Kindest Regards, Flow!
Thank you for your response.
Our misues of advanced technologies, such as the introduction of toxins into the environment to "improve" agricultural yields of corn to make more fuel, instead of food, to burn in autos and trucks all just has ceased to make much sense to me. There is a middle ground as you say, but it's now dominated by humanity and it's devices.
I'm struggling with understanding here...I see several levels of philosophical thought trying to overwrite each other.
I see a lament over chemical application of fertilizer to improve yields
for fuel, but not for consumption as food? I mean, that was the foundation behind Rachel Carson's work, stopping the use of DDT, period.
I see a lament that an alternative fuel is being developed to power the very vehicles our society has come to rely on. Did you know that the
legal weight limit on a tractor-trailor combo in the US is 80,000 pounds, in Canada it is 100,000. Subtract approximately 35,000 pounds for the fueled weight of the vehicles, and you end up with somewhere in the neighborhood of 45,000 pounds of consumer goods
per vehicle combo. Multiply that by how many hundreds of thousands of trucks moving everything from toilet paper to luxury yachts and everything in between, including the most recent copy of Playboy. Now, when the oil runs out, how do we move these goods in this quantity to feed and house and clothe the masses?
I see a lament that humanity has even bothered to develop technology, regardless of what that technology is, because it is contrary to "nature." Quite possibly, it is the end result of natural selection, the brainiacs developed technologies that put them into power and domination over the balance of nature. Maybe one day we will become extinct "overnight" like the dinosaurs, maybe not. In the meantime, we've got to deal with what it is before us.
I see a lament that humans are not being good stewards with what has been entrusted to them by an Almighty Creator, and that I can agree with. I would add the caveat though, that it is the few who mess things up for the many. It is the lazy, who dump the barrel of toxic waste in the ditch behind the house because they can't be bothered with taking it to a safe place to be properly dealt with. It is the greedy who do the same on a wholesale level. It is the cigarette smoker who flicks "his" filtered cigarette out the window of his car on the highway and leaves a little bundle of fiberglass to enter the environment, fiberglass that doesn't break down, and multiplied by countless millions of equally idiotic actions, adds up to a considerable amount of environmental pollution. On top of the potential for starting a wildfire!
I see fingers pointing here and there, and everywhere but self. And self is included, in the entire picture. Will self impact the environment? Yes, it is impossible not to. But what level of impact, and is that impact something that can be sustained and recovered from?
I see a lament over conditions largely beyond our control, with conflicting interests that make no sense when placed in a proper perspective.
Forget for a moment all of the ails of the industrial world...how would
you do things differently? Let's keep it simple...how would you get the billions of tons of produce from the field to the market to feed the 300 million people everyday, without trucks, trains or fuel? Are you going to carry 45,000 pounds of groceries on a bycycle?