Consumption
From New Contributor Linda Kervin
I am frustrated by the
prevailing idea in the media and the public in general that we can
shop our way out of our energy and environmental problems.
Everywhere you turn, someone is telling you to buy new light bulbs,
new cars, new refrigerators, new windows. However, no one seems to
take into consideration the energy cost of raw materials, production
or shipping. There is also an environmental cost in adding to
landfills. What would really happen if everyone acquired all these
new things?
Over consumption is what has brought us to the brink of environmental ruin. We cannot consume ourselves back from the brink. I know that there are situations when it makes environmental and economic sense to replace items that are no longer functioning at an acceptable level. But the pressure to purchase for some righteous cause is just one more symptom of our society’s search for meaning and purpose in all the wrong places.
3 comment(s)
Another point on consumption. Even "responsible" and
"green" broadcasters
keep talking about vegetative sources for fuel. Excuse me, I am a
farmer's
daughter from the sandy soils just west of Detroit...now all houses,
roads,
stip malls and some other defunct things. Dad saved in the barnyard
what
came out of the gutters behind the cows, and we spread it on the soil,
to get
potatoes, wheat, corn, oats and a vegetable garden. Folks, if you do
not put
vegetative matter BACK into the soil, why not visit the Sahara Desert
and
find out what happens. Green stuff needs rotting green stuff to grow.
We cannot get rich by turning it into ethanol or isopropanol and
burning it up
at the stoplights on the way to the strip malls.
Posted by Leona Heitsch on Thursday, 19 February 2009, 1134 EST (-0500)
Leona,
Absolutely right. I heard a "scientist" once on the radio lamenting
the fact that farmers left straw, stubble, etc. on their fields "just
to rot" as opposed to using it for fuel. I wondered what kind of
scientist could be so stupid as to not understand that rotting is the
way soil is built up. I, myself use the grasses and weeds I cut (some
with my push-mower, some with my scythe when they're longer) for my
gardens. I recommend to you and others the book by Masunobu Fukuoka,
"The One-Straw Revolution".
By the way, where did you live SW of Detroit? I once interviewed for
a clergy position in Riga. I live in the UP. Linda, whose piece
you're responding to, lives in Utah.
Robin
Posted by Robin on Monday, 23 February 2009, 1112 EST (-0500)
I agree with most of the comments, but would like to point out that
some crop residue, such as that from corn and sugar cane, is too hard
and fibrous to easily break up and/or decompose readily. I would also
guess that with some crops grown in dry climates, such as the dry land
wheat grown where I live in Utah, there is simply not the moisture or
invertebrate population in the soil to aid in timely decomposition.
Posted by Linda Kervin on Friday, 13 March 2009, 2017 EDT (-0400)
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