Hello Lee >It now becomes clear, Bush was right on the money. There are weapons >of mass destruction and they are still being developed and deployed.
US nuclear weapons being the main example, and I guess the 190,000 guns the US lost in Iraq would also qualify, in sheer number if not in scale, especially when it emerges that the holy US military shoots 250,000 bullets for every alleged insurgent they kill. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2146645,00.html Oh well. At least losing all those AK-47s builds a market Saturday August 11, 2007 The Guardian http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article314944.ece US forced to import bullets from Israel as troops use 250,000 for every rebel killed - Independent Online Edition > Americas 26 July 2007 But I get your meaning. It's just that if you're looking for WMDs and people who're ready to use them it's long been the case that Washington's the first place to look. In fact that applies to your meaning for the term here too, the world capital of dangerous and rash behaviour is Washington. >The developing countries are following the path of the developed world I don't think so. Some of them are, but even then it's only in part. India is an industrialised nation but it's also an agrarian society, and a traditional one, with its own values that don't necessarily just collapse into those of California wannabes as soon as they see some Golden Arches and a bottle of Coke. Just as often there's active resistance. To say that their most powerful members, India, China, Brazil and South Africa, are following the path of the developed world would be a gross simplification. And "developed" is a very questionable definition, almost Orwellian. Blind addiction to self-destructive and generally destructive behaviour is not exactly developed. Better to call them the industrialised nations. Anyway the world isn't really made up of nations, that's just a state of mind, a "sour ferment of the new wine of democracy in the old bottles of tribalism". Useful for rulers. >and mass producing greenhouse gasses and other pollutants with >technology we all know we should no longer be using. As their >ability to afford more and consume increases, their medical systems >improve their population will boom, compounding the effect. On the contrary, the evidence shows that as people's economic situation improves, as soon as they're not too poverty-stricken to feed their children, their breeding rate slows right down. The surefire way to do that is to empower the women, and especially to educate the women. But the usual "wealth creation" method of improving people's economic situation generally just extracts wealth, removes it and concentrates it in the hands of the few, leaving more poverty in its wake. There are better ways. >Have we as a species, reached or exceeded the sustainable population >for our planet? It depends how big your feet are. I said this here the other day: >... There is NO shortage of food, and there is NO shortage of money, >in fact there's more of both, PER CAPITA, than there's ever been >before. Nor is the human eco-footprint outsized, except for some of >it, which - surprise! - you'll find in exactly the same places where >you'll find all the money, all the food, and all the silly ideas too >that we're a cancer on the face of the planet and a few billion of >us are just going to have to die, pity, but at least it's not us >because we're not poor and starving. I lifted that from here: http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg57949.html Re: [Biofuel] Overpopulation Off Limits? Overpopulation is a myth, quite an obnoxious one actually. >We see the depletion of natural resources, in our lifetime, like no other. Is that because of human overpopulation, or because some nations are addicted to over-consumption and waste, extracting, consuming and wasting a vastly disproportionate and inequitable "share" of the world's resources? With 5% of the population consuming 25% of the world's energy supply and emitting a third of the greenhouse gases, the US is way out in front when it comes to over-consumption and waste, especially of other people's resources. But all the industrialised nations are included in that, and you also have to include the elites in the other countries, even when that country's overall footprint is small - and you have to exclude the very large and rapidly growing number of poor people in the US, for instance. So it emerges that the depletion of natural resources and the various other impending disasters which are obviously unsustainable are due to a particular sector of the human community, which is not even close to a majority. How can over-population be the problem then? When you examine this culprit sector more closely, what you find isn't a human community, it's mainly the corporate sector, with its dependent political and government sectors, armed with a consent-manufacturing industry of unprecedented power and penetration that keeps the subject societies - the "consumers" - not only subdued but completely mesmerised, lost in a Disneyesque world of rootless fantasies and instant gratification. So why not ask rather whether we've reached or exceeded the sustainable limit for our planet of neo-liberal economics and the ever-increasing levels of extraction, consumption, waste and impoverishment that it entails? But you already know the answer to that question. So why pick on humans then? >We see politicians promoting profit by population growth like there >are no limits. We are biological, living on this space bound >bubble, limited in resources, limits disregarded by financial >models, by which politicians and corporations live. > >Time to get your heads out of the sand. Out of the "hologram" - it won't be easy! http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/58437/ A Feast of Bullshit and Spectacle: The Great American Media Mind Warp By Joe Bageant, AlterNet Posted on August 9, 2007 >Decisions made now, in our lifetime will determine the future for >our children (and perhaps ourselves if change is rapid). Commerce >is just as finite as our natural resources. We should be looking at >a sustainable market, we should make long life products, durable, >repairable and upgradeable/ extensible. Indeed so. >We consumers should expect and demand these criteria, too much is >disposable in just a few years. I don't believe you're going to solve many if any problems by whatever consumers might expect and demand, consumerism is part of the problem, not of the solution. >We do not want to follow the example of bacteria/moulds/yeasts/ >rodents, boom and bust. Huh? Those are all highly successful life forms. >The devastation of millions of dead/dying people fighting each >other for the few remaining resources. Dieoff eh? Please see: http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg70734.html Re: [Biofuel] Proper intgration of Biofuels for small farms Best Keith >Lee _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
