Earth -- today.

Meh, I do what most people are already doing, turn off the lights that I don't use. And I usually have to take the bus.

Recycle.

I like the environment as much as any other semi-rational person, but I see too many people taking ecology waaaaaay too far. Dimming your lights and recycling can only help, but I read an article in the New York Times about this group of people in I think it was Vermont who refuse to use any electrical devices or manufactred goods because they think that all technology is increadibly harmful to the planet.

No, duh, like most people it ok to feel some way, just don't take it to the extremes

True, we actually live in a world of extremes... most "rational" people wouldn't part of their luxurious standard of livings even if it meant 50+ more international childrens OUT of famine conditions.

How many SUV vehicles have you seen going back & forth lately.

As i was waiting for the bus to pick me up from a scheduled hospital visit on monday afternoon, it was ironic to be hypnotized by the circus of personal transportation means. The sheer numbers are mind boggling, some even have more than one vehicle -- all fueled up and ready to speed beyond reasonable or justifiable distances.

Earth is an highway and if you drive far enough, you'll reach a desert somewhere or oceans.

Earth is also a forest and if you cut half of it down to print pub pamphlets weekly, you'll run out of breathable nitrogen.

Earth is NOT recyclable.

Yes it is.

It actually is recyclable, the problem is most people don't recycle it! As the old song goes:

Clowns to the left of me,

Jokers to the right!

Here I am,

Stuck in the middle with you.

Okay... partly.

Since dropping the luxurious standards of living doesn't actually do anything for international children in famine conditions but breed more of them dependent on charity, I'll keep my computer.

Also, trees don't live forever.  North American pine trees, which are what most of our paper is made from, only live to be around a century before nature takes it's course.  They can live a lot longer, but there's this funky thing called fire that wipes them all out in the first drought to come along.  They go up like roman candles once they're well aged.  That produces large quantities of green house gases and kills the polar bears!  So while you're being an eco nut, remember the nonsense cancels itself out in the end.

This.  People take this stuff way too far. sure recycling is a good thing and I do my bit every week but all these people telling me that im killing someone in <insert country name here> because I have a computer and a car (a honda civic no less) is insane.

They need education in the less well off countries not constant hand outs.

Give a man a fish he will eat for a day

Teach him to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.

Exactly. Of course, if you use the money made from SELLING your stuff to invest in 3rd-world economies, you get results, but you have to be smart about it...

Where are you reading that i'm an eco nut?

I'm not typing this from a ghetto either, but that doesn't me make any less compassionate of any other human beings suffering on Earth.

I've always been against Charity specially when it serves as a deduction on IRS records to cut funding to THE government whichever yours may be.

Underdevelopped countries exist because a few OVER-developped ones (Europe & North-America, btw) keep that potential away.

Earth -- Today, polluted by industrialization & striking hard on bio-diversity.

Agreed, where do we start? In the USofA? Unless you can afford College level fees by living in a middle-class (or MORE, btw) family, knowledge & as a result, work perspectives becomes a privilege rather than a sustainable resource by and for a society. Don't start me on health care overthere either.

Poverty is as rempant as anyone lets it be.

I was an electronics recycler for 3 years.

The king of Saudi Arabia would like to have a talk with you;

Please get a V12 red Ferrari, and spit out a few more spare tokens by the exhaust while you're stuck in traffic for three hours daily trying to get in LA. And while you're at it, get the new Hybrid trendy "wash_up_the_personal_conscience_illusion" semi-electrical solution and plug it in to suck up nuclear produced mileage to get out of LA.

Repeat and rince, now that's a standard of Living worth taking pictures of and pride yourself with.

Insane, you say?

Earth -- Today. We evaluate success by property (collective or otherwise) and show it by purses, high heels and lipstick.

I mean... get real and a life.

You may figure out, you're walking on asphalt, concrete and metal too late to realize the jaguar runs faster than gazelles for a reason or that birds die under tires for another.

You know what is ironic with hybrid cars, they are not that economical or that green, I would rather import a deisel high mpg rating from Europe than buy a hybrid.

One where do you put those dead batteries, let see... the trash because no one recycles them that much or its so far a way that it would be a waste.

Two most of the hybrids are suv type vehicle that suck in milage in the first place and still suck.

We really need to be focus on where are energy is comming from, we should not be using coal anymore, we need hydro, wind, solar, nuclear.... to power theses vehicles and our countries, this will majorly reduce out pollution out put.

Hydro=Clean, perpetually available from water natural flows.

Wind=costly and too dependant on weather. Netherlands tackled it efficiently, though.

Solar=costly and must be "converted".

Ever heard of tectonics? Continental drifting causes Earthquakes that contains sooooooo much energy, it puts thunder or tornado velocity to shame. Call it Core & Magma dynamics at your service.

Sorry, but you're an eco nut.  Anyone bitching about paper is an eco nut. 

Most of it is made from tree farms.  Places where, of all things, crazy fuckers do nothing but plant trees and cut them down.  It's more efficient to plant them yourself than it is to let nature do the work.  You want uniform, tightly packed trees that shoot straight up and have as few limbs as possible.

Natural forests are mostly being burned to clear ground for farmland.

In other words, you need to kill all the poor people, instead of putting all of your hard earned money into making more of them.  That will save the trees.

Talk about 500 year into the future.

Heres something thats we might be able to do in the next 20 years, tornado power plants. All you need is a jolt of power from another power source like hydro, to turn a turbine that will create a tornado that will last infinately which ultimatly turns that same turbine to make positive clean energy.

You are correct.

What are your thoughts on nuclear power?  Of all the 'green' power sources, nuclear is the only practical one.  Hydro is very dependent on geography, as is geothermal.  Wind and solar fail as base load power sources and are at the mercy of the weather.  The main problem with these alternatives (solar, wind, geothermal and hydro) is that they just don't produce the power needed.  Wind and solar farms are huge and expensive, with little in the way of power generation compared to its cost.  The problem is that the 'greens' don't like nuclear and believe all of our power needs can be met with the above named alternatives.

Specificly look at the nano-vent skin in the article link below, it could be applied anywhere, producing energy from wind and solar and this "skin" is cheap reliable version to solar panals and other things.

http://weburbanist.com/2008/06/09/modern-wonders-of-green-technology/

That's neat.  However, I'm skeptical.  Until these are proven and economically feasible, then I'll bite.  Too many times have we been promised things like this will work, only to find out later it really doesn't.  Then again, I'm annoyingly cynical.

/Where's my flying car, dammit!

The skin thing looks cool, but I for one would much rather like to see a nuclear power surge in the short term. I'm also a little scatred by Obama's stance on bio-fuels: They don't work, so why are we throwing money at them?

I've read about Fusion plants. Seems they are building one now and it should work fine or so I heard. Seems this will produce lots of power and with very little risk to the planet.

It's petroleum on steroids.

Instead of dumping CO² in the atmosphere, we let something decay in sealed radioactive containers for centuries.

Sooner or later we'll run out of fuel for that too -- unless Earth isn't the only place where Uranium can be found.

Renewable energy is (somehow) the modern Alchemy quest for the philosophical stone.

Okay, you win.

I'm just fed up receiving junk mail printed and ready for recycling.

Teach everyone to fish and nobody eats for very long. Have you seen the state of most of the world's fisheries?

What I've done: the single best thing anyone can do for long-term environmental action. I didn't have kids.

Seriously, teach the third world that 2, maybe 3 kids is quite enough.