I have noticed recently, against the public outcry about energy consumption and reducing our carbon footprint, that businesses and advertisers are completely ignoring this and the public supports them! I have noticed that signs in front of businesses are being replaced with giant LED displays where the image and message changes. WTF? Not only do these things chug down electricity like a frat boy doing a keg stand but, they are made out of plastic and shipped from China! Fucking sad!
I was also out for dinner lately and noticed that my view of the restaurant/bar’s television sets was never obstructed, because I counted 22, 32 inch tv’s pointed in every direction on every conceivable wall surface and, where one had no surface, they were suspended from the ceiling. There was no specific programming on, just mindless background movement so nobody was even watching them.
What is wrong with us? Do we crave this constant visual stimulation? Are we like fucking crows and only the shiniest of electronic media will capture our attention? At what cost to society do we ignore pleas from societies most educated in environmental sustainability?
We are all slaves to our own demise!
—Mega Watt
This article appears in Feb 6-12, 2014.
Fuck off some of us like what fossil fuels and power brings. If you don’t like it, find a cave somewhere and live out your life without fossil fuels.
Hello Mega Wart. If I undertsnd you correctly you are concerned that we are moving too fast to create socialism in an industrialized urban society dominated by free market capitalism, This is exactyly the wrong course totake. We must eliminate the urban bourgeoisie and remove the populace to the countryside to create a Year Zero of agrarian based subsistence economy in order tocorrectly realize the perfection of a socialist societty.
“To destroy you is no loss”
“Do we crave this constant visual stimulation?” To answer this question – yes. Thanks to some of our most beloved technology – such as iphones – being so accessible to people at younger and younger ages (when our brains are still developing) we are noticing physical changes in the way our brains work, this will continue to compound over time. I would find you the link to this study but am sure you can google it pretty easily.
But the energy consumed by these things and the energy required to manufacture/transport them are small potatoes compared to the radiation that is permeating throughout the pacific ocean as we speak. We are pretty much fucked one way or the other, I say enjoy the game while you can at this point.
Crows are way smarter than humans. Money isn’t their god like it is in human society. So stop insulting creatures far more clever than your average CEO.
I would reword that ‘conspirators to our own demise’ or maybe ‘with’ instead of ‘to’.
yeah, that’s better.
like the movie ‘how I gave up and learned to love the bomb’ I may be close to giving up worrying about the mess we are making. the planet itself will survive ONCE WE DIE OFF. the species that survive us will adapt. things will get better when we are gone. so bring it on! hurry it up! we have done nothing whatsoever to make the earth a better planet or to improve the lot of any species on it. our footprints are like acid and our breath is a foul stench.
Sad part of living in this world is that society as a whole has become a throw-away, non-reusable mentality. The plastics we recycle go to China for what? They burn it to produce electricity. WTF is up with that? Most consumer items at one time, if it broke, you took it to a repair shop and got it back just like new. Not these days, if it breaks, throw it away, they are cheaper now.
I, 100% absolutely agree with you Hoist on the radiation that is coming across the ocean from Fukushima plus all the debris washing ashore. I can’t imagine wanting to eat any fish out of the Pacific, or to swim, but for many, it’s a way of life for them.
Humans have raped this planet for centuries without any regards to “what will it be like in the future”. With the recent spike in earthquakes, weird weather and volcanoes, the earth is saying I’ve had enough of humans. But another theory is that external forces are in play causing all that. Sun’s normal pattern of maximum and minimum solar output is completely out of whack. Then there is the theory of a red dwarf appearing, Nibiru, or planet X. It’s gravity is presumed to be 13 times of earth, which could also explain these strange phenomena.
Have you noticed the gene pool you’re surrounded by, but dare to ask the same question?
Yes, Tim. We all know you and your cop buddies love your fossil fuels. Leaving your big V8s running while you sit in the donut shop so you delicate asses don’t get cold when you get back in.
I went to Sherwin Williams to buy paint last weekend but, before I went in I noticed that right beside me there was an unattended RCMP cruiser sitting there idling away. I went in for a full half hour and, what do you think was still sitting there chugging away on our tax dollars when I came back out? Fuck it, right? You don’t pay for the gas!!!!
We all know it wasn’t you though, it was an RCMP car, not one of those HRPD dick mobiles. You know the ones that put their lights and sirens on to get through lights then turn them off again, the ones that park in no parking spots right in front of businesses they frequent, are usually found in threes cause there are so many of you now it take at least three to pull.over old ladies for speeding.
Hey Mega Watt
I have a sign on my very successful business on Spring Garden Road. My unemployed artist boyfriend uses lightbulbs in his latest installation.
Hoist nailed it. Except for the fact that we don’t have to be fucked but there’s no chance in Hell we have the will to change things. So I guess we are fucked.
Thanks Crispy but I encourage you to look up some info on the fukushima disaster and what it is currently doing to the pacific ocean. It’s not the kind of thing we can come back from.
“With americium it’s more dangerous than plutonium…if it rains and the radiation comes down, don’t grow food – don’t eat the food – and I mean don’t eat it for 600 years.”
“This is the greatest public health hazard the world has ever faced apart from the threat – every day – of nuclear war. Einstein said: “The splitting of the atom changed everything, save man’s mode of thinking.” Very profound. Thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. We are arrogant, we have a lot of hubris…we are now in a situation where we have harnessed the energy of the sun; it is out of control and there’s simply nothing we can do about it.”
– Dr. Helen Caldicott
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMmaduq-5bw
Buddha, hopefully they are the good incandescent bulbs and not the crap from ENS.
Someone’s a budding 1st year ecology student, aren’t they?
Let the world burn and enjoy the ride….
ob fails to stay reasonable and believable. for example, stores are replacing their signs with huge LED screens………oh really? this is ‘sweeping’ the neighborhood, correct?
Actually, GV, for arguments sake, I did see 2 new 15 X 8 foot (approximately) LED screen billboards right next to the farm market on the Bedford highway. So they may not be widely used at present but, one can definitely take a WAG (wild ass guess) that they will likely all be switched over in the near future.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t drive around in a fart powered car that plants trees from its exhaust but, there is a complete disregard for the delicate balance of our coexistence with nature and our arrogant greed seems to be gripping our already wasteful culture. Its funny, when someone mentions this shit and points out our greed, the collective here seems to demonize someone who is, at the very least, aware the direction we are going is wrong, and play the “what can I do to stop it” card. You could stop being dicks about it, that would likely be a good place to start.
A show of hands… Who here recycles and composts? I do so I’ll raise my hand. By the comments above, this makes all of us hypocrites!!! Why bother doing anything about anything seems to be the general theme here, so why do we bother doing even the easiest of the RRR mantra. It won’t help anything anyway, right?
I recycle my plastics/electronics/cans/cardboard/paper etc but I don’t compost at all. SHITMD, back when all we had to worry about (or at least the only thing that really stood out to me as a significant problem) was plastics, oil and carbon, I thought that it mattered what we did and that if enough people would snap out of it and realize how destructive we are being to the planet that maybe things could turn around. I am not that delusional anymore. There are too many people out there who still believe the earth is too big to experience any impact from our presence and that our resources are infinite. There are too many people out there who behave like creationists when they are shown scientific evidence of these things and like creationists you will never get them to observe reason. They are afraid so they deny there is a problem and so nothing is done to correct it. People who talk about these issues are refered to as occupiers or granola crunchers as a way to debase their character and claims – which is a real piss off because I hate hippies.
Recycling certainly doesn’t hurt, that’s for sure – but it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than that to get us out of this mess. Like yet-to-be-invented-technology more. I hear Europa is nice this time of year.
I recycle and compost (I keep it) because I couldn’t face myself if I didn’t.
that goes back to when I was a kid. mom saved and reused paper bags til you could see through them. she saved twiddlies, cans, jars, plastic bags. she got those habits as a kid and passed them on to us.
once ‘recycling’ started, she was a little unhappy about giving up all her jars and cans and plastic bags but did it for the good of the country.
i wash and re-use tin foil. I buy milk in bags and use the washed bags for leftovers, freezing stuff etc. I make my own hand soap & dishwashing detergent from bar soap, I have a vegetable garden using old tires for potato stacks. I buy used linens, furniture, clothing, cars. I make my own bread, soup, stews, pizza, spanakopita, dog food and irish cream.
we eat meat from a farm in the area. ditto on chickens, eggs.
I plant stuff for bees. I have a bat house. I keep my thermostat very low.
but I hate those fucking cf bulbs and have a stockpile of the nice old ones.
I work from home so I don’t drive unless I want to.
I do some stuff. I don’t do everything that I could. you should do something. it doesn’t have to be everything. every bit helps and sometimes it spreads.
I think this planet is so gorgeous, we haven’t shown much appreciation for it. the earth itself is bloody gorgeous. air is wonderful, water, the oceans and lakes and rivers and waterfalls are so wonderful, meaning full of wonder. mountains, valleys, great swaths of grasses in the wind. clouds. trees of all kinds, plants flowers, animals, whales and small fishes. all of it, and we walk around throwing cigarette butts on it, we throw coffee cups on it, we pour millions of gallons of hair dye, conditioner, shampoo, deodorant, mr clean, oil into and onto it.
it reminds me of a incident I read about decades ago. some bikers partied with a young woman. instead of loving her body with appreciation and joy they tied her up, pissed all over her and set her on fire.
I would like to point out led lamps require a hell of a lot less power than what we used to use.
In what I do there are lamps we use that use to need a 20amp fuse & drew the capacity of that circuit to give us light. & we would get a full 2000 watts of photons cranking outta that. Now we have led lamps that allow us to power multiple fixtures out of a 20amp line & we are getting nearly double the lumen’s coming out according to our light meters ….& this may not mean the signs you are talking about are using more power (they may have increased the size & amount of LED bulbs …meaning same power draw, more LIGHT baby ~:D
GDM – that was quite possibly one of the most articulate and moving passages I’ve ever seen written here. If I could like it a thousand times, I would. I’ll settle for looking afresh at my own life. You see, I’m a lot like Hoistie in this regard. The actions of one vs. those of 5 billion = exercise in futility. Add in a general misanthropy which says we as a species have worked for this end because we deserve no better. On the other hand, I come from a long line of stubborn bastards. And I have under my belt some 35 years of reading about brave men who looked at long odds, smelt the stench of the demon’s breath, and went down fighting with a defiant “Fuck You” sneer, because dying with self respect was the preferable option. As Kruschev said, of an earlier existential threat to humanity – “The living will envy the dead”
I guess the way I think in general, ivan, is what drives me. I believe in the virtue of selfishness, the way that ayn rand intended. I know she is trashed but I read her when I was 12. and it fit for me then and still mostly does.
I do what moves ME. I am quite self absorbed and arrogant enough to believe my way is the only way for ME. for the sake of the planet and all it’s species I would wish that humanity would take a step back, but it’s not going to happen. but that won’t affect what I do for me, on my own. maybe a little ‘peachy to be nietzche’ in me.
(go Canada womens team! scored 2 already! diane glued to the tv)
“The actions of one vs. those of 5 billion = exercise in futility.” Ivan the Philosopher
You’re less intelligent than I had given you credit for.
The great changes in life are the results of individuals facing the many. Need examples? Jesus Christ, Paul Mauser {that one’s for you, Ivan}, the Buddha, William Gates, Captain Cook, etc.
But those great individuals didn’t follow the herd, they stood for what they believed to be true .. and changed the world.
So don’t blame the odds of winning for your failure to achieve great changes .. blame yourself for quitting, before you even began.
“Ivan the Philosopher”
What a low thing to say.
“”Ivan the Philosopher”
What a low thing to say.”
Hee! Yes, perhaps I was a wee bit hasty, forgive me!
“Crows are way smarter than humans. ” – Rag Hag
Crows are way smarter than you, obviously.
Who is this ‘rag hag’ you speak, Buddha? Do I detect a racial slur to this ‘rag hag’ slam? Do you think she wears a jihab? If it is a she. There is no one on this board who is named ‘rag tag’, Buddha. Are you having Bud-duh visions again?
The crows are very confident they could run your store with greater efficiency and style with the added bonus of no artist bird friends to siphon the profits. The crows also insist that they have a larger vocabulary than any of your staff. Plus those huge cups make nifty nests. Now who’s smarter?
“The crows are very confident they could run your store with greater efficiency and style with the added bonus of no artist bird friends to siphon the profits. The crows also insist that they have a larger vocabulary than any of your staff. Plus those huge cups make nifty nests. Now who’s smarter?”
I apologise. You are as smart as a crow, after all.
In any event you are nowhere near as smart as I am. My very successful retail business on Spring Garden Road and my beautiful waterfront condo and my expensive car and all my beautiful expensive things prove I am smarter than you you rag hag!
…obviously, Buddha is unaware of just how intelligence crows are. The crows have wondered why anyone in their right mind would try to flog so much ‘Frederick’s of Hollywood’ lingerie. It’s not so much the boas and feathers as those damn cut-out openings and arrows pointing to said openings.
Interesting that you follow the teachings of some pudgy golden dude with a clock in his belly, my silly little sausage casing.
“…obviously, Buddha is unaware of just how intelligence crows are.”
Yes .. smart as a crow!
OB takes trip to times square…
head immediately explodes.
the end.
you guys know where scrap metal from western europe goes? it crosses from gibraltar to Morocco where locals there turn the scrap metal into just about everything. need a fridge, they make it all out of scrap metal. they repair their cars with it, make furniture, housing materials etc. all with brute force and ingenuity. it is really quite astonishing how industrious and resourceful they are. do i really care though…no. my tv breaks i find the publication to fix it, find the parts at radio shack etc and then follow the directions. its fun and cheaper than buying a brand new one. i have however over soldered before, which sucks. if the general population had more time or were more industrious and less lazy, a small garden would not only save money in the long run but also bring about some phsyical activity and some fresh air from the plants(thereby reducing the carbon footprint, not that that matters really). lastly carbon tax…established and pounded to industrial nations to do what….allow them to pay to pollute more. guess where the money goes….the guy who supports al gores money making Green empire. conveniently also the guy hiding out in china to avoid being prosecuted for the whole Oil for money iraq fiasco….oh this green mentality is funny and full of hypocrisy sometimes. especially for those who just bang the band drum with little idea about the realities surrounding them.
http://doingadvancework.blogspot.ca/2010/0…
http://www.redd-monitor.org/2013/10/17/car…