My Post to Junk Economics List -- FYI
Flower Child (nternet@c2i2.com)
Thu, 15 Oct 1998 11:12:48 -0700
(Already this list is off on divergencies the details of which may obscure
its original focus. This is my first post. Charles Wilson)
All right, the 'tide' of unbalanced, mindless and unnecessary economic
growth, which may be formulated as (quantity of Earth resource consumed per
person) TIMES (number of persons on the Earth), has risen to the point of
causing alarm as islands of species survivors (us included) are threatened
by the rising encroachments -- need for energy, need for space, need for
resources, need for people's time, pollutions, rise of controlling classes
and their public relations operations devaluing our truthful communications
and the focus of our cooperative energies, etc. The answer is not to try to
raise all boats or islands, nor to fund higher and higher flood protections
around whatever victims who (or their simpaticos) can appeal pathetically
enough, but to lower the threatening seas of pollution, excess & unjustified
resource processing, and the cadres of professionals grown up around once
noble goals of production. I have heard no interruption in the cheering for
higher gross national product levels from any U.S. Congressperson, although
our level now is gross enough. I think this level is most of the problem.
Following our use of resource processing not for life's needs, but for the
increasingly demanding investor classes, we have directed our diplomats,
businesses and militaries to guarantee the exporting out of sub (third)
world countries the cheap resources and labor needed to keep the
capitalistic pyramid functioning. Some of these contracts originated with
tribal leaders, monarchs, dictators, and others of the 'higher' classes in
those countries whom we have paid off with U.S. lifestyles and burgeoning
bank accounts. The concomitant need to remold others' cultures from the
outside we have supported also. It is perhaps the need for others'
resources that keeps the U.S. military in over 150 others' countries today
and is a source of friction. Fail though it must as the limits of new
populations and resource locations are reached, the horses of the old ways
are increasingly whipped to bring back either good old days or what were our
imaginations of good new days. While the capitalistic system has been the
best to fill what once was a huge need for material supplies for our lives,
that need was fulfilled quite some time ago, in terms of the production vs.
adequate minimums times the number of persons alive. The number of persons
alive has even been affected by organizations such as church, national power
seekers, and by profit seekers, all with their narrow interests; it is an
artificial and bloated number and its physical bodies have grown without
sufficient cultural, family and community enriching content. This is the
real work -- quality of community not quantity of product. We need to go
into a steady state now, and with planning there is no need for a drastic
loss of altitude in the process of shedding the old first stage economic
booster while heading out for the long and fulfilling human journey with
steady state propulsion. Since a single personal computer now could network
the use of Earth resource, as well as resources of time, etc., for an
entire, large community (see how at my website
http://www.c2i2.com/~nternet ), until we have made some of the basic
attitude changes, resource handling decisions, and have overseen giving the
'permission to live' to the young and ill- or unhoused, I do not believe we
need to do anything more. With that, I conclude my contribution to this
forum. P.S. Feral uncaring people make feral animals, they are not a
natural species. Use a steel jaw trap (the bear-size ones) on your own leg
before recommending its use on others. Try chopping down all nature while
wondering about its 'standing' and then what will you be standing on? If we
lived more simply, or just legalized and even promoted more simple living
for those desiring it, we could realize that almost all pets could be fed
from our own food waste streams. We used to do that. The pets would
benefit from the increased communication we would have with them. No time?
Well, here's a change: With the mind tools we have developed, and the
resulting physical tools, machines, assembly lines and now the computers to
drive them, in a fair system of labor each would surely have only to work a
4-hour day, and could be home with the children, building our communities,
saving and gaining optimum health, knowing more about our world, its
wonders, and our pets. With legalizing and promoting 'microhouses' (and
microhouse cohousing), and new promotions of 'van villages' and such, as
long as all impacts are mitigated (sewage, energy use, traffic, health, law
abiding, safety, etc.) for today's young, the ill- and unhoused, and with
proper use of a few computers to solve our landfill, pollution, trade
imbalances, and efficient resource use (& thus atmospheric intrusions),
those problems would quickly be taken care of. Our plain physical use
(ingestion?) of the planet and its wilderness would diminish and we would
have insured the continued presence of the 'wildness' /sic/ that Henry
Thoreau (& Stegner in the quote of the previous writer) saw so essential.
Have a good day,
Charles Wilson (Flower Child)
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Zatkin <rzatkin@worldnet.att.net>
To: rlawrenc@mail.tds.net <rlawrenc@mail.tds.net>; Steve Kurtz
<kurtz@top.monad.net>
Cc: JunkEconomics@onelist.com <JunkEconomics@onelist.com>
Date: Wednesday, October 14, 1998 11:13 PM
Subject: [JunkEconomics] Re: pet food
From: "Robert Zatkin" <rzatkin@worldnet.att.net>
It would be interesting to calculate the cost to biodiversity from the
'pet' industry. As I write there is a meeting being held in the Redwood
Shores area of Redwood City, California. The subject is the requirement by
the US Fish and Wildlife Service, under mandate by the federal Endangered
Species Act (ESA), requiring the City to trap out a host of feral animals
prior to raising a dike adjacent to endangered/threatened species habitat at
the edge of the San Francisco Bay. The feral animals include progeny of
stray pets such as cats, mice, introduced species such as red foxes, and
spatially marginalized populations of raccoons, skunks and etc. The reason
for the mandate is the presence of several species listed on under
authority of the ESA (salt harvest mouse, clapper rail). The 'animal
rights' people are angry at the notion of using steel jaw traps to capture
the invasive species and are arguing for other approaches such as passive
traps and fences. This action is indicative of a 'movement' as there is an
initiative on the forthcoming general election ballot in California to make
illegal steel jawed traps and some types of poisons that, as I understand
it, are very effective (essential?) for removing feral animals from
endangered/threatened species habitat.
JE does not calculate the resultant cost of the loss of biodiversity that
may result from the potentially ineffective 'soft' approaches that many
animal rights activist are promulgating. Does species diversity, and the
value of endangered/threatened species provide a calculable 'economic'
return to people who 'connect' seeing an animal as rare as the clapper rail?
This is a non-trivial question and goes in the direction of what we value,
and discount as valueless by default, through JE. Does anyone remember the
essay several decades ago titled something to the effect _Do Trees Have
Standing?_ concerning the 'rights of trees'? Perhaps 'Do Species Have
Standing?'.
Conversely what are the 'economic' costs of the pet industry? Given that
many pet foods are derived from the industrial production of other animals
which are converted to 'pet' food there exist myriad costs to such
production -- groundwater contamination from nitrates in the waste stream of
feedlot fed animals; increased demand on surface and groundwater production
to feed such animals; production of methane (a principle 'global warming'
molecule in the atmosphere); consumption of non-renewable fossil fuels to
raise, process and deliver the food that we feed our 'pets'; soil loss and
soil nutrient depletion caused by raising the grains to feed the animals
that are turned into 'pet' food; and etc.
Incidentally, I have been working on endangered/threatened species issues
(salmonids) and find it vary curious that activists value these fish
species in a way that is intangible. Rarely seen and only known through the
efforts of agency fisheries biologists to assess the conditions of
populations, salmonids are to many what distant wilderness is to many more.
Not seen or experienced but tangible... because it is there.
"We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more
than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring
ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope." --
Wallace Stegner
Anyone out there want to attempt to assign economic value to hope?
Robert Zatkin
rzatkin@att.net
----------
> From: Lawrence D. Rupp <rlawrenc@mail.tds.net>
> To: Steve Kurtz <kurtz@top.monad.net>
> Cc: JunkEconomics@onelist.com
> Subject: [JunkEconomics] Re: pet food
> Date: Wednesday, October 14, 1998 1:35 PM
>
> From: "Lawrence D. Rupp" <rlawrenc@mail.tds.net>
>
> Steve Kurtz wrote:
> >
> >
> > As to the US$17B in current situation, I agree that the statistic is
nearly
> > meaningless except to point out that pet keeping is a voluntary
> > luxury/leisure activity that consumes resources. I suppose the
judgement is
> > implied that pet keeping is immoral. Put those pets to "work" to
provide
> > some "economic benefit" for the planet!
>
>
> In many cases they substitute for more human children. Is that "work"
> enough?
>
>
> Larry
> >
>
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