Walter In Denver

Yeah, maybe we can start on the beef war. I was just explaining tonight to my matey why eating burgers is bad. How the rain forests are being torn down to make land for cows (and cocaine) that the burger joints, here, are using to feed us.
Basically, the rain forests, and most of Earth, is screwed, as long as we keep NOT asking "where'd this come from?". We are so stupid.
Did anyone note the short story on the Today show today that told us (again) how much petroleum we're using for : packaging, junk, buttons, hair care products, packaging, computers, car parts, CD's, packaging . . .? It's way more than we're using for gasoline or heating. I've got a query for you. How do we reverse that? How do we stop using plastics? How do we get corporations to stop overusing plastics? do we really need little plastic screw tops for plastic lined milk cartons? can we get China to stop importing plastic crap? do cheap cookies really need to be wrapped in heavy plastic? are plastic parts in cars necessary? how do we go back, or forward toward something better? go ahead: blog that.

Why do we care how much petroleum goes into plastic? I thought petroleum was evil because burning it caused global warming. So every barrel of oil that's turned into plastic makes the world one barrel cooler, right?

Plus, I think the primary cause of deforestation isn't beef production but subsistence farming. The solution to that isn't less consumption but better farming techniques, with modern equipment, fertilizers, pesticides, and genetically modified crops. The only way to go backwards, to consume less (which you seem to be suggesting as a solution), is to let a lot of people starve.

wow, my hand started to sweat writing this because of such amazingly bad thinking on the part of Matt, and so much wrong information. subsistence farming? i thought maybe you were making a joke. or live on the moon. wow.

to make plastics requires drilling for oil. drilling for oil messes up the drilling spot (big spot) and making plastic uses up oil we need for heating and driving (yes, polluting) thus causing a bigger need for oil. making plastic often requires burning the petroleum, or otherwise refining it, which requires electricity, i.e. heat, which pollutes the planet. is this brief overview simple enough?

subsistence farming could never cause as much damage to everything as agribusiness. "modern pesticides and fertilizers" take the ecology of the planet into very small account, preferring to simply kill the bugs and quickly grow the plants no matter how it affects us overall. nobody would starve (in this country) if we suddenly stopped serving up burgers made from South American cows. or any other cows for that matter. nobody would starve, not even the ranchers.
ow, my head hurts. i'm going to go ice it.

I respond respectfully and you respond with abuse. Glad to know I don't have to take you seriously.

Your first concern was about South American deforestation, which is attributable primarily to subsistence farming and (you're right) cattle ranching. How do we reduce deforestation? Your suggestion is a "war on beef", which is simply laughable as a comment to a post that is decrying the ridiculous war on drugs. Curbing American demand for beef is every bit as pie-in-the-sky as curbing the demand for drugs. My suggestion is much more workable: make third world farming more productive.

So we have to decide which is the greater evil, deforestation or modern farming. I'm going to vote for deforestation.

We do use a lot of plastics. In fact, last year when Mrs. In Denver was giving birth to twins I noticed that the hospital was loaded with plastic gizmos. Respirator parts, IV tubes, medication delivery systems, incubators, thousands of different items made of plastic. What's worse is that I'll bet a lot of the companies that make those plastic doodads are making a profit, too. Evil.

So I have a solution. Get rid of hospitals. Clinics and ambulances, too. Not only will we cut down on use of plastics but maybe we can get life expectancies back to eighteenth century levels, dramatically lowering population levels and reducing demand for beef.

That would be beautiful.

OK, serious question for gnash. If the US consumes more than its share of beef, and we produce a lot of beef, why isn't deforestation a problem here? In fact, over the last century we've grown more trees than we've cut in this country.

I would guess the easy (and probably partially correct) answer would be that we deforested North America so much in the 19th century that there was nowhere to go but up.

The full answer is obviously more complicated. We don't have subsistence farming anymore. Our ownership laws are much better at protecting both land owners and public lands. We've found uses for forests (recreation, paper, timber) that make them more valuable as forests than as farm or ranch land.

It's that last one that I like. It sounds backwards, but it makes sense if you think about it. We needed to cut down trees, so we planted them first. So the desire for more and more wood products (rampant consumerism) actually led to an increase in trees. Penn and Teller had a former founder of Greenpeace (or it might have been Bjorn Lomberg) as a guest on Bullshit who said that the best thing you could do if you wanted more trees was to use a lot of paper.

Yes, Matt, the easy answer is correct, and that's because subsistence farming was the norm. And let's define our terms; subsistence farming means producing just enough to feed yourself with perhaps a small surplus of food to contribute to society at large. Agribusiness means making a profit. Make no mistake, subsistence farming, allowing the farmer no chance of economic advancement, is a bleak existence. Naturally that farmer is going to look for some way to better himself. If he has access to timber, a valuable crop, that's going to be a powerful temptation. So societies with subsisting farmers (read poor) will have a problem with deforestation.

Modern societies, with farmers who can turn a profit like any other business, don't have such a problem with deforestation.

I`d like to point out that most the things in Bagdad were hand made. They had very few plastic items in their/economy,opting to provide jobs for craftsmen.
It was ironic that in several of the gruesome beheading videos, the last place the victim sat on this earth was a plastic resin chair brought over by our forces.
I`m sure when they begin the rebuilding of Iraq it will be a plastic society like we have created in the US.