Fragments From Floyd

I like the adage "think globally, act locally." Skip MacDonalds - one less unit of demand for economoically grown beef; keep furniture longer - less logging for the exotic woods; and on and on. We've seen the enemy, and the enemy is us.

And for the undercafinated question of the morning... instead of/or in addition to marking a product as recylclable, how about marking whether its production was bio-friendly?

Ahh, my friend, the White Rabbit lurks in the minds of many of us. We were going to save the world, remember? Peace, love and the American way. A global family of weavers and farmers and teachers. At least you achieved the last part of the equation.

I think you are passing the baton well. This side of 50 is strange, no? (I am assuming we are of similar age.)

You sing of JA, and I have the Byrds, with a little help from the book of Ecclesiastes,
playing for me this morning:

"To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose, under heaven"

You need a vacation!

it comes to us all, this sense of almost-despair. like running as fast as we can around the lip of a vortex, fighting the gravity trying to suck us down into the gaping abyss! we can only all do so much, and so many don't even do that... it may just be the time to do what we do and chill, because sooner or later there'll be another big shake up in the ways of the world as we know it, and whether or not man'll make it through that is debatable - only i haven't the energy to debate it. try chocolate, enjoy the weather, take a sense of pleasure in the growing minds about you and know that you can't take it all one single-handedly.

That's an interesting question! Sounds like you're on a pretty balanced diet though. :-)

None of my female friends (50-ish with careers - nurses, real estate, artist) read or watch the news at all because they feel they can't do anything about it anyway, so why trouble themselves so? No newspapers, no local news (if they can help it), no CNN. It seems to work well for them! They go about life seemingly without a care. It doesn't bother them that plain common sense has nearly been litigated and legislated out of our lives - but it bothers me. It's bad for my health, they feel, and they've repeatedly advised me to stop watching the news (which I can't do) and live a longer, happier life.

So who's right? Ignorance really IS bliss. I've seen it with my own eyes.

That IS a good question.

I think, although I'm not sure, that the original saying was "The Truth it Hurts. Ignorance is Bliss." Over time each sentence came to stand on it's own. I've heard the entire quote in very old Celtic songs.

I think that sometimes, we're a victim of our own "Big Picture" philosophy when it comes to how we approach environmental philosophy. People talk, talk, talk about how awful it is that the current administration seeks to set down pipelines in ANWR..... Or, gosh darn, why doesn't the administration sign the Kiyoto Agreement, and on and on. We talk endlessly about big picture issues, and talk, and talk, and then talk some more. However, how many of us finally stop, assess our immediate surroundings and determine how we can, each day of our lives, leave our little corner of the world better off then we found it?

Here are some examples: How many of us have a modern energy efficient lightbulb in every light socket in our house? How many are organizing a glass recycling campaign if our county recycling doesn't take it? How many of us are rooting out invasive non-native plants that are disrupting the balance of our ecosystem? How many of us stop on the road when we see a turtle crossing the road, pick him up and set him down at a safe harbor on the other side of the road? How many of us join a civic organization and help keep our roadways clean? How many of us are members of our local Ruritan Club? How many of us even know what the Ruritan Club is? How many of us know how many animals were displaced when trees were cut down to make firewood for our fireplaces? How many of us spend less money on conveniences and spend a little more on upgrading our HVAC systems to cleaner modern alternatives? I can tell you that I've got ALOT of work to do to live up to the standards I've described.

Economically grown beef? I assume you mean giant farms who have an eye on the bottom line? My own life experience, that of living on a 1,000 acre farm in Vermont, that began as a 250 acre farm and grew, is that bigger is better when it comes to farming. In almost every environmental aspect. Huge farms are easier to regulate. Huge farms have modern cleaner burning equipment, and they have more resources to dedicate to efficient farming. Would you rather have fifty one hundred acre farms, each utilizing +/- 75 mid-size tractors, or one five thousand acre farm, utilizing 15 heavy duty tractors? The smaller farmers would certainly burn more gallons of diesel than would the large farmer, and they would create more pollution. Furthermore, a 5,000 acre farm will have a fertilization program that utilizes GPS and works closely with extension agents to determine just the right amount of fertilizer on literally a 10 square meter basis. A small farmer usually doesn't have GPS, and they may often put down more fertilizer than is needed, with a greater negative environmental impact. One five thousand acre farmer will out-produce fifty farmers each with one hundred acres, requiring less overall land area in order to feed the population. Less land area required means more acres available for re-forestation. And I have another bone to pick with the assumption that huge farms somehow create a less hospitable environment while raising beef cows (or ANY livestock). While it is true that they seek to increase or maintain profitability, a key aspect of efficiency is minimizing loss of livestock. A major contributor to livestock loss is environmental stress. Most large farms go to incredible lengths to make a happier and less stressful environment for their livestock, because this investment directly reduces livestock loss. I think you'll find that a massive farm with thousands of head of cattle will typically have fewer % losses than a small farmer. So, sure, stop eating at fast food restaurants, but do so because you prefer healthier alternatives; don't stop because you (in my opinion) incorrectly assume their vendors mistreat their livestock.

Sean

Hi Sean,

"Economically grown beef" is a term often applied to describe beef which is grown by cutting down the rain forest for pasture, and that is the context used here. The pastures become over-grazed, underproductive and that condition then leads the rain forest cattlemen to the next round of rain forest being cut off. For them it is cheaper to create new pasture land than to take care of the existing pasture land. A far cry from the sustainable techniques you have described.

Hey Carl, thanks for clarifying. I agree with you now, haha! Sadly, it's that sort of timbering and farming that is at it's heart a trauma we ourselves put North America through, to a large extent. Other industrialized nations also. Now we get to watch in horror as developing countries with their own bountiful natural resources squander most of it as we have squandered much of ours.

Sean

Sean, your environmental point about the large farm is well taken. On the socio-economic side though, what happens to the fifty or so small farmers and their families who are displaced?

Fred,

Thought you might find this apropos.

http://finance.yahoo.com/columnist/article/futureinvest/1282

Sigel is a phenom and celebrity among the business world.

It must be hard to teach through a single discipline. I don't see how our universities can continue to teach without overlapping and blending disciplines. I notice how economic theory is playing a bigger part of all of the world's policies. How can a natural scientist predict doom and gloom without understanding how "the market" will impact the future? And how can an economist discuss costs while ignoring or mispricing externalities such as environmental impact?

It's not that you can't study each discipline, but it's how you put it together that no one has figured out. Or have they and I just missed it?

Regarding Dave Noyes, "what happens to the fifty or so small farmers and their families who are displaced?"

It's not simple but "subsidized" workers can go through a painful adjustment period of re-training for another job. Sometimes there are training programs available at tax payer expense to ease the burden. For better or worse, "the market" only rewards the lowest cost producers. I think the competitive American worker can no longer afford to be surprised by the fast-changing work environment. Check out "Who Moved My Cheese?" by Spencer Johnson.

Another big negative of removing smaller farms is a possible changing of the landscape from rural to less so. You could also lose the diversity of individual crops and water down farming knowledge and expertise. I don't know what the net costs of transportation with fewer farms versus with many would be. Sean?

For better or worse, "the market" only rewards the lowest cost producers.

Why do we allow money price to be the only determiner of market success? The cost of a good is far more complicated than the dollar "value" the "market" assigns to it.