Boycott Chinese Olympics? Nah, How About Boycotting Chinese-made Goods.

I'm perplexed why there's such consternation about the United States either boycotting the 2008 summer Olympic games or opening ceremonies in Beijing China, over China's human rights and other issues.

The simplest thing for U.S. consumers (ergo Voters...) to do is boycott items "Made in China", instead. 

Oh, wait. We can't; nearly everything imported to this country in recent years is made in China. So, good luck locating what you need/want that isn't sourced from China. 

U.S. voters need to elect government officials who'll revamp trade and tariff policies to benefit the U.S. instead of China. Afterward, China's most-favored nation status could then be repealed (they're Communist, remember; what was the Cold War really for, then?...). 

An argument could be made—after the poor-quality issues of many Chinese-made goods which have poisoned our animals, leached toxins to our children and dubious medicine's ingredients—that for an Communist country like China to attack the U.S. isn't by using their vast army, but instead kill the U.S population via our own conspicuous consumption by insidiously poisoning us though innocuous everyday consumer products they make and dump on our shores...

Disposing the Disposable Society

The concept of the "disposable society" must be disposed of. The "new" eco-friendly lifestyle model which modern consumers could adopt for sustainable living, is simply to look to the recent past of the early 20th century. 

The era of mid 20th century attitudes, habits and industries built upon concepts of disposable goods, is over. Way over. The world's landfills, oceans, lakes, ozone layer, and greenhouse gas amounts have all been pushed to their absolute limits in many regions. This is largely due to industrial cultures making and selling consumers goods which overall have inefficient lifecycles.

While, yes, current environmentally-positive changes can begin at the individual level, industry must engender and revisit concepts of reusability and durability, and product materials which encourage recyclability.

Basically, I'm suggesting a return to using natural organic materials for producing and producing items. Materials which are renewable, recyclable and which aren't based upon petrochemicals. A return to wood, paper, glass, metals, cottons, ceramics, etc.

Ironically, the form-factors of many of novel modern "high-tech" devices are predicated upon their ability to be formed in plastics. But the raw and finished plastics will never biodegrade in open air, nor soil, nor water. Our plastic-made pieces parts will be around for generations and generations and generations to come.

Yes, many plastics can be recycled. But that gets to a couple practical points. One point being that the recycling habit needs to be better ingrained in people of all ages, let alone how and where to recycle plastic items. Beyond that, the real goal is to reduce the need for oil, and for its refining and repurposing to become used in petrochemical-based materials.

Who knows, maybe petrochemical-based plastic consumer products might very well become the next environmental pariah, coming after fossil-based fuels used for mobile transportation and energy-generation for fixed locations.

See, the real goal of the United States in the 21st century should be to reduce its overall amount of fossil-fuel based raw and finished materials, so that we're able to mainly rely upon our own domestic oil reserves and not predominately foreign sources.

Solving the World's Climate Change Crisis Could be Easy to Do

The biggest-impact action Mankind could take to correct the climate crisis woes of Global Warming and pollution is the one which isn't being publicly discussed these days. 

The Earth's main problem of the last 100+ years is simply: overpopulation of us people.

Think about it; during the Industrial Age, the world's human population was roughly about 1 billion people. Which, it took eons to get to that amount. Roughly over the span of about the last 100 or 150 years, as Mankind has now arrived well-into the Information Age, the world's population has become 6.5+ billion people and growing.

Ordinarily that many people on the planet might not be a problem, per se. But, the hitch is that whereby a small percentage of people ("only" hundreds of millions) were once needing to use the world's resources, and polluting the planet in the process in order to live civilized in a "developed world", that percentage is currently expanding greatly and quickly.

So now, basically, everyone's proverbial "Slice of the Pie" has to get smaller, to accommodate all the rising standards of living. Which entail more individual private homes, everything which goes into running and furnishing that house, and the transportation to and from that house for work and gathering lives needs like food and clothing.

That said, don't get me wrong; improved standards of living is a paramount aim of all peoples. It just so happens that when 6.5+ billion people are all striving toward that, that the planet notices the effects. Effects which manifest themselves as over-pollution contributing to health problems of people, species, eco-systems and weather patterns of the planet.

The Earth is basically "crying Uncle" now; it's had all it can take of the stresses and strains of accommodating the now-multitude humans living upon her, in the wasteful and often-polluting manner in which generations of people have. And so, in recent years scientists have witnessed, politicians have finally been made aware and now religions have all finally taken notice of extreme and rapid changes occurring in the environment, conveniently coined Climate Change and/or Global Warming.

 

The real challenge, in my humble opinion, is to begin to (re)educate--because this is not a new idea--the world that over population is not a good thing. However, no religion, nor country, nor race wants to concede nor recede its numbers. Because there's strength in numbers. It's one way of self-defense, or atleast intimidation; having more of "us" than of "them".

Some religions flatly eschew the concept of practices meant to control one's population (yes, Pope, I'm talking to you. And before readers get upset, I'm a [former] Roman Catholic of Italian descent, so fahghetaboutit...). Additionally, what politician would really run on a platform of slowing down the birth rates in their country, in order to eventually scale-down the size of their nation's overall population in order to be more environmentally-friendly over time? Not many. Since that gets back to the notion of wanting more "us" than of "them" mindsets. (China was "forced" to do this with their one child policy. What if that policy came to Western cultures/countries in the next decade, huh?)

Back to my metaphor of everyone's Slice-of-the-Pie becoming thinner and thinner. My unease with much of what guilt-laden western cultures are undergoing now (yet once again...) by Reducing, Reusing, Recycling is that it may all be for naught someday. Especially if the world population doubles to about 12 billion people, nearly half of whom might live in mid to high standards of living (owning homes, cars, gadgets, becoming conspicuous consumers...). 

It really seems that we're all just simply shifting the energy consumption needs from one side of the globe (Western worlds) to the other (Eastern worlds) this century. The resources drain (oil, water, wood, crops, seafood, oceans, etc) will continue unabated, and pollution will continue (coal burning, oil burning, nuclear waster disposal needs, etc...). And ultimately the world will, in effect, not have truly solved the root causes of Global Warming (Climate Change).

My small "big-idea" is that the world needs to really actually first get population growth to be in decline; maybe by 25% or 50%. Then the tenets of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle combined with green renewable energy sources like Wind, Solar, Hydro, Geothermal, Cellosic-based liquid fuels (and maybe "clean coal"?...) could continue to be woven into lifestyles of this and future generations. That might be really what it takes to finally stabilize pollution caused by Mankinds' daily living needs. 

Natural population reduction a big idea that I haven't heard leaders seriously and consistently espouse. Because, as everyone wants to sit at the table to have some of the "High Standard of Living Pie", each person's slice can only just be a sliver, in order to even have enough pieces to go around for everyone to enjoy. 

Hello, hello, hello…

Hey there, hi there, ho there. The world needed another new weblog, so here it is. 

In this new personal forum, I'll cover observations and notes about This, That and the Other. Topics are apt to range from large ones—such as politics and the environment—to smaller ones—such as high technology in our lives.

Welcome, I hope you enjoy reading the posts—whether you're ambivalent, in agreement or disagreement—feel free to comment and feedback.