A house divided: Syrian Refugees and Thanksgiving conversation...

[catherine]

Here is my illustration.

Suppose your investment banker does a lot of investment "work" in bottled water. And the source of this bottled water is Lake Malawi. So he empties the lake to fill bottles of water to sell to people in the first world (expensive exotic water for Whole Foods customers). Then he uses a portion of his earnings to dig wells in Malawi (Got to! The lake was drained!).

Now obviously I don't want you to take this illustration literally,

You mean like this?

http://www.mintpressnews.com/nestle-...fornia/211565/

[Ultralight]

That philosophy always reminds me of "Finish your vegetables; children are starving in Biafra." Not very compelling.

I don't expect you to be compelled. I expect you to do what most people would do.

[jp1]

I don't think there's a true either/or regarding bae's example and Ultralight's. The reality is that some resources are quite renewable and there's no reason we shouldn't be taking advantage of them. However, there are plenty of situations where non-renewable, or slowly renewable, resources get used solely for profit or because people can afford to waste them. For example, how many single driver SUV's are cruising up and down the freeways in this country at any given time. Dinosaurs aren't growing as fast as the trees in the pacific northwest.

Another example, farmers in the central valley of California with the financial ability to do so are switching from lower profit, lower water usage crops to the higher profit, higher water usage crop of nut trees, and in order to have sufficient water for this new, more profitable endeavor, they are hiring oil well diggers (because the water well diggers don't have equipment to dig far enough) to dig massively deep wells to suck up what's left of the water table.

Using resources isn't the problem. Using resources faster than they can rejuvenate is.

[bae]

Using resources isn't the problem. Using resources faster than they can rejuvenate is.

I like the Natural Step folks' approach to laying out system conditions for long-term sustainability:

1. Substances from the Earth’s crust can not systematically increase in the biosphere.

2. Substances produced by society can not systematically increase in the biosphere.

3. The physical basis for the productivity and diversity of nature must not be systematically deteriorated.

[Ultralight]

I don't think there's a true either/or regarding bae's example and Ultralight's. The reality is that some resources are quite renewable and there's no reason we shouldn't be taking advantage of them. However, there are plenty of situations where non-renewable, or slowly renewable, resources get used solely for profit or because people can afford to waste them. For example, how many single driver SUV's are cruising up and down the freeways in this country at any given time. Dinosaurs aren't growing as fast as the trees in the pacific northwest.

Another example, farmers in the central valley of California with the financial ability to do so are switching from lower profit, lower water usage crops to the higher profit, higher water usage crop of nut trees, and in order to have sufficient water for this new, more profitable endeavor, they are hiring oil well diggers (because the water well diggers don't have equipment to dig far enough) to dig massively deep wells to suck up what's left of the water table.

Using resources isn't the problem. Using resources faster than they can rejuvenate is.

I think this is a smart explanation.

I try to see comprehensive systems. So sunlight is pretty darned renewable, but the stuff we use to build solar panels might not be. Also, if we have missile factories powered by solar energy we're missing the point. These things connect. How do we harvest a "renewable" energy? What do we do with the energy after we harness it?

[catherine]

Let me provide another example.

Lovely trees grow all over my land. They grow fast, they grow tall, and they grow strong. If I "extract" the resource of the wood, I have huge supplies of firewood, and marketable timber for producing wood to build other peoples' homes. If I don't "extract" the resource, the high winds here will eventually topple the nearby trees and crush my house and outbuildings, assuming a wildfire doesn't sweep through first and burn everything down. If I do "extract" the resource, it grows back quite swiftly - it is a never-ending struggle not to be overrun by trees here.

The same line of thinking goes for the deer on the land here.

And pretty much every drop of water that lands here from the sky.

Yes, but you are a member of the society in which you live--a small community that seems to be interdependent with a vested interest in maintaining the quality of life there. Good stewardship of your property is what motivates you.

That's different than someone coming in and deciding that your trees will make them lots of money if they log them all and take them to the mainland and sell the logs to Lumber Liquidator for the benefit of strangers and stockholders with big profits as the only raison d'être.

[jp1]

I try to see comprehensive systems. So sunlight is pretty darned renewable, but the stuff we use to build solar panels might not be. Also, if we have missile factories powered by solar energy we're missing the point. These things connect. How do we harvest a "renewable" energy? What do we do with the energy after we harness it?

What about the gas station I saw the the other day with solar panels on the roof...

[Ultralight]

What about the gas station I saw the the other day with solar panels on the roof...

[bae]

That's different than someone coming in and deciding that your trees will make them lots of money if they log them all and take them to the mainland and sell the logs to Lumber Liquidator for the benefit of strangers and stockholders with big profits as the only raison d'être.

We take steps here to make sure that doesn't happen.

http://sjclandbank.org/protected-lands/

[LDAHL]

What about the gas station I saw the the other day with solar panels on the roof...

Wouldn't you prefer it to a gas station without solar panels on the roof?

I'm not arguing against environmental sustainability, however you care to define it. I'm arguing against a sort of lifeboat ethic based on a zero sum view of the world where Peter must starve to feed Paul. I believe that "sustainability" is more likely to be achieved through technical means than some sort of mass enlightenment.