Published on 12, July, 2020
I've got a few ideas about this myself, having spent two years collecting and processing every bit of burnable paper that goes though our house, implementing solar and wind "solutions" being involved in recycling WEE. (Waste Eectrical Equipment)
Here's the deal, 1 billion people manage to live similarly comfortable modern lives as you do, the remaining seven billion now though the power of media WANT TO have what you have...
Our response is MORE technology, electric everything, etc.
I've tried sharing what I have, it's next to bloody impossible and people have no concept of looking after what you have, there's always another newer one avaialble.
Electric cars, use a horrible battery technology, that completely offsets any perceived environmental gain, and is leaidng to premature disposal of other more durable techncology, whilst overloading aour transmission grid which is already suffering the insult of copper being replaced with aluminium conductors....
Climate change though CO2 emissions is NOT settled science by any means and even if it was, there are alternative (always undiscussed) ways of tackling it, rather than "stopping oil".
The thing you all need to know is this: Energy is measured in watts. YOU can produce approximately 100 watts of energy continuously and sustain it for as long as you are physically fit.
YOUR house if it's "normal" continuously draws as much energy on "standby" as can be produced by between two and four people pedalling constantly day and night to keep it going. A shower requires the equivalent of 110 people pedalling whilst you clean yourself.
MY motorcycle at full chat makes about the same power as one thousand people pedalling!!
A rebalancing with nature can only be avoided by making A LOT of energy available by means of technolgy as yet unexploited, but we can't have that because people will misuse the technology for war as soon as it goes mainstream.
ANY effectvive strategy to maintain our standard of living I feel will require much greater "sharing", and use of glass and ceramics, instead of "packaging".
There's a bit of my take. the energy figures lack academic levels of precision but are generally not too far form the truth that they aren't useable enough for basic energy education.
AND PLEASE. Someone tell me why they are shuttng down food production all over Germany and Holland, right when we are importing more hungry people by the millions?
Please don't tell me that isn't happening, I know that this is happening and has been ongoing for a while. There were HUGE protests about it, but the policy is still in place. It does not take nostradamus to figure out what will happen if the foood gets in short supply..
There's also a major shooting war happeing in "The Bread Basket of Europe" and the only thing that stopped the fields being salted with depleted uranium FROM US (an irreversible act of radiological polution right wehere our wheatabix is probably grown) was a well placed RF Iskander missile that nailed the lot in a warehouse! (Ive used a bit of licence, I'm not 100% sure what air attack asset the RF actually used, but they DID get all those DU shells before they were distributed...) Well done them, from an ecological perspective!
Over to you guys, for hopefully another well balanced discussion like we've seen a lot of recently.
Interesting subject. I see some comments that I agree with. I try to re use containers as much as possible. I enjoy doing gifts where I buy items and arrange them in a repurposed box. Also I do a bit of dress making so have left over material. I came up with the idea once when I was going to get wrapping paper of using bits of material and saved ribbons to wrap presents. I love the task of making them look attractive for nothing and no sellotape involved.
I find ways of recycling the material in clothes that are not fit for someone wearing them. I recently discovered I could use a small piece of material to replace a broken loop on a watch strap. It is much more comfortable than an elastic band. That reminds me, we used to have wind up watches, so no batteries to dispose of. When the strap wore out we bought a new one. If it went wrong we took it to the watch repairer.
A lot of appliances these days it seems go wrong because of the computer programming. Years ago there were repair people for everything. I was pleased recently to find a local repair person instead of buying new and sending the old one for 'recycling'.
I did get someone to replace the workings of a laptop which was cheaper and saved throwing away the outside. However I agree that batteries are a big challenge.
One of my pet hates is people sitting in cars with engines running whilst stationary for no apparent reason.
I think it is sad how much people throw away. Many pieces of furniture can be repurposed as garden storage. Odd bits of wood can be used for building other things such as composting bins.