Dear Subscribers,
As many of you don’t get to see our posts on Facebook, here are some of the more popular ones from this month. Please let me know if you’re interested in receiving featured posts from Scale Down on Facebook on a monthly or bimonthly basis.
Today marks the start of a new journey around that not-so-distance star, the Sun. Safe travels, dear Earth, to you and to all your inhabitants!
Best wishes,
Tony
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We are certainly finding this to be true!
Posted Dec 19 (# of viewers: 754). This quote addresses a fundamental prerequisite for a sustainable civilization, — respect for and protection of the Greater Community of Life. Thomas Berry was an influential eco-philosopher with a profound love of creation.
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Here's the thing, John. A fair and timely transition to renewables can't happen without a reduction in consumption by the affluent. Call it energy equity. Begin by setting an example.
People of low or modest income don't tolerate huge energy price hikes. They can't afford electric cars. Most electricity is generated by fossil fuels anyway. Accelerated green industrialization has serious environmental consequences. Less energy consumption, however, means less carbon emissions and less damage, and buys time. Again, be a role model, like stop flying in private jets for starters. End overconsumption by the rich!
Posted Dec 16 (# of viewers: 508). “The reality is that the only way change comes is when you lead by example” ~ Anne Wojcicki, American entrepreneur
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Gambling on Technology to Save the World! Our civilization is so obsessed with economic growth that it is willing to bet the house on unproven technology. This is not only irresponsible, it's crazy. They say that big technological breakthroughs are needed very soon to avoid the worst of climate change. For instance, see:
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/.../could-new-technology-solve.../
https://www.publicradioeast.org/.../how-can-fossil-fuel...
But what will happen if there are no major breakthroughs? Are we doomed? Guess so. As an insurance policy, how about slowing economic growth to stem carbon emissions? We already know that works.
Much of humanity over consumes, yet part of it remains impoverished. Scaling down the economy, if done properly, could provide equity for less fortunate people was well as for nature.
Posted Dec 15 (# of viewers: 436). For further reading, check out TechNo-fix.
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Fossil Fuels Versus Renewable Energy. The latter is obviously preferable to the former given the climate predicament. But without curtailing overgrowth, it simply greases the wheels for further destruction of Nature.
Posted Dec 17 (# of viewers: 414).
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Here’s an excellent ecocentric presentation. Worth viewing for all the reference material (books, charts, quotes, etc.) alone. Let’s encourage everyone to view the video. It's well worth the 75-minute run time!
Posted Dec 16 (# of viewers: 57). Michael Dowd is an eco-theologian who can be found at postdoom.com.
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LAST JOURNEY. Crippled by a ship strike, a humpback whale, makes her final journey of 3,000 miles back to her winter home in Hawaii. Absolutely heartbreaking (see article).
According to the World Wildlife Fund "Shipping traffic increased 300% between 1992 and 2013, and continues to increase at a rate of 2-3% per year. Ships that keep growing in size and speed now move 10.3 billion tons of goods around the globe each year. Ship-based travel has also escalated, with fast-passenger ferries racing through coastal areas also used by whales and dolphins."
Scale down please! The environmental crisis is not about climate change — it's about human population and economic overgrowth. It's about selfishness and brute calllousness toward the living world.
Posted Dec 13 (# of viewers: 724). Tragically, many Cetaceans face annihilation. Such is genocide and should be recognized as such.
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And What About The Nukes?
Climate change is all over the news these days especially after the recent COP27 international conference involving many hundreds of national delegates, corporations, scientists, and environmentalists from around the world.
But why no such mega-conference on the surging threat of nuclear war? The climate issue will evaporate along with much of everything else if the nukes go off due to malice or accident. Unlike the existential threat of catastrophic climate change, why is that of nuclear war left solely up to the U.S. and Russia?
And by the way, who speaks for the 9 million other-than-human species on this issue? Don't they matter?
(text modified from original post)
Posted Dec 10 (# of viewers: 460).
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Want to save the planet? Have fewer children!
I'm glad the Washington Post at least nearly admits it. But then tries to dance around the issue of overpopulation as if its impacts were only about climate change. They conveniently ignore the devastating effects of our enormous numbers on other life. Someone needs to remind them that we are only one among 9 million species.
Posted Dec 9 (# of viewers: 489).
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Concerns About Overpopulation!
Human population of New Jersey: 9,300,000
Black bear population of New Jersey: 3,000
The aim of the hunt is to reduce the NJ black bear population by 20%, or some 600 bears. Meanwhile, New Jersey's human population is projected to expand by 4.2% between 2020 and 2040 - an increase of 381,938 people.
Ever wonder about all the sweet talk these days about "living in harmony with wildlife and nature"? Or is that just for people in Africa?
Posted Dec 7 (# of viewers: 605).
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Victims of “Green” Industrialization — a tragedy unfolding in the Mojave Desert.
More crimes against nature as our "civilization" tries to save its own ass from the worst effects of radical climate change it has caused, selfishly with zero interest in scaling back economic growth to protect the greater community of life.
“Start with site-specific Mojave plant species such as the tricorner milkvetch and the white-margined beardtongue, lovely rare flowers endemic only to certain valleys and basins. They are goners under the solar regime. From there the picture only gets uglier, with the likely wiping out of huge stretches of habitat for the broad suite of Mojave fauna: foxes, hawks, badgers, rabbits, and, most prominently, the desert tortoise, the keystone species of the Mojave, whose construction of extensive burrows provides homes for at least a dozen other species. “If there were no desert tortoises to dig new burrows,” states a Fish and Wildlife Service manual about the species, it would lead to ‘the demise of the ecosystem’…
Some 60,000 acres of BLM land adjacent to near-pristine Death Valley National Park have been proposed for industrial solar…The Joshua tree, which the Fish and Wildlife Service is considering for protection under the Endangered Species Act, is on a path to extinction, Joshua tree woodlands being one of the most imperiled ecosystems in the American West. The solar project at Sarcobatus Flat would kill, bulldoze, and stack in cordwood piles between 50,000 and 70,000 of the trees, according to a field estimate by the nonprofit Basin and Range Watch.
The Great Basin Desert to the north, meanwhile, remains mostly free of the techno-industrial regime. But that’s ending with the advent of new electrical transmission projects into these remotest parts of Nevada, a project called Greenlink that electricity and natural gas provider Nevada Energy is funding. Greenlink North, pending approval, is planned to run along Highway 50, the famous Loneliest Road in America, from Reno to Ely, through some of the wildest parcels of public land in the state — and prime habitat of the endangered greater sage-grouse…Greenlink North, along with the associated solar fields it will make possible, is expected to devastate some of the last strongholds of sage-grouse in north-central Nevada, as the birds are exquisitely sensitive to the light and noise of development."
Excerpt from: https://apple.news/AVA4YQomYSfia-dS3LEn2Bg
Photo from: https://www.latimes.com/.../biologists-fear-desert..
Posted Dec 8 (# of viewers: 875).
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OMG! A UN official admits that “we are at war with nature” and that population is a reason. But Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN environment programme, fails to mention (at least in this article) that overpopulation is a matter that needs to be addressed. Still, acknowledging it is a hopeful step in the right direction!
Posted Dec 6 (# of viewers: 689).
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Pakistani writer, Insaf Ali Bangwar, sums up the consequences of overpopulation. (Post by Digital Guidestones.)
Posted Dec 4 (# of viewers: 591)