Sustainability and Quality of Life- world wide

[TGHusker]

Interesting article and perhaps alarming at the same time.  One may ask why a conservative poster is posting on Sustainability- a typically non-conservative topic (unfortunately in my opinion).  It is because we all have more than a casual stake in the health of our environment and its ability to provide us a sustainable and hopefully even an enjoyable life.  When I talk about 'we' I'm talking about us living today but also my grand-kids' grandchildren to come. 

 

I've quoted a few sections form the article below. There is more in the article and it provides a link to an interactive website - I provided the link also below.

 

I think one of the big issues is distribution and political issues.  The earth has sufficient resources for much if not all of our basic needs, however, those resources are often hindered in

their distribution because of political issues - war, dictators, poor infrastructure, etc. The prosperous nations also 'bristle' at the idea of wealth redistribution and the need to cut back on their use of resources as noted in the article - as a conservative that sounds to much like world wide socialism.  

 

So a few discussion questions:

1.  What is the responsibility of wealthy nations if any?

2.  How do we overcome distribution issues of infrastructure and political resistance (both of the wealthy and poor nations)?

3. As a conservative, I believe in efficiencies and liberty.  How do we efficiently distribute resources without infringing on liberty, sovereignty?   What I mean by this - we could have a world wide govt that redistributes resources and yet we lose liberty and freedom of choice and national sovereignty. 

4.  How does the USA change its budget priorities to maintain both long sustainability and quality of life?

 

 

 

 

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-good-life-sustainability-20180205-story.html

 

The interactive link and the researcher's website:

https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/

 

 

Quote

 

Bad news, Earthlings: It may be possible for everyone on the planet to live a "good" life. It may also be possible for humans to live within their environmental means.

But if present trends continue, there will be no way for both of these things to happen at the same time.

That's the bleak — if not entirely surprising — assessment of researchers from the Sustainability Research Institute at University of Leeds in England and the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in Berlin.

They came to this conclusion after considering 11 necessary ingredients of a well-lived existence. Some of the items on their list are basic human needs — income of at least $1.90 per day, electricity, enough food to eat and a life expectancy of at least 65 years. Others were social goals, such as equality, dependable friends and family, and a decent degree of life satisfaction (at least 6.5 on a scale of 1 to 10).

The researchers also considered the cost to the planet of achieving these things. They broke it down into seven categories such as carbon dioxide emissions and use of natural resources like nitrogen, phosphorus and clean water.

What they found is that humanity has a lot of work to do.

 

 

 

Quote

 

Right now, there's not a single country on Earth that provides its people a good, sustainable life.

Not one.

In fact, there aren't even any that come close.

The researchers, led by economist Daniel O'Neill of the University of Leeds, believe this is possible. But it will take some hard work.

Let's start with the good life.

Out of roughly 150 countries studied, only three — Austria, Germany and the Netherlands — currently provide their citizens with all 11 items on the list. An additional seven — Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Japan and Sweden — offer 10 out of 11. The United States achieves nine, as does Canada.

But none of them is close to doing so sustainably. Indeed, none of them meets more than two of the seven requirements set out for environmental sustainability

 

 

This chart shows how selected countries balance their social needs and their resource use. If they were doing this well, they would be in the upper-left quadrant of the chart. (Daniel O'Neill)

 

 

Quote

 

If someone could wave a magic wand and reallocate Earth's resources so that they were shared equally by everyone, it would probably be enough to meet everyone's basic human needs (the list that includes enough food to eat and enough money to avoid extreme poverty, among other things), O'Neill said.

But it still wouldn't allow everyone to enjoy "more aspirational goals like secondary education and high life satisfaction," he added. For that, "we need to become two to six times more efficient at transforming resource use into human well-being."

That's much easier said than done, of course. And it gets only more difficult when you consider that there will be 11.2 billion people on the planet by the end of the century, according to projections from the United Nations.

In theory, wealthy nations could cut way back on their resource use while maintaining their achievements on the social front. Some straightforward first steps include "switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy, producing products with longer lifetimes, reducing unnecessary waste, shifting from animal to crop products, and investing in new technologies," the researchers wrote.

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

I just came across this thread and don't know how I missed it.

This is actually a subject I had read about quite a bit.  The issues are extremely difficult and not as easy as just being angry at the other side.  For instance, we currently produce enough food in the world to feed everyone very well.  It's not a production issue.  It's a distribution issue.....and that gets tied up into one hell of a lot of messes.

 

I also have read a lot from Patrick Moore.  I don't agree with him on everything.  But, I think his mind is at least in the right direction as an environmentalist.  He was an original founder of Green Peace.  He then realized that the group was going in totally the wrong direction and he left them and started preaching about environmental sustainability.  His main thing is that he understands that we will have 11.2 billion people on earth that needs to be fed, housed and clothed.  That can't be done without affecting the environment in some way.  But, it needs to be done in a sustainable way.  For instance, he found that groups like Green Peace would be totally against logging.  Moore would understand that logging is necessary but it needs to be done sustainably.  Green Peace would be against all plastics.  Moore understands that plastics can be a major part of making the world sustainable...but, there needs to be changes to how we treat plastics, use them and dispose of them.  Those are just a couple examples.

[NM11046]

@TGHusker you're going to have to admit pretty soon that you're a dyed in the wool liberal.  (jk)

[RedDenver]

Just now, NM11046 said:

@TGHusker you're going to have to admit pretty soon that you're a dyed in the wool liberal.  (jk)

Sustainability is pretty closely associated with conservation, which was the origin of conservatism. So maybe he's just getting back to the Teddy Roosevelt roots.

[BigRedBuster]

17 minutes ago, NM11046 said:

@TGHusker you're going to have to admit pretty soon that you're a dyed in the wool liberal.  (jk)

Reddenver hit the nail on the head with this.

 

There is something totally missing now days in the macro thought process.  It obviously isn't the current American conservatism.....they are F'ed up.  

 

 

 

 

 

But, it's not liberalism either.

[RedDenver]

5 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

Reddenver hit the nail on the head with this.

 

There is something totally missing now days in the macro thought process.  It obviously isn't the current American conservatism.....they are F'ed up.  

 

 

 

 

 

But, it's not liberalism either.

If you go back to earlier versions of liberalism, you'd probably agree with a lot of it as it was the predominant view of the founding fathers. For example, the 2nd Amendment is a VERY liberal idea.

[TGHusker]

15 hours ago, NM11046 said:

@TGHusker you're going to have to admit pretty soon that you're a dyed in the wool liberal.  (jk)

Funny.  Compassionate Conservative perhaps.    Under this definition, copied from the quote below, I would be a liberal:

In most other countries and languages, also, “liberal” means classical advocacy of a free-market economy; personal rights, liberties, and responsibilities; equality before the law; and a democratic element in limited government.

 

http://libertyunbound.com/node/496

Here are some quotes from this interesting article that explains the movement of the meaning liberal from the classical sense of the word to the American politicization of the word.

Quote

 

The word “liberal” derives from the Latin for “free.” Classical liberals do not all share the same detailed understanding of their values; but to minimize repetition in what follows, it is convenient to list typical characteristics. Classical liberals typically believe in the importance of individual responsibility; in the freedom to live one’s own life, to travel, to change residence, and to choose one’s own occupation; in freedom of speech and press; in tolerance of the opinions and lifestyles of dissenting minorities; in capitalist enterprise with secure property rights and free markets for domestic and international trade; in freely and honestly elected representative government of defined and limited powers that protects human rights; in the rule of law, equality before the law, independent administration of law and justice, and separation of church and state.

Left-liberals share many of these values, of course; the chief difference concerns the character and scope of government, which affect the degree of respect that left-liberals have for others among those values.

Liberalism, if not yet so called, became a powerful force in the Age of Enlightenment. It rejected hereditary status, the divine right of kings, absolute monarchy, and established religoin. Leaders of the American and French Revolutions used liberal philosophy, including insistence on consent of the governed, to justify overthrowing tyrannical rule. The 19th century brought more or less liberal governments to countries in Europe and the Americas.

 

 

Quote

 

How, then, did the word “liberal” acquire its changed meaning? Well, the early liberals worked for freedom from burdensome and oppressive old laws and regulations. Liberalism meant action. The ideal of change toward increased freedom and modernity drifted into accepting change almost for its own sake — or so I conjecture. Many conditions in the world plausibly seemed open to improvement — even in the liberal direction — by changing or adding some laws and regulations.

The case for a typical one of these interventions, taken by itself, may indeed be strong; yet a great accumulation of individually plausible interventions may become oppressive and make the task of monitoring government all the more difficult. Overlooking this point commits the fallacy of composition, the fallacy of supposing that what is true of the individual case is therefore true of such cases taken together. (The standard example compares one spectator standing up to see a parade better, and all standing up to see the parade.)

Even so, advocates of each particular intervention tend to focus on it, not perceiving or worrying about the fallacy. Some interventions may have unintended side effects that seem to require still others as correctives (as Ludwig von Mises explained). Ongoing growth of government activity motivates special interests to seek more interventions on their own behalf or in self-defense against privileges given to others. The political expediency of a “moderate,” middle-of-the-road position — the Hotelling effect, so called following Harold Hotelling’s article in the Economic Journal (1929) — allows the more active side of the road to drag along what is considered the respectable middle, thus reinforcing the drift. Many or most participants in an interventionist drift may well be high-minded people; but the drift does offer opportunities to control freaks, who may relish the prospect of power for their own purposes in a semi-socialist state.

 

Quote

The original term “liberal” persists, in the United States, anyway, even for an orientation that has metamorphosed into almost its opposite. The process illustrates the Hegel-Marx notion of a change of quantity into quality, of degree into kind (as rising temperature changes ice into fluid water and then into steam). An itch to change things has taken hold, with politicians and special interests constantly imagining what further government interventions into what further aspects of life might do some good.

Quote

 

The word “liberal” in the sense of left-liberal is (or was until quite recently) accepted gladly, and even as a self-congratulatory term, by American adherents of that political persuasion; and most do so use it still. However, many conservative politicians and commentators, such as Rush Limbaugh, have come to use it as a pejorative. Thus even conservatives join in perverting the unmodified word to mean incessant leftward change.

International Usage

This drift toward perverting the word has not occurred, however, in all writings and all countries. In some English-speaking countries outside the United States (Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom), usage of the term “liberal” seems to be complicated by their having thus-named Liberal (or Liberal Democratic) political parties. But in the UK, anyway, the classical usage still seems to prevail. The London Economist does routinely and unambiguously so use the word. For example, its issue of 16–22 October 2010 hails Mario Vargas Llosa, winnner of the Nobel Prize for literature, as “A Latin American Liberal”: “His liberalism is universal, inspired by such thinkers as Karl Popper and Isaiah Berlin.” In most other countries and languages, also, “liberal” means classical advocacy of a free-market economy; personal rights, liberties, and responsibilities; equality before the law; and a democratic element in limited government.

 

 

[TGHusker]

16 hours ago, RedDenver said:

Sustainability is pretty closely associated with conservation, which was the origin of conservatism. So maybe he's just getting back to the Teddy Roosevelt roots.

Very true. When I think of Biblical conservatism - it is equated to stewardship.  Mankind is told in scriptures to be good stewards of this earth.  Thus sustainability relates to stewardship and passing this earth on the future generations in good shape.   This should not be a liberal or conservative construct. If corporations or govt pollute and destroy the earth and make it less sustainable, then we are allowing them to violating the biblical mandate.   So, this then gets down to policy and priorities.  What should this govt spending its limited funds on. Protecting the environment is an important 'human' responsibility and therefore an important role of govt.  Today's congressional 'conservatives' should be less concerned with the 'donor' class and more concern with stewardship and the long term affect of policy.

Edited March 9, 2018 by TGHusker

[Kiyoat Husker]

3 hours ago, TGHusker said:

Very true. When I think of Biblical conservatism - it is equated to stewardship.  Mankind is told in scriptures to be good stewards of this earth.  Thus sustainability relates to stewardship and passing this earth on the future generations in good shape.   This should not be a liberal or conservative construct. If corporations or govt pollute and destroy the earth and make it less sustainable, then we are allowing them to violating the biblical mandate.   So, this then gets down to policy and priorities.  What should this govt spending its limited funds on. Protecting the environment is an important 'human' responsibility and therefore an important role of govt.  Today's congressional 'conservatives' should be less concerned with the 'donor' class and more concern with stewardship and the long term affect of policy.

 

It's funny that the current head of the EPA cites the bible as his inspiration for a completely opposite view of this topic.  Ironic, right?

[TGHusker]

24 minutes ago, Kiyoat Husker said:

 

It's funny that the current head of the EPA cites the bible as his inspiration for a completely opposite view of this topic.  Ironic, right?

Yes and I originally supported his appointment.  I based it on other things he was doing as AG in Okla that I supported.  Knapp was right on that one.

 

I've followed Pruitt many years in Okla and he was a rising star but I think this gig wasn't the right one for him or maybe it just revealed the true person. 

 

Good grief I'm starting to sound like that liberal NM was pegging me as.  I just think there is room in conservatism for environmentally sound policy.  In the same way there is room for

compassionate social policy (GWB) - it is all a matter of priorities and equality (sounds like a liberal word but look at the classic definition of liberal that I posted above). The far left leaning 'liberals' (today's meaning of the word) co-oped the meaning of classic liberalism and the far right pushed them even further.    That is why I keep thinking that if we remove the liberal vs conservative labels from the conversation we really aren't that far apart - not as far apart as the dividers (those far left and far right agitators) want us to believe.

Let's look at the definition again (see below quote):  These words are often connected to  right of center policy:  free market economy, responsibility, limited govt. These words are often connected to left of center policy:  equality, personal rights, liberties.    Reasonable, centralist policy should be able to claim these words - not just one or two of the words - but all of the words.  If policy makers  could make priorities based on these words, then we'd have policy that was both conservative and liberal - conservative in the sense that it protects a free market society and does not infringe on individual rights via an overly aggressive & massive govt and liberal in the sense that it has a blind eye towards race, gender and other differences - providing equality while limiting favoritism (towards the donor class of special interests).   But it all goes down to priorities again. If the priority is to win the next election - then the donor class will have the upper hand forever dividing us & also our policy makers who need the donor's money for the next election.  If the priority is to fashion policy that protects liberties (both now and the future - thus sustainability), maintaining equality, & a free market economy then the donor class would have to take a back seat.  

There I just made a speech about getting money out of politics - a whole new topic.

4 hours ago, TGHusker said:

In most other countries and languages, also, “liberal” means classical advocacy of a free-market economy; personal rights, liberties, and responsibilities; equality before the law; and a democratic element in limited government.

 

[RedDenver]

11 minutes ago, TGHusker said:

There I just made a speech about getting money out of politics - a whole new topic.

 

Welcome to the issue that started my journey from a conservative Republican a couple decades ago to a progressive today. (Of course, I'm onboard your idea of getting rid of the conservative/liberal/progressive/libertarian labels, but I haven't found a way to do that in broad political discussions.) Getting money out of politics is still by far my number one issue. Republicans like Kasich could get me to take a long hard look at voting for them if they campaigned on getting money out of politics.

[TGHusker]

17 minutes ago, RedDenver said:

Welcome to the issue that started my journey from a conservative Republican a couple decades ago to a progressive today. (Of course, I'm onboard your idea of getting rid of the conservative/liberal/progressive/libertarian labels, but I haven't found a way to do that in broad political discussions.) Getting money out of politics is still by far my number one issue. Republicans like Kasich could get me to take a long hard look at voting for them if they campaigned on getting money out of politics.

yes I've come to believe that Citizens United was a huge overreach.  It was to counter the influence of labor unions, teacher unions etc on the other side but it opened up a flood gate of special interests taking over policy making.  It would be good but probably not conceivable to limit all donations to private individuals with certain caps - the union money, PAC money out of our elections.  This I believe is the big reason Congress and DC as a whole is so dysfunctional.  Or perhaps term limits would help (yes I know - elections are suppose to be term limiting in and of themselves - but we've seen how that hasn't worked) however, if members of Congress knew  that they only had so much time to get something done then maybe they would be more concerned wt the people's business than their own re-election. 

[TGHusker]

We are going to suffocate in our own plastic if the world doesn't fix this mess.  The floating plastic garbage dump in the Pacific is

now 2x the size of Texas.   Do we go after the plastics industry, the shipping industry, the fishing industry to get it cleaned up?  Kind of

hard to pin this on one or two industies - it is a human issue.  Seems bigger than one govt to clean up.  Should this be the responsibility

UN? What a mess to clean up.   The last sentence in bold is shocking.

 

http://theweek.com/speedreads/762425/garbage-island-floating-pacific-ocean-now-twice-size-texas

 

Quote

 

A floating clump of garbage in the Pacific Ocean has grown to be more than twice the size of Texas, research published Thursday found. That's at least four times larger than previously thought, the researchers noted.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch lies between California and Hawaii and comprises at least 79,000 tons of plastic, the study found, spanning across 617,763 square miles. To track the patch's growth, researchers flew over the area and used 18 boats to survey its true size and density.

"Ocean plastic pollution within the GPGP is increasing exponentially," they concluded. Microplastics, which are tiny fragments of plastics, make up the bulk of the 1.8 trillion pieces of debris in the patch, though the number of fishing nets present has also alarmed scientists, reports The Washington Post. The nets account for at least 46 percent of the patch's mass — a concerning statistic given sea life often become entangled in them.

The size of the patch is not changing as rapidly as is the sheer amount of trash, the study noted. The patch is becoming more dense, as plastics travel from all over the world on ocean currents and settle in the Pacific.

The findings present a daunting challenge to organizations seeking to clean up the mass. The United Nations estimates that there will be more plastic waste in the world's oceans than fish by 2050 without a major reduction in single-use plastic consumption

 

.

[BigRedBuster]

I don't understand the concept of dumping trash in the ocean.

[Landlord]

9 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

I don't understand the concept of dumping trash in the ocean.

 

 

Most of it isn't 'dumped' - it comes from trash in streets making it into drains, litter on beaches, etc.