"Ocean 'dead zones' becoming global problem" #400

[barracuda]

No Asshole, it's the kind of attitude that a self-cleaning organism would have: learn from mistakes, adjust to new knowledge, cooperate for the betterment of all. People like me clean up after snotty shits like you because otherwise we'll choke on your crap.

Unless you're sneaking into my home while I'm away, you're not cleaning up jack shit from me, crikkett. I walk to my job as a drinking water engineer everyday, and have as small a "carbon footprint" as you might expect an individual to possibly have. Not only do I go through the futile motions involved in phoney "recycling" (once again, basically for the profit of industrial corporations who cannot be bothered to package even everyday staples in a bio-degradeable fashion - too costly, cuts in on their profits) but virtually everything I own is bought in thrift stores or found in other people's trash. And guess what? I've lived this way my entire life! The happy combination of near poverty, small needs and responsibility is one which should be foisted upon the transnationals as a matter of course. Don't be such a douche bag. I almost never eat red meat. I come from generations of farmers, like most people. I've been growing my own vegetables for thirty years. The four varieties of tomatoes in my garden are just ripening now, along with the zuccini, cucumbers, string beans, pears, and peaches. The persimmons and oranges are next. I pay some of the highest property and state taxes in the country to offset the "pollution" I cause by taking showers and flushing my toilet. Thanks for your "help" but you know what? It's covered, pal, and it's too, little too late. I hate to lecture you about "taking personal responsibility", 'cause in general I think all that is just corporate propaganda. I don't live this way to save the world; on the contrary, I do it because it is smarter, cheaper, easier, and more convenient FOR ME. I am selfish that way.

By the way, what do you do again to clean up after me?

It's called maturity which requires taking responsibility for your part in the state of things, and a willingness to take part in the/any solution. If for you that means wailing on the Internet about how nobody's doing anything to punish polluters I hope you snap out of your shiftless despondency long enough to bother to actually do something to change things for the better, and remember to recycle your plastic as you go.

If you call this wailling, you don't wanna be around me when I really get pissed about the corporations and their bullshit. Recycling plastic is meaningless in the large scheme of things. Recycling the same problem over and over is more like it, as each cycle sends a predetermined amount of the mess into the environment. You can get every individual in the country to recycle every bag and bottle around, but that won't do shit until the transnationals are forced to clean up their messes. I know you've spent your busy day cleaning up after me, but what about them, crkkett? There is a way of life here that requires changing from the top down. The gasoline required to perform the processes of recycling my personal plastic offsets any environmental benefit accrued. The whole notion of "recycling" and small individual "carbon footprint" is revolting. The corporations and grafted politicos laughed at that shit all the way to the bank, while they watched New Orleans drown, and Bhopal turn into a relentless unlivable wasteland sinkhole, Three Mile Island become a radiant fuckhole, Alamosa River stank into lifelessness, the bees died a neurotoxic death, etc. etc. etc. "They" made money the whole ride, from spill to cleanup. And this doesn't begin to discuss the systematic release of poisons into the environment on the level of SOP for industrial process each moment of every globalized day, an environmental disaster which frankly dwarfs by several orders of magnitude any personal mess you or you'r neighbors are "responsible" for. Dow, Monsanto, Exxon, you know - THOSE GUYS. Guess whose "superfund" money cleans this shit up? Mine. Guess whose taxes subsidise entire shitty wasteful industries? Yours. Guess why 70% of the senators in Washington are millionaires? I guess according to you that's all at least partly my fault, though. You can keep your ire and your responsibility, or focus it where it belongs. And it ain't me. Welcome to the Calumet River:



Oh yeah, recycle, sure, that'll work.

It's cool, though. I just keep praying for the price of oil to skyrocket, and it will some day. In the meantime, come on by, we'll go dumpster diving, and you can help me wash up al the quality shit that other people just discard. Its actually rather amazing.

[compared2what?]

I'm not sure what you mean by "owning" though.

Taking what measure of responsibility you feel is yours for the harms that are done for your dollars, and making changes to reduce and even god forbid make amends for them.

I believe this is an excellent secondary tactic, but not an adequate strategy, for the reasons stated in my prior post -- ie, as long as the industrial contributors to the damage continue to operate, it won't have a significant impact on the problem.

Whatever it is, it seems to preclude plainly stating that there is an identifiable class of people.

Quote: Not true at all, I would love them to be identifiable, I just don’t think throwing around empty and inaccurate labels helps. There are no clichés in detail.

Then stop equating the the position of those who argue that a solution requires more than taking personal responsibility with morally slack whining about nebulous "elites."

(the ones who control the private equity)

Quote: Not all polluting electricity generators are owned or controlled by private equity, many belong to governments, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, banks – are you saying all these are the same thing?

Of course not, for Jeebus' sake. The reason I put community organizing first on the list of We vs. They actions is that the problem is too vast and too diffuse for any one global solution. Which suggests that a good first-step would be textbook "act-locally/think-globally" organizing, the aim of which is to....Honestly, do I really have to explain that in order for a popular-protest movement to succeed, it has to have the support of the community at large, one route to which is the setting of locally attainable goals that are viewed by the community as actions that advance their own interests? That's not the only step, obviously. But it's a necessary step, and a prerequisite to most of the others. An excellent, relatively recent formal model for a good old-fashioned, well-coordinated, and successful popular protest movement -- and one that started out with a lot less to work with in terms of gaining the support of the community than the environmental movement has now and had then -- is, I am deeply sorry to have to say, the anti-abortion movement. Which has gained an enormous amount of ground by advancing inch by inch on many fronts and in multiple dimensions over several decades, during which the mainstream environmental movement stood still and advocated recycling, while its anarchist tributaries alienated local communities, and its mainstream-radical hybrids -- for example, PETA -- established themselves as boosters for the interests of the common supermodel. That's just not how it's done.

who own the physically real and geographically locatable plants that will continue to destroy the natural world as long as they continue to operate, irrespective of how much responsibility any individual outside of that class takes

Quote: You are arguing that we are impotent, which I believe is wrong.

I am not arguing anything of the kind. I am pointing out why focusing primarily on personal responsibility is an ineffective tactic, and a useless strategy.

for the statistically insignifant contribution to that destruction he or she has made in the course of using and/or consuming goods and services the manufacture, sale and/or provision of which relies on environmentally destructive technologies.

Quote: Convenient statistics are irrelevant to ethics.

And pertinent statistics are relevant to, as you put it, "deciding how to fight the amorality of it and our multiple other items of trade with our suicidal economic system."

Because unless so many people take so much responsibility that living at a Unabomber-lifestyle level of energy independence becomes the rule.

Quote: Nice pissing in the discourse, such extremism is not required.

I'm not sure if you mean that I was being rhetorically extreme and that's not required, or whether having a majority populating living in a state of energy independence as extreme as Ted Kaczynski's was is not required.

But either way, no extremism intended, as I was not referring to his crimes, but to his lifestyle in order to cite a well-known example that adequately represented how extreme a lifestyle a widespread responsible-consumption-based strategy would have to entail before it has any meaningful effect on corporate and/or industrial operations, conveniently realistically statistically speaking.

Also, I sincerely apologize for giving the impression of extremism, which I obviously should have anticipated, and which you are 100 percent in the right for flagging and calling me out for failing to do.

rather than the exception, a true taking of personal responsibility would entail admitting that unless you are in that class of people -- let's call them "they" -- the pleasant feeling of personal empowerment that comes with living as environmentally responsibly as your means and circumstances permit is not the same thing as either having or exercising enough real power to have a significant impact on a problem you aren't causing and can't solve personally.

Quote: Who said anyone could do it personally? Too many ‘savior’ films perhaps?

We personally also have to come terms with our collusion in the violent charade and change, otherwise we can only perpetuate our servitude.

You did. What's a 'savior' film?

Which is not to say you are powerless to address it through, for example, community organizing, mass boycott, media campaign, political activism both within and outside of the system, etc.
Quote: I’m torn between Duh! and Now we’re getting somewhere!

I vote for option B, honey. And I hope that you do too.

But those all require group identification as "we" by people who are in general agreement about what "they" they're up against.
Quote: Does it? It would be nice, it would almost definately help, but it is far from essential, as past centuries of social reform show.

If they do, I am indeed ignorant of them and have no problem admitting it. Of what are you thinking?

So I still don't understand the advantage of rejecting those terms when discussing an issue about which we're in a greement wrt the general lay of the land, since I too define the problem as being one caused by and benefiting only:
Quote:
The corporatised production systems that supply your goods and services
of which I am not ignorant but aware, which includes an awareness that I don't control those systems. They do. And it's irresponsible not to admit that, from my perspective.

Quote: I think its irresponsible not to know who & what you're talking about, and cartoonish cliches obscure us working who They are.

I couldn't agree more.

[jc denton]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOiKG7hb8Pg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT_scav6DhQ

HUGH! You're getting sloppy my man!!

[wintler2]

I'm not sure what you mean by "owning" though.

Taking what measure of responsibility you feel is yours for the harms that are done for your dollars, and making changes to reduce and even god forbid make amends for them.

I believe this is an excellent secondary tactic, but not an adequate strategy, for the reasons stated in my prior post -- ie, as long as the industrial contributors to the damage continue to operate, it won't have a significant impact on the problem.

1 persons changed behaviour is of course not pivotal to society, but it is pivotal to that person. Also, monkey see monkey do; humans are quite capable of change, with modelling more of a catalyst than any amount of words.
I don't claim it itself is enough, but without it we, individually and collectively, are going nowhere.

Whatever it is, it seems to preclude plainly stating that there is an identifiable class of people.
Quote: Not true at all, I would love them to be identifiable, I just don’t think throwing around empty and inaccurate labels helps. There are no clichés in detail.

Then stop equating the the position of those who argue that a solution requires more than taking personal responsibility with morally slack whining about nebulous "elites."

I never said solutions don't require more than personal responsibility, but what i keep reading is zero mention of personal responsibility, multiple mentions of vague elites who supposedly have total control.

(the ones who control the private equity)
Quote: Not all polluting electricity generators are owned or controlled by private equity, many belong to governments, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, banks – are you saying all these are the same thing?

Of course not, for Jeebus' sake. The reason I put community organizing first on the list of We vs. They actions is that the problem is too vast and too diffuse for any one global solution. Which suggests that a good first-step would be textbook "act-locally/think-globally" organizing, the aim of which is to....Honestly, do I really have to explain that in order for a popular-protest movement to succeed, it has to have the support of the community at large, one route to which is the setting of locally attainable goals that are viewed by the community as actions that advance their own interests? That's not the only step, obviously. But it's a necessary step, and a prerequisite to most of the others. An excellent, relatively recent formal model for a good old-fashioned, well-coordinated, and successful popular protest movement -- and one that started out with a lot less to work with in terms of gaining the support of the community than the environmental movement has now and had then -- is, I am deeply sorry to have to say, the anti-abortion movement. Which has gained an enormous amount of ground by advancing inch by inch on many fronts and in multiple dimensions over several decades, during which the mainstream environmental movement stood still and advocated recycling, while its anarchist tributaries alienated local communities, and its mainstream-radical hybrids -- for example, PETA -- established themselves as boosters for the interests of the common supermodel. That's just not how it's done.

Agree.

who own the physically real and geographically locatable plants that will continue to destroy the natural world as long as they continue to operate, irrespective of how much responsibility any individual outside of that class takes
Quote: You are arguing that we are impotent, which I believe is wrong.

I am not arguing anything of the kind. I am pointing out why focusing primarily on personal responsibility is an ineffective tactic, and a useless strategy.

I don't see your evidence for personal responsibility (PR in this thread) being 'useless', and you'll have to admit the collective front has been losing ground in the West for decades. I'm happy to leave primarily/secondarily to individual judgement, having plenty of reservations myself about how PR is being used to pass the buck, what i'm on about is its glaring absence in surprising quarters.

for the statistically insignifant contribution to that destruction he or she has made in the course of using and/or consuming goods and services the manufacture, sale and/or provision of which relies on environmentally destructive technologies.
Quote: Convenient statistics are irrelevant to ethics.

And pertinent statistics are relevant to, as you put it, "deciding how to fight the amorality of it and our multiple other items of trade with our suicidal economic system."

Touche!

Because unless so many people take so much responsibility that living at a Unabomber-lifestyle level of energy independence becomes the rule.
Quote: Nice pissing in the discourse, such extremism is not required.

I'm not sure if you mean that I was being rhetorically extreme and that's not required, or whether having a majority populating living in a state of energy independence as extreme as Ted Kaczynski's was is not required.

The latter.

But either way, no extremism intended, as I was not referring to his crimes, but to his lifestyle in order to cite a well-known example that adequately represented how extreme a lifestyle a widespread responsible-consumption-based strategy would have to entail before it has any meaningful effect on corporate and/or industrial operations, conveniently realistically statistically speaking.

I don't think huts in the woods are credible alternatives to anything except tents, and nobody is saying that is what we must all do today, except you by inference.

Also, I sincerely apologize for giving the impression of extremism, which I obviously should have anticipated, and which you are 100 percent in the right for flagging and calling me out for failing to do.

Oh shucks you needn't.

rather than the exception, a true taking of personal responsibility would entail admitting that unless you are in that class of people -- let's call them "they" -- the pleasant feeling of personal empowerment that comes with living as environmentally responsibly as your means and circumstances permit is not the same thing as either having or exercising enough real power to have a significant impact on a problem you aren't causing and can't solve personally.

Quote: Who said anyone could do it personally? Too many ‘savior’ films perhaps?

We personally [b]also have to come terms with our collusion in the violent charade and change, otherwise we can only perpetuate our servitude.[/b]

You did. What's a 'savior' film?

Beg to differ, see the also? Meaning PR is required but not sufficient. Savior film: where a single charismatic character with unique qualities matched to main audience demographic saves the day - Die Hard is the one i always think of, but there have been many thousands. I blame them for the refrain "but what can one *ordinary* person do?" that millions cop out with.

I don't think we have a disagreement - i am not arguing the PR is the best and only way to address our problems, just that it can't be passed off entirely onto others, no matter how powerful one might imagine they are. You haven't argued that, rather that collective action is the best strategy , which is entirely credible to me.

[compared2what?]

Beg to differ, see the also? Meaning PR is required but not sufficient. Savior film: where a single charismatic character with unique qualities matched to main audience demographic saves the day - Die Hard is the one i always think of, but there have been many thousands. I blame them for the refrain "but what can one *ordinary* person do?" that millions cop out with.

I don't think we have a disagreement - i am not arguing the PR is the best and only way to address our problems, just that it can't be passed off entirely onto others, no matter how powerful one might imagine they are. You haven't argued that, rather that collective action is the best strategy , which is entirely credible to me.

Well, I don't think we have any serious disagreement. I didn't and still don't understand in what way your insistence of your preferred rhetorical emphasis helps either to expose the nature of the problem or encourage an effective response to it. But the more consciousness-raising, the more better, obviously. So given that we're on the same side wrt what the problem is and, in general terms, what should be done about it, I say we table all further bickering about it until after our marriage.

Because that way, whichever one of us first needs a pretext for striking a low emotional blow after the honeymoon is over will already have one to hand. Plus, since we're not even engaged yet, even that will, necessarily, have to be far, far in the future. Which leaves us free to be friends and comrades in the fight against enviro-evil in the present. Starting by saving power expended online arguing about semantics. OMG, it's working already!!!! We're saved!

c2w

[Seamus OBlimey]

High price of plastics raises prospect of rubbish mining in dumps

The value of second-hand plastic has risen so rapidly that mining operations to dig it out of rubbish dumps are forecast to begin within the decade.

Waste suitable for recycling is already being dug out of landfill sites in the United States and it is thought that commodity prices are on the verge of making it a profitable option in Britain.

Times

Time to clean up?

[Seamus OBlimey]

Oh, and looking forward to an official announcement from the 2s.

[bks]

crikkett wrote:

No Asshole, it's the kind of attitude that a self-cleaning organism would have: learn from mistakes, adjust to new knowledge, cooperate for the betterment of all. People like me clean up after snotty shits like you because otherwise we'll choke on your crap

Crikkett: Multinational corporations, not human beings, are the dominant organisms on earth. MCs are NOT self-cleaning. People cannot overcome them by the means people overcome the problems they have with other human beings (like modeling, attempts at behavior modification or discussion). They're not amenable to suggestion, shaming or conscience, except to the degree that appearing to be suggestible, shamed or conscientious can be used to help the bottom line.

MCs are best understood as a kind of infection, and we had better begin to think immunologically if we want to effectively combat them.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOiKG7hb8Pg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT_scav6DhQ

HUGH! You're getting sloppy my man!!

Good find, jc denton.

Verizon wireless phone ads using horror movie meme of a young man/a couple being warned away from a 'Dead Zone' by spooky children and a spooky woman but then informed that the area was 'all good' by a horde of white-helmeted (Verizon engineering) men.

Clever layering of pop culture reference, framing of gender role-models, and friendlying up corporate technology with a phrase-hijacking, all in one.

[sijepuis+]

I'm primarily an occasional visitor, rarely posting, here, but I had to sign in to say, brilliant rant, barracuda!

I'll highlight the following passage, only, because it zeros in on the gist of an entire subset of problems revolving around corporate profits, consumerism and the environment. But barracuda's post is full of essential observations.

Recycling the same problem over and over is more like it, as each cycle sends a predetermined amount of the mess into the environment. You can get every individual in the country to recycle every bag and bottle around, but that won't do shit until the transnationals are forced to clean up their messes.

We, in the affluent west, need to understand that the cost of the "cheap" stuff we clamor to consume carries with it an immense, hidden price tag, which corporations have expected, or more accurately, demanded, be absorbed by local, public funds. And, this, on a global scale. We may buy bargain-priced crap, imported from Asia, and elsewhere, but Asian workers, chosen for their cheap labor and lack of labor protection, find their revenues additionally taxed by the necessity on the part of governments either to clean up the ecological damage created by multinationals or pay in the form of damaged health and health care. Either way, it's the working force and societies that subsidize corporations.

Add in the cost of importing raw materials from Africa, for electronics, and oil for the manufacture, packaging and shipment of the stuffs, not to mention the end cost of disposing of the same packing and soon-to-be obsolete crap, an item that may go for $19.95 at WalMart is likely to carry a hidden cost of hundreds of dollars.

Obsession with recycling, in the Rich World, is an utter farce, designed to ease the consciences of hyper-consumerists, in order that the wealthy continue to consume, blindly, rather than question the multiple levels of supranational thievery that is sapping the life-blood of billions of people.

Right, so, go out and indulge in that soon-to-be obsolete, plastic-encased iPhone you've been coveting ['you' meaning US/EU consumers, broadly speaking] and climb in to your individual car [along with millions of others like you] to take your plastics and other refuse to the recycling center, whence it will eventually be reprocessed at societies' expense so that you may feel free to buy more of the same.

The problem of dead zones in our oceans is the product of decades worth of social engineering of consumer societies, destined to boost corporate profit. Until these premises are understood and challenged, sea life will continue to suffer, at everyone's expense.

[wintler2]

Well, I don't think we have any serious disagreement. I didn't and still don't understand in what way your insistence of your preferred rhetorical emphasis helps either to expose the nature of the problem or encourage an effective response to it.

Rhetoric is all we have in this space, and i don't understand what is so hard to understand about bringing your ethics home. Growing food IS an effective response to buying bad food AND is a step towards reconnecting with all else that lives. I'm not saying has to be either/or, but i could attend dozens of meetings and demos with less effect.

But the more consciousness-raising, the more better, obviously.

Humans can think many things and behave the same, consiousness raising is only a first timid step, deeds and actions are what make the world go round. Why trivialise the many minor actions of daily life that support the beasts?

So given that we're on the same side wrt what the problem is and, in general terms, what should be done about it, I say we table all further bickering about it until after our marriage.

Oh mercy, don't dangle such a dream before me.

Because that way, whichever one of us first needs a pretext for striking a low emotional blow after the honeymoon is over will already have one to hand. Plus, since we're not even engaged yet, even that will, necessarily, have to be far, far in the future. Which leaves us free to be friends and comrades in the fight against enviro-evil in the present. Starting by saving power expended online arguing about semantics. OMG, it's working already!!!! We're saved!

Many marriages are founded on fundamental misunderstandings, i say we should elope before ours resolve.

[compared2what?]

Hey! You can't persist in bickering after I offered an olive-branch of bicker-freedom and continue with the amiable marriage banter both! That's just unsportsmanlike conduct!

Oh, well. I say: No more bickering when we have, bigger more toxic fish to fry and are in substantial agreement. Though, naturally, please take another last word, if you have one. I promise simply to look at it in silent adoration, sort of like Nancy-Reagan, except minus the evil and the surgery-induced facial immobility, in a state of unwavering commitment to a clean and squabble-free planet.

Can you see my halo from where you are, btw? Because I'm Kind of hoping it at least looks good, you know, from a distance.

[lightningBugout]

Barracuda, your entire contribution to this (old) thread should be tattooed somewhere on the collective body of this board. Bravo.