Quote:
Originally Posted by Greyg
(Post 113681)
We can cut back on oil use in so many ways beyond driving. Plastic water bottles and soda bottle, plastic walmart bags, stryofoam fast food containers and coffee cups. Oil is very useful, don't get me wrong, but were using it like it's the only rescource we have. This leads me to an "addiction" analogy. It's all a matter of changing bad habits we have acquired living in a throw away society.
I know I sound like tree hugger.
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I don't disagree with you on that. But at the same time, if we didn't use oil, we would have to use some other resource to make our products. What are our alternatives? wood from trees? Mine more metals and rock out of our ground? Those are all finite resources as well and would mess up our visible environment a lot more than drilling for oil does. We could make some things with non-hydrocarbon chemicals, but many of those are hazardous materials that would end up deposited somewhere (although many hydrocarbon chemicals are hazardous as well, so kind of a trade-off there).
Everybody likes seeing all these technological advancements, but I can't help wondering if they aren't actually bad for us because so many of them require us to use even more resources. We could all be drinking out of clay bowls and be getting around on foot while hunting and gathering and we'd still have all of the resources in the world available. But that life was fairly tough, so we advanced, and now we're using our resources up at an alarming rate because of all our advancements. Is life really any easier or better? I guess that's subjective. Medical advancements, sure.
I also agree with djenyc about population. I've believed the earth has been overpopulated for quite some time. Sure they say everybody in the world could have a section and fit in Texas, or something like that, but living space isn't the problem. It's resources. I've always felt insensitive when I think about overpopulation because I can't help but think of so many bad things as natural population control. Things like war, natural disasters, etc. I don't like seeing people get killed. We just need to control things better. China is trying, which......well.......most of us know about that.
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