[Vision2020] Inconvenient Truth -- What WE REALLY HAVE TO DO

[Donovan Arnold]

I don't think eating lettuce and carrot sticks is going to save the  environment, no matter how many you eat and everyone else. The only way  to do it is to raise the price of gasoline and reduce the human  population. If the world raises the price of gasoline to $7.50 a gallon  over the next 5 years it would force everyone economically to switch to  an alternative form of fuel that would be better on the Earth, maybe  even reverse the effects.
  
 The second, is to maintain the  human population. The Earth cannot sustain 12 billion people for very  long, it just cannot--even if they just eat tofu, cabbage and sprouts.  The current birth rate of the world it will shortly be 12 billion.  There is only three ways to stop overpopulation; mass murder, mass  sterilization and abortion, or economic enforcement. I prefer economic  enforcement. Making it so expensive to raise a child so that only 1.8  children per fertile woman are born, or zero population growth, is the  way to go. Many Western countries are going this route already.   China uses law enforcement and forced abortion to control their  population--I don't want to go that route.
  
 You guys are  thinking so small, so tiny. It doesn't help save the earth even a day  to do these tiny things. If the Earth's environment is going to be  saved, it has to be on a HUGE scale, all over the world, and people  will have to be forced to do it by economic necessity.  Trying to do it politically, socially, educating, or choosing one by  one to change and start caring for the world--it ain't gonna happen  that way folks. Think BIG for a BIG Problem. 
  
  Best,
  
  _DJA
   
Nils Peterson <nils_peterson at wsu.edu> wrote:  I'm not too surprised that there was not an outpouring of personal actions
to my previous question -- I'm about immobilized by the challenge as well.

Carbon neutral is an interesting concept, but knowing if something is carbon
neutral is hard, and, given that most things include a transportation
element, its going to be hard to be neutral.

Megan's veggie idea, as subsequently modified by other suggestions is one
that resonates for me -- eat lower on the carbon input chain, which means
eat local. That's something I can work on.

SO now,  I want to move the discussion out a level, what are WE, as Moscow,
gonna do?

I got a piece of good news last night, PCEI has converted a vehicle to
bio-diesel and they are talking about how to work with other fleets in town
to convert them, and have a local bio-diesel supply. I know a couple other
bio-diesel drivers around already and having a supply closer than Lewiston
would be welcome news to them.

The COOP gives a discount for getting there by foot. One of the businesses
in Alturas Park (Anatech maybe?) gives employees a financial incentive per
mile that they travel to work by foot power. WSU & UI run a bus between the
campuses and its free to students and employees (but UI almost cut the
service this summer -- sad statement on their green commitment)

What else can we, in whatever collective groups, begin doing?

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