Humans Eating away at Mother Earth.

Keep on Trekin

Population

In the next 10 years about 800 million people will be added to the global population.


The waste

output of an average American has nearly doubled in the last 40 years.

And all around the world, rubbish heaps are growing as countries industrialise.

In the mid 1990s, OECD countries were producing almost two tonnes of household and industrial waste per person each year.

Africans generate less - but more than two thirds of their rubbish is not formally disposed of at all.

Fossil fuels still provide almost 80% of the word’s total energy needs. And as countries industrialise, and their populations increase, their energy consumption also rises. 6 Billion Tonnes of Carbon Emmision are added to the Air we Breathe each Year.


Asia, Europe and Africa have all been hit by extreme weather conditions this year.
Southern Africa has suffered widespread drought while India, Bangladesh and Nepal and more recently parts of Europe have seen serious flooding cause severe damage and deaths in many areas.

At the Earth Summit in Johannesburg next week, environmentalists will call upon Western developed countries to clean up their act, arguing that much of the devastation has been caused by human impact on the planet.

The intensity and increasing frequency of climate disasters are creating a demand for preventative measures to be brought about to protect people and places.

But the poor countries which suffer most of the consequences can't afford these costly solutions.

Is It now time for Ireland to pay up and help these poorer countries.

Blitzkrieger

Originally posted by Keep on Trekin
Is It now time for Ireland to pay up and help these poorer countries.

Really? We weren't the richest country in the world before the current 'slow down'.

full forward

We live in a backward country.

Where does Irish electricity come from? Most of it comes from turf.

Some 82pc of the country's peatlands have been used up and peat is the most carbon-intensive of all fossil fuels.

We have lots of wind in this country. We could get a lot of power from it. Most of county Kerry already gets its electricity from a wind farm.

Two new ESB power stations being built at Lanesborough and Shannonbridge will burn 1,500 hectares of peatlands every year for the next 15 years, despite the serious effect that peat extraction has on rivers and lakes from silt.

The funny thing is that we think we are better than other countries by not using nuclear power. We are stupid.

SO what can you and I do?
The most important thing we can do is limit the amount of electricity you use. Switch off you computer every night when you go home and encourage others to do the same. Swith off you screen EVERY time you leave the desk. Dont fill the kittle to the top for one cup of coffee. Dont leave the oven on. Put clothes on the clothes line and not in a tumble drier. Wear an extra sweater instead of turning on the heating. Dont put a glass in the dishwasher if all you did was take a drink of water out of it. Use energy saving light bulbs.

USE YOUR HEAD YOU IDIOT!

BJJ

ha good one!

Sposs

Its time we forgot about turf,nuclear power is the way forward,its clean and can generate power for hundreds of years.

Blitzkrieger

Originally posted by full forward
We have lots of wind in this country.

Phew! You're telling me :eek:





I remeber doing a project for my leaving where I researched ESB power stations (dunno why) and was surprised to see they're almost all fossil fuels. Oil, gas, peat, coal - u name it, we burn it. Things are slowly changing though. Just look at all the taxpayers' money they're going to waste on that off-shore wind farm. They're going to expand the hydro-electic station on the Lee, etc.

phaxx

I heard that a wind farm is bring proposed off the coast of wicklow, and another off arklow, and together they are supposed to generate a third of the country's power. According to the Wicklow People, anyway...

pencil

Originally posted by Blitzkrieger

Just look at all the taxpayers' money they're going to waste on that off-shore wind farm. They're going to expand the hydro-electic station on the Lee, etc.

Not to be so abusive

A waste of taxpayers money?

Once a windfarm is built and maintained the 'fuel' (wind) is free for ever!

Build a peat/oil/coal burning plant and you still have to purchase the fuel.

There should be windfarms every 10 miles along our coasts.

Typedef

Actually yes Wicklow will host the largest windfarm in the world, with the Danes having the second biggest windfarm in the world.

http://www.wicklowtoday.com/opinion/windenergy.htm

County Wicklow is soon to be the site of what will be the largest offshore windfarm in the world 7 miles offshore on the Arklow banks. If you stand on Brittas Bay in 2003 and look out to sea you will see the futuristic sight of wind turbine after wind turbine evenly spaced along the entire horizon.

The company building the farm for anyone interested is.
Eirtricity.

Extensive site investigations and studies have already been completed, engineering is underway, and construction is set to follow in a phased manner with eventual buildout by 2007. The company has already invested over €2.5M in the project, with an eventual spend of €650M anticipated.

Doubleplusgood.

Blitzkrieger

Keep it clean

Originally posted by pencil

Once a windfarm is built and maintained the 'fuel' (wind) is free for ever!

There's the crux of the matter. It's going to take an absolute fortune to build and maintain the windfarm, and how long will it take to recoup that expenditure?

Typedef

Please keep on topic and don't insult each other.

Typedef

You know I maintain that to be truely evolved humans will have to develop an 'equilibrium' with the environment.

However I don't think that it is humanity as a species that is detramental to the environment, more the current style of life that is most pervasive in human culture at the moment, namely Western Culture.

The throw away society, the society that cares not for what anything that does not stand right in the way of what it wants to do.

It is this kind of hand to mouth socital attitude that has allowed the vicious circle of paper milling, refuse disposal, water pollution, ozone pollution and 'you name it ' pollution to engender itself into human culture or more the most pervasive and 'successful' read affluent human cultures.

The American Indians for example were a part of thier environment in a way the settlers who came to the US never were, perhaps because the Native Americans derived their existence from the Land.

I don't necessarily think that a high tech society need to be in combat with it's surrounding environment, a properly high tech society is advanced enough to deal with the wastes it produces, by doing something productive with it, like recycling.

Once recycling becomes the most proliferic way of dealing with wastes humans will have become as a species and not just a culture, wholely more enlightened then currently we are.

Of course such movements require real illucidation and recoginition by voters to endow leaders with the importance environmental issues.

That is why the power rests with you, not George Bush, the Pope the Taoiseach or the Queen of England, you, you make the choice to recycle or no, to leave appliances on or no, to litter or no, you, not them. Make the right choice.

Windows XP, Yes you can