20 Weird, Crazy Ideas for Helping the Earth

...I know that over-population is the most dangerous thing in the world. Therefore, we must kill as many people as possible to save the ocean-front properties for the ultra-rich like us. My hero, Rachel Carson, helped do this when her and her devout followers convinced the UN to ban DDT in Africa. In the name of "saving the planet" we managed to kill 50 million useless black people by spreading malaria! Yay! Now, we must redouble our efforts to kill poor people who take up too much space. We must end all foreign aid, encourage the spread of AIDS, and provoke a shooting war between Pakistan and India!

And everyone must watch MSNBC! It's owned by General Electric, which stands to make more profit from global warming hysteria than any other corporation* in the world! Yay, Keith Olbermann!

*with the possible exception of Al Gore's investment company, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

We won't reduce population, which is our major environmental problem (Science Daily, April 29, 2009) because we are too selfish for our own desires, businesses need more customers, and no politician would dare suggest it. But for those who would like to look at the problem I suggest the free ebook series 'In Search of Utopia' (http:andgulliverretuns.info) An interesting read!

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Reducing the world's human population is the only idea to save the world that has a chance of success. Are we supposed to think that it is impossible to prove the Pope wrong? How's that geocentric cosmography working out for ya? Are we supposed to think that human libidos cannot be redirected from procreation? Did you know there is PORN on the internet? Fake environmentalists belong on Fox News, not Alternet.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I can just see it now... dickensian work houses where the poor peddle for 16 hour shifts to generate electricity for the wealthy.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Duh, we should not be putting corn in our cars! But we are. Nice use of bogus argument against potential discrimination most likely sponsered by Exxon-Mobil. And no mention of HEMP ETHANOL.

1 - The entire hemp plant is useable, not just one or two ears. Leftovers from processing can still be used as animal feed, stalks can be used for fibre.

2 - Hemp grows like grass, not in rows like corn. That means 100% of the land can be planted which means less water use. Hemp is also naturally drought-resistant.

3 - The reason hemp is called "weed" is because it is naturally pest-resistant too. It used to grow wild in ditches (in Alice B Toklas' day). Good luck finding wild corn in a ditch.

4 - Hemp ethanol has a real historical precedent. The original Model T ran on hemp ethanol and it got better mileage than anything we have today. Thank you Exxon-Mobil for WWI, ethanol prohibition and the hemp prohibition forced on 100 countries around the world in 1961.

5 - There is no such thing as GMO hemp. Hemp seed by itself is probably the most perfectly nutritious food known to man. Higher protein than milk, meat or eggs and all the essential fatty acids. The first completely documented case of medical treatment with dietary supplement was a study on using hemp seed to cure tuberculoses.

Hemp for Ethanol in Kentucky

Sad isn't it that when we could be happily brewing our own for $1.40 a gallon that the curator of the Kentuck Hemp Museum is reduced to using corn stalks for his demonstration because Amerika still can't see its way to legalizing a non-psychoactive industrial crop :.?

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

LOL at the article and the inane commentary.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?


However, this is highly unlikely to make the slightest difference to anything. It has been obvious for years to anyone with any real scientific training, that global warming is a blatant lie. It's entire political in nature and about a mutually agreed agenda across many different extreme factions to take control of Western Democracy.

http://www.gwb.com.au/gwb/news/beck/270999.htm

"Maurice Strong says, "Is it the only hope for the planet that the industrialised civilisations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about? Maurice Strong may not be a household name, but he wields incredible power within the United Nations. Ironically, Strong made his fortune as an oil industrialist."

There is no significant political opposition to this except for relatively small factions in the US Republican party. The Political Class across Europe are bought and paid for and fully signed on to this nonsense.

The fact that it is all totally corrupt is irrelevent. The Political Class is totally corrupt. This is not news, and won't result in any change.

Headline News - All Our Politicians are Corrupt, results in virtually no prosecutions whatsoever. Similar news that Global Warming is a Load of Bollocks won't even appear, because the MSM is totally Corrupt too.

Pass Me The Sick Bowl. The entire lot of them should be in jail.

Tony

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Facts excerpted from John Robbins' Pulitzer Prize nominated Diet for a New America (1987):

Half the water consumed in the U.S. goes to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock. Huge amounts of water are used to wash away their excrement. U.S. livestock produce twenty times as much excrement as does the entire human population, creating sewage which is ten to several hundred times as concentrated as raw domestic sewage. Animal wastes cause ten times as much water pollution than does the U.S. human population; the meat industry causes thrice as much harmful organic water pollution than the rest of the nation's industries combined.

Meat producers, the number one industrial polluters in our nation, contribute to half the water pollution in the United States. The water that goes into a 1,000 lb. steer could float a destroyer. It takes 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat, but 2,500 gallons to produce a pound of meat. If these costs weren't subsidized by the American taxpayers, the cheapest hamburger meat would be $35 per pound!

The burden of subsidizing the California meat industry costs taxpayers $24 billion annually. Livestock producers are California's biggest consumers of water. Every tax dollar the state doles out to livestock producers costs taxpayers over seven dollars in lost wages, higher living costs and reduced business income. Seventeen western states have enough water supplies to support economies and populations twice as large as the present.

Overgrazing of cattle leads to topsoil erosion, turning once-arable land into desert. We lose four million acres of topsoil each year and 85 percent of this loss is directly caused by raising livestock. To replace the soil we've lost, we're destroying our forests. Since 1967, the rate of deforestation in the U.S. has been one acre every five seconds. For each acre cleared in urbanization, seven are cleared for grazing or growing livestock feed.

One-third of all raw materials in the U.S. are consumed by the livestock industry and it takes thrice as much fossil fuel energy to produce meat than it does to produce plant foods. A report on the energy crisis in Scientific American warned: "The trends in meat consumption and energy consumption are on a collision course."

Nor can fish provide any help here, notes Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook. There are signs that the fishing industry (which is quite energy-intensive) has already overfished the oceans in several areas. And fish could never play a major role in the worlds diet anyway: the entire global fish catch of the world, if divided among all the world's inhabitants would amount to only a few ounces of fish per person per week.

Obviously, then, the idea of providing the entire world with a Western-style diet is absurd. But what about satisfying today's demand for meat--which provides only a fraction of the population with a Western-style diet? If the world population triples in the next 100 years, and meat consumption continues, then meat production would have to triple as well. Instead of 3.7 billion acres of cropland and 7.5 billion acres of grazing land, we would require 11.1 billion acres of cropland and 22.5 billion acres of grazing land.

But this is slightly larger than the total land area of the six inhabited continents! We are desperately short of groundwater, forests, topsoil and energy already. Even if we resort to extreme methods of population control: abortion, infanticide, genocide, etc...modest increases in the world population would make it impossible to maintain current levels of meat consumption. On a vegan diet, however, the world could easily support a population several times its present size. The world's cattle alone consume enough to feed over 8.7 billion humans.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

The planet will save itself from global heating. It has been through it before.

What is not going to be "Saved" is humanity. It is WE who cannot survive global heating because our agriculture will be wiped out.

Earth has been through five mass extinctions of nearly all life. The planet survives and after many years, often millions, life continues to evolve again from simple organisms.

So, please, let's get this right. NOT save the Planet. It should always be "save humanity".

Read James Lovelock, the guy who recognized the ozone hole and helped fix it: his latest book - The vanishing face of Gaia: Final Warning.

Lovelock estimates five billion humans will perish from starvation and related calamities and it could come suddenly and soon.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

The following quotes, facts, figures and statistics are excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Animals (2007) by Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:

"A reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources. Our choices do matter: What's healthiest for each of us personally is also healthiest for the life support system of our precious, but wounded planet."

---John Robbins, author, Diet for a New America, and President, EarthSave Foundation

One study puts animal waste in the United States to between 2.4 trillion to 3.9 trillion pounds per year. The United states produces 15,000 pounds of manure per person. This is 130 times the amount of waste produced by the entire human population of the United States.

A 1,000-cow dairy can produce approximately 120,000 pounds of waste per day. This is the functional equivalent of the amount of sanitary waste produced by a city of 20,000 people.

A 20,000-chicken factory produces about 2.4 million pounds of manure a year. Poultry factories are one of the fastest growing industries throughout Asia.

One pig excretes nearly three gallons of waste per day, or 2.5 times the average human's daily total. One hog farm with 50,000 pigs in France produces more waste than the entire city of Los Angeles, and some pig farms are much larger.

Factory farm pollution is the primary source of damage to coastal waters in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Scientists report that over sixty percent of the coastal waters in the United States are moderately to severely degraded from factory farm nutrient pollution. This pollution creates oxygen-depleted dead zones, which are huge areas of ocean devoid of aquatic life.

Meat production causes deforestation, which then contributes to global warming. Trees convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the destruction of forests around the globe to make room for grazing cattle furthers the greenhouse effect. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations reports that the annual rate of tropical deforestation has increased from 9 million hectares in 1980 to 16.8 million hectares in 1990, and unfortunately, this destruction has accelerated since then. By 1994, a staggering 200 million hectares of rainforest had been destroyed in South America just for cattle.

"The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways, and sub-division developments combined."

---Philip Fradkin, in Audubon, National Audubon Society, New York

Agricultural meat production generates air pollution. As manure decomposes, it releases over 400 volatile organic compounds, many of which are extremely harmful to human health. Nitrogen, a major by-product of animal wastes, changes to ammonia as it escapes into the air, and this is a major source of acid rain. Worldwide, livestock produce over 30 million tons of ammonia. Hydrogen sulfide, another chemical released from animal waste, can cause irreversible neurological damage, even at low levels.

The World Conservation Union lists over 1,000 different fish species that are threatened or endangered. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate, over 60 percent of the world's fish species are either fully exploited or depleted. Commercial fish populations of cod, hake, haddock, and flounder have fallen by as much as 95 percent in the north Atlantic.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

The United States and Europe lose several billion tons of topsoil each year from cropland and grazing land, and 84 percent of this erosion is caused by livestock agriculture. While this soil is theoretically a renewable resource, we are losing soil at a much faster rate than we are able to replace it. It takes 100 to 500 years to produce one inch of topsoil, but due to livestock grazing and feeding, farming areas can lose up to six inches of topsoil a year.

Livestock production affects a startling 70 to 85 percent of the land area of the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union. That includes the public and private rangeland used for grazing, as well as the land used to produce the crops that feed the animals. By comparison, urbanization only affects 3 percent of the United States land area, slightly larger for the European Union and the United Kingdom. Meat production consumes the world's land resources.

Half of all fresh water worldwide is used for thirsty livestock. Producing eight ounces of beef requires an unimaginable 25,000 liters of water, or the water necessary for one pound of steak equals the water consumption of the average household for a year.

The United States government spends $10 million each year to kill an estimated 100,000 wild animals, including coyotes, foxes, bobcats, badgers, bears, and mountain lions just to placate ranchers who don't want these animals killing their livestock. The cost far outweighs the damage to livestock that these predators cause.

The Worldwatch Institute estimates one pound of steak from a steer raised in a feedlot costs: five pounds of grain, a whopping 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about 34 pounds of topsoil.

33 percent of our nation's raw materials and fossil fuels go into livestock destined for slaughter. In a vegan economy, only 2 percent of our resources will go to the production of food.

"It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the overpopulation of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat."

---Jeremy Rifkin, author, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, and president of the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation

Lester Brown of the Overseas Development Council calculates that if Americans reduced their meat consumption by only 10 percent per year, it would free at least 12 million tons of grain for human consumption--or enough to feed 60 million people.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Flatus bags for individual off-the-grid use collects human farts for eventual concentration in flatus banks. Entire communities can be connected via flatus tubes for collecting nocturnal gaseous episodes. Centralized concentration tanks or banks can be used to fuel cities, cars, etc.

You can buy ready-to-use flatus bags and any medical/hospital supply store. Just plug-n-play.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

peta2 is now the largest youth movement of any social change organization in the world.

peta2 has 267,000 friends on MySpace and 91,000 Facebook fans.

A few years ago, PETA was the top-ranked charity when a poll asked teenagers what nonprofit group they would most want to work for. PETA won by more than a 2 to 1 margin over the second place finisher, The American Red Cross, with more votes than the Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity combined.

I understand there are conservative Christians who fear vegetarianism...which is kind of like being afraid of nonsmoking, nondrinking, or recycling. Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, pointed out that 220 million Americans were eating enough food (largely because of the high consumption of grain fed to livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.

A pamphlet put out by Compassion Over Killing says raising animals for food is one of the leading causes of both pollution and resource depletion today. According to a recent United Nations report, Livestock's Long Shadow, raising chickens, turkeys, pigs, and other animals for food causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks and other forms of transportation combined. Researchers from the University of Chicago similarly concluded that a vegetarian diet is the most energy efficient, and the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by not eating animal products than by switching to a hybrid car.

A 2007 journal published by the American Dietetic Association found "meat protein production required 26 times more water than vegetable protein on rain-fed lands." The journal further states that dieticians "can encourage eating that is both healthful and conserving of soil, water, and energy by emphasizing plant sources of protein and foods that have been produced with fewer agricultural inputs."

"Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation."

---Union Nations' Food and Agriculture Association

70% of the grain grown and 50% of the water consumed in the U.S. are used by the meat industry. (Audubon Society)

Over 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to grow grain for livestock. (Greenpeace)

It takes nearly one gallon of fossil fuel and 5,200 gallons of water to produce just one pound of conventionally fed beef. (Mother Jones)

Farmed animals produce an estimated 1.4 billion tons of fecal waste each year in the U.S. Much of this untreated waste pollutes the land and water.

The number of animals killed for food in the United States is 70 times larger than the number of animals killed in laboratories, 30 times larger than the number killed by hunters and trappers, and 500 times larger than the number of animals killed in animal pounds.

“If anyone wants to save the planet,” says Paul McCartney in a PETA interview from 2001, “all they have to do is stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do. It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty. Let’s do it! Linda was right. Going veggie is the single best idea for the new century.”

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Not a bad article except for #7 which shows absolutely no understanding of cows, grazing management or the relationship between animals and the land. The author seems to believe the only way to raise cows is the dominant industrial model. Using Management Intensive Grazing we can produce beef and milk while sequestoring carbon in the soil. How about some articles about farmers that sustainably produce quality food instead of all the negative junk we already know???

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

... is the idea that we can continue to live as we live now. That we can keep not only our lifestyles, but our ways of life. That we can somehow effect the radical change needed not just for global warming, but for everything we have been doing to kill our environment by making tiny changes that don't address our overpopulation or overconsumption or our industrialized economy's absolute need for that overconsumption and eternal growth to keep it going.

I highly recommend Derrick Jensen's book Endgame. It is one of the more accessible books that tells it how it really is. Industrialism is part of the problem along with our population numbers. We can't keep going like this because even all these "green" technologies today are just shifting deck chairs on the titanic. Sure, you can go to solar... but then you have to mine and extract and process and assemble and ship every single solar panel... and every single appliance it will run. You will still need processed petroleum for all that plastic. The same kind of plastic that is choking our oceans in huge huge patches often the size of states.

It can't be saved. It has been nice while it lasted, but our way of life will end one way or another. The only question is how much more destruction will we cause and how much misery will be created by the eventual collapse both for humans and non-humans alike.

www.greenanarchy.org

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I agree overpopulation is a problem; thanks to our GREAT GREEN GURU al gore, we know every american family should have 4 children.

The stupid europeans found out that High Speed Trains all over Europe save time and fuel.
But these enterprises are public/private corporations with profit restrictions for private investigators and that s no good.

To linder the inequality of wealth in USA would do more for the earth then all green painting ideas together.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Number 21... Global warming.

As the wheels come off of the global warming wagon, it should be added to the list. With the damage done by this fraud, it should be near the top.

The upper atmosphere heat signature never appeared. Then Mann's hockey stick was proven an intentional fraud. Then temperature decoupled with CO2 and slowed it's rise to near zero.
Now the Hadley CRU got hacked and uncovered was evidence of massive fraud to keep the AGW movement alive in spite of overwhelming evidence against the (now debunked) theory.

Global warming is a huge waste of hundreds of billions of dollars a year that could go to REAL environmental problems.

Instead of giving these frauds 3/4 of a trillion dollars a year to waste on global warming 'research', the money could outfit every house in the US with a solar set up and have it paid for in 5 years. Yeah, you're right, lets go with the fraud, it is soooo much greener.

The AGW fraud isn't quite as deadly as rachel carson's phony war on DDT killing all of those 3rd world kids, but it is close. They are trying to use it to create a one world government, which will lead to war.

Between that and killing prosperity, it will also dry up disposable income to spend on environmental causes. I'd vote global warming to be in the top 3 worst/stupidest/craziest environmental ideas of all time.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

We must recognize the necessity of instilling this urgency upon our children, the next generation of our planet’s protectors. It’s never too early to start teaching children to care about the Earth. Even toddlers should be gently guided to treat grass and other plants as living entities to be cared for.Blu Ray to MKV

Compassionate Kids will learn about recycling, saving energy, and choosing earth-friendly products. As a support to parents, teachers, and home educators, we will list on this website environmentally supportive curriculums, activities, recommended books, videos, magazines, articles, organizations, websites, and other earth-friendly resources.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]