Thread: Environmental Impact

Turn down the thermostat on your hot water system at home until the water is just as hot as you need, and not hotter. For example loads of people have their water super hot and then when washing dishes etc, they have to add cold water to make it cool enough to put their hands in. Even dropping a thermostat a degree or two makes a difference long term. Same with central heating if you use it.

Also with refridgerators or freezers. If you don't routinely use all of the space in yours, fill the voids with bags/boxes of polystyrene chips left over from packaging. It stops the cold air escaping each time you open it, meaning it costs less power to run in the long term.

Dont have children,or if you do only one allowed

Originally Posted by Traveller

Dont have children,or if you do only one allowed

That's terrible. I think that's a VERY personal thing and telling someone to only have one child because of the enviroment will do no good. Better would be:"Educate your children so they think about the enviroment as well"

Yep Lx I agree the truth is sometimes terrible,yet still the truth even if it doesnt fell good ,Best regards Gary

I agree with Gary's point if not the way it was presented. The Earth is already overpopulated and every child is a drain on the world's resources. Too bad certain other overpopulated countries don't follow China's example.

Originally Posted by FiReSTaRT

The Earth is already overpopulated and every child is a drain on the world's resources. Too bad certain other overpopulated countries don't follow China's example.

We do not have a fixed ammount of food resourses on our globe. If that would be the case we need to kill off some. Who shall choose who can stay and who has to go?
The socialist say that it's wrongly distributed and that is right to some degree.
As long as crops are burned in the west and farmers in EU get subsides (sp) for not growing certain crops, to keep market prices up, I don't believe in the theory of overpopulation.

The Chinese have stepped away from their one child policy because most families wants a boy, so girl fetuses have been aborted and girl infants have been killed after birth. The result: million-population cities with 70-90 % male pop.

In Sweden we had forced sterilization of people with "wrong" genes, way into the 60's, maybe 70's. A dark part of our history. Most thought that those things were over with the fall of the Third Reich and then we found out that it was going on in our hospitals and orphanages.

Who will descide what countries shouldn't be allowed to produce babies? How should it be inforced?

The overconsumtion in the west, or north, is enormous, so this is a good thread.

Mats

You are raising some great points Mats..
-This is not only about the amounts of food we can produce. It's also about what we're doing to the environment by producing the food and other consumer goods.
-I don't have all of the solutions such as the criteria. They could have a combination of population density, gdp per capita, costs of living and who knows what else.
-Internationally they can be enforced by global accords. Countries that do not have effective control policies would be given assistance for starters and sanctions if they're unwilling to implement them.
-Locally they can be enforced through heavy taxation. If you're breeding like rabbits and not paying your taxes, you end up in prison, but you wouldn't want to put your precious little angels into foster-homes, right?

Originally Posted by Traveller

Yep Lx I agree the truth is sometimes terrible,yet still the truth even if it doesnt fell good ,Best regards Gary

Bollocks Gary. If you can sustain your family then you have the right to have a family. That's not the government or anyone else's buisiness.

I can tell you that me and the missus will have more than one child in due time and anyone who thinks I should not and try to stop me from doing so better be physically and legally stronger than me.

I think it's my DUTY to provide a good home for the children born into this world. Soo many children are born in bad homes that those children that are born should be born in a good home as often as possible. Offcourse this view comes in part from the fact that I'm strongly religious.

And if I teach my children to do good for the inviroment and people around them then that'll do a whole lot more good than simply not having any children.

Not having children is a short term solution.

Alex, if taken as a suggestion to make improvements to the environment, then this is a great idea. The Earth is already overpopulated. Global population needs to be taken down a notch and it's still growing.
You are right about it being a short term solution. If we all refrained from having more than one child until the population reached the 4 billion level and then went up to having just enough children to maintain that level of population, we'd be doing the environment and mankind a HUGE favor.

I simply don't agree. I don't even agree about the earth being overpopulated. So for the. You're simply wrong on that account.

It's my priviledge to have children. And like I said. No-one will touch that.