Are We Knowingly Living a Lie?

[Gyakuto]

I’m increasingly getting the feeling that all the things that I’m doing to ‘save the world’ are a bit of a lie and one in which we’re all complicit.

We (aspire to) buying electric cars to reduce pollution and yet heavy industry belches out pollution (some to make those electric cars) that totally mitigates our joint efforts.

There was a big hoo-ha recently about how we will, in the future be able to take guilt-free holidays thanks to old cooking oil being converted into aviation fuel. Nothing was made of the fact that the fuel will still be adding to the green house gases by being combusted so we can run around on a beach or attend a business meeting in some far flung place.

In the U.K. we have no choice but to recycle paper and its products. Fair enough. Yet in, say, Japan, if you buy something from a department store or a pack of nice tea, it will be wrapped in plastic film, then brown paper, then decorative paper and placed in a plastic bag with a plastic ribbon on it probably negatively offsetting my efforts to ‘recycle’. I have to collect my plastic film waste and take it to a specialist recycling depot. Why are things still delivered in plastic film? In South East Asia, little plastic packets of single cup coffee with creamer and sugar included are so popular that it makes up one of the major oceanic plastic litter.

The water from washing our synthetic material clothes, floods the oceans with tiny plastic fibres which enter your food chain causing goodness-what-maladies, but because we’ve used a Ecover or similar green detergents, we don’t have to worry about it.

I had a drink recently in which was plonked a little decorative umbrella. It was made of wood, brightly coloured paper. It struck me that this object, that will be binned by the bar staff, was manufactured in the East, required the felling of trees for the materials to make it, was packed in film plastic then into a huge shipping container, loaded onto a ship with all the other containers filled with plastic ‘crap’ and shipped to the West, using fuel (dirty diesel usually) so it can be essentially be immediately ignored and removed from my drink due to the risk of eye injury!

And yet we all turn a blind eye to all this because ‘we’re doing our bit‘. We go along with corporate ‘Green washing’ as we think they absolve us of our manifold ecological sins. “All our collective little efforts add up to a big impact upon the environment” I hear you cry, and yet the world is getting hotter, our weather patterns are wilder and more extreme and the (U.K.) government is granting permits to oil companies to allow them to search for new oil field in the North Sea. In order to undo the harm we’ve enjoyed inflicting upon the ecosystem with our lifestyles, we’d have to essentially be living as they did in medieval times, and have only one (surviving) child per family! I don’t really to live like that so I ignore the proboscidea in the room and I dutifully put out my little cardboard/paper-filled crate out for collection…each Monday…

Happy New Year!

 

[HighKick]

I’m increasingly getting the feeling that all the things that I’m doing to ‘save the world’ are a bit of a lie and one in which we’re all complicit.

We (aspire to) buy electric cars to reduce pollution and yet heavy industry belches out pollution (some to make those electric cars) that totally mitigates our joint efforts.

There was a big hoo-ha recently about how we will, in the future be able to take guilt-free holidays thanks to old cooking oil being converted into aviation fuel. Nothing was made of the fact that the fuel will still be adding to the green house gases by being combusted so we can run around on a beach or attend a business meeting in some far flung place.

In the U.K. we have no choice but to recycle paper and it’s products. Fair enough. Yet in, say, Japan, if you buy something from a department store or a pack of nice tea, it will be wrapped in plastic film, then brown paper, then decorative paper and placed in a plastic bag with a plastic ribbon on it probably negatively offsetting my efforts to ‘recycle’. I have to collect my plastic film waste and take it to a specialist recycling depot. Why are things still delivered in plastic film? In South East Asia, little plastic packets of single cup coffee with creamer and sugar included are so popular that it makes up one of the major oceanic plastic litter.

The water from washing our synthetic material clothes, floods the oceans with tiny plastic fibres which enter your food chain causing goodness-what-maladies, but because we’ve used a Ecover or similar green detergents, we don’t have to worry about it.

I had a drink recently in which was plonked a little decorative umbrella. It was made of wood, brightly coloured paper. It struck me that this object, that will be binned by the bar staff, was manufactured in the East, required the felling of trees for the materials to make it, was packed in film plastic into a huge shipping container, loaded onto a ship with all the other containers filled with plastic ‘crap’ and shipped to the West, using fuel (dirty diesel usually) so it can be essentially be immediately ignored and removed from my drink due to the risk of eye injury!

And yet we all turn a blind eye to all this because ‘we’re doing our bit‘. We go along with corporate ‘Green washing’ as we think they absolve us of our manifold ecological sins. “All our collective little efforts add up to a big impact upon the environment” I hear you cry, and yet the world is getting hotter, our weather patterns are wolder and more extreme and the (U.K.) government is granting permits to oil companies to allow them to search for new oil field in the North Sea. In order to undo the harm we’ve enjoyed inflicting upon the ecosystem with our lifestyles, we’d have to essentially be living as they did in medieval times, and have only one (surviving) child per family! I don’t really to live like that so I ignore the proboscidea in the room and I dutifully put out my little cardboard/paper-filled crate out for collection…each Monday…

Happy New Year!

There are a few typo's you may want to look at.

 

[Instructor]

Over 20 years ago I helped a friend build one of these: Earthship Biotecture - Off Grid Sustainable Green Buildings - Earthship Biotecture

At the time we thought we were really making a difference. Nowadays not so sure. I retain hope the human race will someday live with our environment without destroying it but we aren't there yet. The bicycle is the most environmentally friendly vehicle mankind has yet devised especially if it's made of steel which is recyclable. I try to ride mine when the weather is nice and leave the big polluting truck in the driveway. Electric cars have a long way to go before they even make a dent in the problem.

 

[Gyakuto]

Over 20 years ago I helped a friend build one of these: Earthship Biotecture - Off Grid Sustainable Green Buildings - Earthship Biotecture

Oh wow! That’s amazing!

At the time we thought we were really making a difference. Nowadays not so sure.

The thought makes my heart sink…

I retain hope the human race will someday live with our environment without destroying it but we aren't there yet.

Yes we must have hope, tempered with realism and honest introspection.

The bicycle is the most environmentally friendly vehicle mankind has yet devised especially if it's made of steel which is recyclable.

Oh yes…but not the electric version!

I try to ride mine when the weather is nice and leave the big polluting truck in the driveway.

I think one of the contributing factors to the unhealthiness of the U.K. populace and of the atmosphere is nobody rides bicycles because of our inclement weather - it’s alway p*ssing it down! Who wants to ride a bicycle in the thrashing rain?

Electric cars have a long way to go before they even make a dent in the problem.

Yes, I agree but it seems the micro particles liberated from the tyres and brake pads are particularly bad to inhale and electric vehicles still produce those. My old office was on a main road in Sheffield and everything in it quickly accumulated a thin layer of what I thought was soot from the diesel cars and lorries, but in retrospect it was likely other noxious substances too.

So do you generally feel we’re kidding ourselves about of contribution to saving the planet?

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I believe in that climate change exists. I believe that at least part of it is anthropogenic (human-caused). I didn't always believe that, but I do now.

I believe we humans will not do anything to change this, and it's probably too late to stop it now in any case. I tend toward pessimism where it comes to humans intentionally stopping bad behavior. I think the majority of human beings are booger-eatin' morons and proud of it.

That being the case, although I do what I personally can to mitigate the coming disaster, I am more concerned with surviving it. I don't have to survive long - my natural lifespan isn't that far from the end of the candle. Not being a fatalist, just looking at statistics.

I have migrated to a part of the USA that is surrounded by 3/4 of the world's fresh water supply (four out of five Great Lakes). My home isn't in a 100 year flood zone, we have few tornadoes, earthquakes, forest fires, or other natural disasters. We are of course at risk in the case of nuclear accidents or attacks, as are most of us. But in general, this is a very safe place from climate change. Our notoriously bad winters are now warmer. Our kinda-hot summers are cooler.

I am not a prepper or a survivalist, but I know how to identify bad weather from cloud formations. I have shortwave and CB radio equipment. I have vehicles that don't have electronics in them. I keep as much medication and spares like eyeglasses and protective gear as I can. I have smoke detectors and fire extinguishers. I know how to get out of my house in an emergency. I know what a rally point is. I'm part of my community and county emergency response communications.

None of this consumes my thoughts or my life. I'm mostly focused on adding to the retirement money I will have to rely upon when I am too sick to work anymore (I plan to work until I can't physically do it or no one will hire me). I plant flowers and ride my scooter and work on my cars and build vacuum-tube electronics in my basement in the winter.

Whatever happens, the worst of it won't occur in my lifetime. That's not an excuse; my daughter and granddaughter will bear the brunt of our selfish and short-sighted behavior; we are leaving them with garbage for a world and society. But at least for me, "Apres moi, le deluge" holds true.

I'm not proud of what I have personally contribed to making the world a worse place, but I cannot change it. I would love to know what will become of the human race, but collectively, we probably do not deserve to survive.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

So do you generally feel we’re kidding ourselves about of contribution to saving the planet?

When I recently learned of the documentary journalism that proved that the recyclables that we carefully separate and put in special containers to be picked up each week go into the landfill without being 'recycled' in any way, I knew it was nothing more than mental masturbation. We don't have the will, and we may not even have the ability, to save the planet. To be more clear, the planet will be fine. It is us who will pay the price, and probably we should.

 

[Gyakuto]

I have no vested interest in saving the world since I have no children I have no more 10-15years left on this mortal coil but I’d like to leave it a better place for moral reasons.

I feel very sorry for young people because they’re unaware that their lives are going to be unpleasant, at best, because they believe ‘the lie’ and they think their activities might turn back the tide.

 

[Gyakuto]

When I recently learned of the documentary journalism that proved that the recyclables that we carefully separate and put in special containers to be picked up each week go into the landfill without being 'recycled' in any way, I knew it was nothing more than mental masturbation. We don't have the will, and we may not even have the ability, to save the planet. To be more clear, the planet will be fine. It is us who will pay the price, and probably we should.

Yes, I believe a lot of U.K. recycling ends up in landfill in Turkey!!

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Yes, I believe a lot of U.K. recycling ends up in landfill in Turkey!!

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/24/1131131088/recycling-plastic-is-practically-impossible-and-the-problem-is-getting-worse

"The report cites separate data published this May which revealed that the amount of plastic actually turned into new things has fallen to new lows of around 5%. That number is expected to drop further as more plastic is produced."

 

[Gyakuto]

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/24/1131131088/recycling-plastic-is-practically-impossible-and-the-problem-is-getting-worse

"The report cites separate data published this May which revealed that the amount of plastic actually turned into new things has fallen to new lows of around 5%. That number is expected to drop further as more plastic is produced."

Depressing…

My old Uni department once took on an Indian student via an Indian game show (NDTV Scholar Hunt U.K.). As part of a science project when he was 16 years old, he took chicken feathers (he lived near a poultry farm), a chemistry book and his mother’s pressure cooker and turned it into a pliable plastic about the size of a large goose egg. The interesting thing was that despite having all the properties of commercially produced plastic, when he buried pieces of it, after a couple of weeks it rotted away harmlessly. He still had most of it and the Chemistry department tried to reverse engineer it’s production (he couldn’t remember exactly what he’d done to create it). They were unsuccessful and the project was abandoned. The student went on to study medicine and did a PhD at Harvard.

Why aren’t governments working on stuff like this? Why aren’t $billions being poured into clean fusion power research? Well, we know why…ALIENS!

 

[Mider]

Of course most things are a lie

Politics, religion, etc

electric cars are charged by electricity that’s still powered by gas…

but the question is, why do people put up with it?

 

[Mider]

I have no vested interest in saving the world since I have no children I have no more 10-15years left on this mortal coil but I’d like to leave it a better place for moral reasons.

I feel very sorry for young people because they’re unaware that their lives are going to be unpleasant, at best, because they believe ‘the lie’ and they think their activities might turn back the tide.

Everything turns, to good to bad then back to good. So will we see better days, I think so, how long? Who knows

you can’t change the world…yet you can, your good deed is one, then someone else’s becomes 2, then 100, 1000, a million

 

[Gyakuto]

Of course most things are a lie

Politics, religion, etc

….martial arts turning you into a competent fighter/improving your character/making you more successful in love….

electric cars are charged by electricity that’s still powered by gas…

I think the idea is that when fossil fuels are completely abolished in 3 years time, we will have unlimited green energy with which to charge them. But of course, that’s a lie!

but the question is, why do people put up with it?

Because we’re comfortable, because it’s convenient and because we’re told it’s greener….green washing!

 

[Gyakuto]

Everything turns, to good to bad then back to good. So will we see better days, I think so, how long? Who knows

Wow, you’re an optimist. I envy you.

you can’t change the world…yet you can, your good deed is one, then someone else’s becomes 2, then 100, 1000, a million

That’s a bit of a contradiction, Mider!

 

[Instructor]

So do you generally feel we’re kidding ourselves about of contribution to saving the planet?

Generally yes. I think the planet was here before us and will be here long after us. We can make the planet tenable for ourselves and the other myriad of life forms that share it with us. But thus far we haven't, not even close. Most things I read say we are smack in the middle of a mass extinction which we ourselves may someday seriously regret. If we are to survive the mass extinction we will have to evolve the way we live, the way we think, everything. If I'm asked, are we up to the task as a species, I doubt it. But don't worry, the planet will go on and in the wake of the mass extinction a myriad of new species will rise to fill the voids left in the cycle of life. This cycle has repeated since the beginning and will keep repeating till the end.

 

[Gyakuto]

Generally yes. I think the planet was here before us and will be here long after us.

Well, six days before us

I forget that it’s only humanity (and other species) that will be wiped out by the climate catastrophe. Cockroach’s, worms and sea squirts (!) will continue and will thrive without us!

We can make the planet tenable for ourselves and the other myriad of life forms that share it with us. But thus far we haven't, not even close. Most things I read say we are smack in the middle of a mass extinction which we ourselves may someday seriously regret.

Yes something like 70% fewer species not in the 19th century…

If we are to survive the mass extinction we will have to evolve the way we live, the way we think, everything. If I'm asked, are we up to the task as a species, I doubt it.

Do you think that’s because we lack the means or the will, or both? It seems to me, that all we have to do is consume much less for a thousand years and we might pull things back from the edge of the precipice.

But don't worry, the planet will go on and in the wake of the mass extinction a myriad of new species will rise to fill the voids left in the cycle of life. This cycle has repeated since the beginning and will keep repeating till the end.

If I had a time machine, that’s what I’d like to see….making a stop at 500 year mark to look at the new technology and science!

 

[Bill Mattocks]

If the solution to all of our problems was down to everybody on the planet voluntarily giving up one meal, just one meal, we would not do it. And we know that about ourselves. We deserve what we get. Good and hard.

 

[Gyakuto]

If the solution to all of our problems was down to everybody on the planet voluntarily giving up one meal, just one meal, we would not do it. And we know that about ourselves. We deserve what we get. Good and hard.

Ooo I like it good and hard

I have to agree with you, Bill. Aren’t we cynical?

Perhaps it’d be a good thing if humanity was were wiped out. It’d let another species fill the gap and hopefully not devise ‘Love Island’!

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Ooo I like it good and hard

I have to agree with you, Bill. Aren’t we cynical?

Perhaps it’d be a good thing if humanity was were wiped out. It’d let another species fill the gap and hopefully not devise ‘Love Island’!

It's not cynical if it's true. And as much as my negative outlook about humanity has outraged a few folks over the years, not one of them has ever shown one of my predictions to be wrong. I think that's what makes them maddest. I say humans are trash and they know it's true; they just don't like to think about it.

 

[Mider]

Wow, you’re an optimist. I envy you.

That’s a bit of a contradiction, Mider!

Kinda lol