America is killing itself

[Oggy]

Road to ruin

America produces a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, the population has risen by 100 million since 1970 and when an area three times the size of Britain was recently opened up for mining, drilling, logging and road building, no one took much notice. What does the Bush administration do? It ignores all attempts to curb environmental damage. In a major investigation that took him from the Salton Sea in California to Crooked Creek in Florida, Matthew Engel reports on how America is ravaging the planet

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More at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1069883,00.html

Note to mods, the subject is the title used in the print edition and the link.

This is a good overall look at some of the general reasons this writer sees as to what is in your national psychology when it comes to environmentalism. Is this a fair reflection? Or is he taking too much of a generalist view?

[GreenGreenLimaBean]

1. Very Powerful

Is there hope??? I believe it hings on the election.
* wins, I'm going to Canada. * loses, there may be hope.

It's sad to say but we really need a major environmental
disaster to slap some sense into the everyday person.
Maybe a whole summer of 120 degree days in Dallas will do
it.

Also, fuck those idiots on the outer banks. Why the fuck should
I subsidize the stupidity of people building million dollar houses
on a sand bar.

[david_vincent]

2. Excellent article, thanks!

The immigration policies of this country are especially troubling. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people (including some here at DU) who will start screaming that you're a bigot if you want immigration to be scaled back. The problem really is that having a policy that seeks to continue the current pace of immigration is like having a turbocharger mounted on the collection of problems we already have.
Oh, and for the inevitable comeback: sure, I'm descended from immigrants (and from native Americans, too). But that doesn't mean that we have to commit ecological suicide. And there really isn't that much hypocrisy attaching to this. History has always belonged to those who got there first. I'm not at all a xenophobe, but if 300 million people running amok is bad, how would it improve things to have 400 million?
Waiting for the day when the jet skiers are tooling up & down Miami's streets...

[ramapo]

3. Like a bad dream

This article highlighted the various topics I rage about. Sometimes I think it's just me because few seem very upset about the direction we're headed. Reading this article at least gave me positive reenforcement for my negative feelings.

The environment gets a lot of lip service from us all. But the reality, even aside from the obvious anti-environmental policies of the current administration, is that it is pretty damn hard to live a life, have a family and job, with a truly low impact on the environment.

The worst part of where we are today is having watched the past 33 years tick by. In 1970 there was some hope. The ecology movement was underway. None other than Republican Richard Nixon signed many important pieces of legislation to attack air and water pollution and create the EPA.

The energy crisis forced a turn to smaller, more efficient cars and conservation.

Jimmy Carter developed a program of alternative energy and spoke (some will say lectured) on the impossibility of having it all.

And that was the turning point. Carter was turned into a joke by Reagan. Carter wearing a sweater while talking about conserving energy was turned into an attack point.

Reagan created the "Morning in America" fantasy and we rolled into the "me" generation. Twenty+ years later the party continues. I would never have imagined that we would have regressed but, aside from some gains against air and water pollution, we are in much worse shape. I never would have imagined a U.S. population of 300,000,000 either.

The warnings of thirty years ago went largely unheeded. I have no illusion that Americans will choose to modify their lifestyles. There is no room in our culture for the thought that everybody can't have it all. To make matters worse, developing countries are racing to copy our "success". One can only imagine the consequences of hundreds of millions Chinese and Indians adopting our lifestyle.

Someday Nature will lead us to change. It probably won;t be pretty and I feel for the generations ahead who will have to deal with the consequences of the last fifty+ years.

Over time the consequences of our abuse will be brought to bear by Nature. Not to sound religious but there will be a reckoning. But Nature will go on, though somewhat the worse for wear.

The big question is what will happen to us?

[Oggy]

4. Over population

in biological terms is described by not enough resources to sustain a population. I think we (humankind) probably fit this model now, especially if you look at the resources (non renewable) we use just to survive now. The powers that be, in fact people in general, have moved so far from nature that they don't realise we still are part of nature (as the article had in its subtext). So massive population collapse is what would happen in the text books when over population occurs, and that is my bet in reality.