1. Louis, the Green Goat is battery powered, a small diesel engine runs in brief spurts to charge the batteries. Carbon dioxide emissions as reported to us by their representatives are minimal, since the Green Goat uses very little carbon based fuel. Carbon dioxide is not an issue with this locomotive.
2. And as you must know, living in NYC, I do not advocate the New Jersey suburban standard of living, nor the Phoenix model as the goal of the proletarain revolution. But increasing the calorie intake of those now malnourished is a goal. Providing sanitation and clean water supplies are goals, particularly since the latter in underdeveloped areas of the world means much to the emancipation of women. I don't think we know what and what cannot be accomplished under a communist social system. We do know that it will involve production for use and the expansion of human needs along with the means for satisfying those needs. The content of the needs may change, but I don't think we should be getting ahead of ourselves, and start dictating what will or won't be planted, harvested, produced, base on our individual likes and dislikes. I'm sure many will think the production of sugar is a waste, but arguing about that is speculation, not Marxism. 3.Social solutions? How about disbanding the US military, currently the consumer of 22% of US petroleum supplies? How about revolution, so we don't provide a material incentive for burning rain forests to produce pasture? Technological solutions? How about emissions controls? How about elimination of biomass as a fuel, and the use of natural gas. How about a combination of the emission controls and natural gas (which current reserves are at 63 years)? Plus, the revolution. If you are skeptical about the feasibility of such solutions, then I'm afraid you are going to find yourself, despite your protests, right back in the corner of those Malthusian solutions you reject-- i.e. culling the herd, and imposing sterilizaton on women, since it's always imposed on women by men. 4. Finally, there is a real problem with what I have referred to as short-attention span radicalism, in that it never thinks through the consequences of its positions-- so someone can talk about a carrying capacity of 2 billion and ignore what that entails for at least 4 billion others on the planet. So that some might argue for the notion of "closing down Phoenix," without explaining what that means, or how that would be accomplished. It makes little sense to argue for a humane sharing society when the program includes closing down a city of several hundred thousand and doing exactly what with the population? Forcibly dispersing them to....where? Retirement villages of the damned? Are we going to ship them, lox, stocks, and cracker barrels to other cities which we think are more sustainable? Sounds a little bit too much to me like strategic hamlets, or pseudo Stalinist organized deportation based on orders of a central committee. And when those gray panthers of Phoenix, and some indigenous peoples say to the central committee, we like it here...it's warm and dry... what will the central committee say-- "Up Against the Green Wall, motherfucker. This is the ecology police."?
