar one that lies behind the hundreds of thousands of deaths linked to Tory austerity - and yet just one of these lives, I would aver, is worth incomparably more than the bankers' fortunes which were made on the backs of those hundreds of thousands of deaths. And it was the same demographic who have been culled by the Tories' catastrophic handling of the pandemic - the frail and elderly. I struggle to grasp, given the state our country is in how these many needless deaths have made the UK stronger.

[french frank]

What an unfortunately social-Darwinian world-view.

I took it as being an objective view of how things are - not how things must be, how (practically or theoretically) they could be changed or why they are like it. That was how I read the post. Darwin and Marx were contemporaries: they both made contributions in their different fields.