Hubcapped

Let’s stay in target. My original dispute is with this guys statement. It’s just not true, and he/she/it are either a) no integrity liar, or b) mentally incapable of understanding the various forms of propaganda from both sides.

Cargo: you say the Netherlands are screwed either way so they should just keep going? You say that because China and India won’t play we should just throw in the towel?

With the utmost respect I call that cowardice. I don’t mean that you are a coward, you are clearly a good dude and a professional in your discussions, it just sounds like you’re quitting, and mama don’t like quitters.

It’s going to sting, gluttony always comes with a price, there is a middle ground.

I also find it ridiculous that somehow the concept of introducing massive amounts of chemicals into any eco system wouldn’t upset the balance of nature.

Excargodog

I’m not saying that the Netherlands is screwed either way, I’m saying that the Netherlands is fairly unique, largely artificial, and being held to arbitrary bureaucratic standards made in Belgium by bureaucrats interested in conformity, not common sense. And damn right they should keep going, unless you can come up with a less polluting way the EU can offset the loss of food production these restrictions have caused. Ever see a little kid with kwashiorkor?

Let me show you:




https://discover.hubpages.com/educat...Rehabilitation

or did I sat the Netherlands were screwed either way. They should explore REASONABLE ways that the NETHERLANDS can insure the health of their people. Not necessarily a one-size fits all solution from Brussels.

Nor did I say anything about “throwing in the towel” if the Indians and Chinese won’t play ball.” What I said was that if the Indians and Chinese won’t play ball than the current plan can only lose. That’s not defeatism, that’s math. We cannot eliminate enough admissions to offset what they are adding. We aren’t making that much to begin with. Explain why we should go down a course that cannot work? With utmost respect, I think pursuing a course of action that mathematically CANNOT meet the goal borders on the irrational.

Perhaps wide scale inherently safe modular nuclear power reactors would. Most of the few nuclear power reactors currently be used are 1950s technology. H€||, that’s older than the 737. 😉

As for gluttony coming with a price - see the pictures above. You don’t think that still happens today? You haven’t travelled where I travel.

https://www.worldvision.org/hunger-n...t-spots-hunger.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/07/1122032

Tell it to these people. And if you say that doesn’t matter because these kids are in Africa and a huge dent in the food production in the Netherlands will be no big deal in Africa you are either ignorant, uncaring, or a racist, and momma don’t like racists or uncaring people, although she’s more tolerant with ignorance.

As for massive amounts of chemicals, I don’t really know how much chemistry you’ve had in high school or college. We are basically talking a chemical standard for NH3 (Ammonia) present in every unflushed urinal you’ve ever seen and cow****. Yeah, there are other chemicals too, since rivers flow into the Netherlands from the heavily industrial areas of Germany as well as France, Belgium, etc..



For that matter, I suppose some of their cow**** does too. But keeping THOSE chemicals out will require source control, since water - yeah - flows downhill and the Netherlands are the ‘nether’ for the continent.

So if the EU really wants to help out on those chemicals, they can mandate source control. The Netherlands can’t turn off the Roer or the Rhine and even if they could, that would quickly lead to their own groundwater becoming salt water from seawater intrusion.

Now look, I don’t really think you are a bad guy (or a racist)and I don’t honestly know what your background is and how easy or difficult it is for you to follow this discussion, but I think you are taking a very superficial look at a highly complicated biological issue without understanding either the underpinnings of the problem or the costs of proposed solutions. The world isn’t as simple as most people think.

MaxQ

You are correct that I didn't factor in the EU in my response. I should have, but most responses I put some thought into tend to become too long and then it becomes a tree falling in the forest.

A couple of quick ones regarding the EU. Each country has more autonomy than EU detractors acknowledge. They also have ways to get variances and flexibility. Also the bureaucrats are not as myopic to the impact of EU decisions on the world as a whole. I would be very surprised if it hasn't been estimated how much these decisions impact both European and World food supply. We also don't know what the overall impact would be of the decision to do nothing. Is this runoff creating a massive dead zone from the rivers mouths? If so is creating a drop in food availability from destruction of a fishery? (side note: I have no clue, it is a hypothetical I made up to illustrate that rule makers sometimes take more into account than initially appears)
3 key strategic goals of Putin's vision for the future of Russia are: 1. Weakening/destruction of NATO.2. Weakening /destruction of the EU. 3. Weakening/destruction of the unofficial USA/European cultural and economic alliance.
They have had a great deal of success from many years of SVR/GRU active measures. Social media has been a gift to them. It is unlikely that Brexit would have occurred without Russia activity. Due to a natural sympathy that authoritarian Nationalist parties and leaders would have with the cultural/nationalistic/anti-democracy leadership of Putin the EU is less unified, and hence weaker, than it was 10-15 years ago. (I won't even go into what was nearly accomplished by the previous administration with NATO). Europeans have a better economic life with better health and household security with the EU. That also should lend itself to a stronger polity. All of which Russia seeks to undermine. We should be thoughtful regarding whether or not to assist them in their destructive goals.

Your post brings up a key issue regarding the problems and predicaments that Mankind faces. Due to the reality that everything, and I mean everything, is connected any action or inaction we take regarding one issue impacts multiple other issues. Often times these impacts are unexpected. We have to decide which crisis to address, knowing it will exacerbate another crisis.
We have built a civilization of breathtaking complexity. It has become virtually impossible to isolate any significant aspect of it. If a bridge needs repair, we have to disrupt traffic and spend a great deal of resources just to keep it at a level we already have. The powers that be have to decide whether or not to spend, suffer the anger of the public, and fix it...or...leave it be and hope all those engineers are wrong.

You point out that the poorest countries take the hit first regarding food. Racism is mentioned. I actually had to smile at the irony of the argument. I have seen exactly the same argument by people who support action to limit climate change. The argument is that the poor of Africa and Asia will suffer the earliest and the most from climate change, hence if you oppose taking any action an underlying motive may be racism.

Which leads back to my original point. Any action we take to mitigate or solve one of our polycrisis makes another one (or more) crisis worse. It creates situations where a vested interest in one area or another will go to great lengths to prevent any attempt to address problems that would cascade into their area of concern. (convincing the body politic that an emerging crisis is a hoax would be one way to prevent said action).
It also leads to a situation where we are paralyzed as to what to do. We want to find painless solutions to fixing problems that have arisen from the success of our ways. We add band aid fixes, which add to the complexity, which makes the next mitigation even more difficult. And so on.
So...I am not optimistic. We do nothing to address problems....people starve.
We attempt to address problems....probably some of the same.
Happy Thanksgiving.

Excargodog

Putin? It’s now Putin’s disinformation that is now responsible for the fact that the EU BUREAUCRACY in Belgium is becoming unpopular within the EU? You really have never lived in Europe, have you. What started as a free trade union among geographically close but historically separated countries has morphed over the years until it has become all controlling with the ultimate say on everything. It wasn’t just the pre-Brexit Brits that chafe at that bit.

But seriously, blaming Russia? Do the math. Russia has a GDP of ~$2 Trillion, and a population of about 143 million. That’s the eleventh largest GDP in the world - after Canada. The EU collectively has a GDP of $20 Trillion (roughly equal to that of the US) and a population of 447 million.

https://statisticstimes.com/economy/united-states-vs-eu-economy.php

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=The_EU_in_the_world_-_population

Russia is NOT.

I don’t know where you get your ‘facts’ about these things such as the availability and probability of obtaining variances of EU mandates when you have never lived there (don’t say that publicly in Greece by the way) even five minutes research on the internet disproves them but not all detractors of the EU are wrong and you certainly aren’t exactly right in this regard. They’ve already had Brexit and absent the COVID situation might already have lost a few other members.



EU membership approval hangs by a thread in France, one of its biggest economies, and has fallen continuously in Italy. Now I will grant you that the US Congress ain’t exactly overwhelmingly popular with the people in a lot of the states either, but no one has successfully broken away from the central government yet, like the Brit’s did with Brexit.

But clearly, blaming the EU problems in anyone but the EU is superficial at best. Yeah, the Russians have nukes (as do the Indians, Pakistanis, North Koreans, and Brits, but the Red Army is no serious threat to anyone but their immediate neighbors, and maybe not even them.

So again, I think you are looking at this very superficially when even a brief bit of research will disprove many of your assertions.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Hubcapped

Do you support autocracies/despots/dictators as a method of government?

Or do you believe in the rule of people?

I’m genuinely curious so as to understand your viewpoint

Excargodog

Speaking only for myself, I support democracy as a means of decreasing interpersonal conflicts, but not to the point of being the last lemming over the cliff. Democracies provide at best consensus. They don’t discern truth or justice or even reality with unfailing accuracy.

If the community vote was that purple was to be the designated state color, I wouldn’t care. If the community vote was to drink the grape koolaid, I’d do something else.

Hubcapped

I’m sorry to bother you with one more question. Are you saying specifically that if the population of a country does not explicitly agree with your view of how that country should be managed, you would support a dictator?

Hubcapped

Do you equate group suicide to environmental management?

I’m not ignoring your other ideas, just need to think about those after thanksgiving

Excargodog

Depends upon how one defines “environmental management” and the quality of its execution. In a worst case scenario, it’s not even group suicide, it’s group murder.

Superficial solutions from people unwilling or unable to do the actual research to separate fact from dogma may only rise to the level of negligent manslaughter. They don’t MEAN to cause the damage they do, they just weren’t up to doing a better job.

Excargodog

What a straw man argument.

Just because the majority hold an opinion does not make that opinion right. But that scarcely means someone needs to go to war over it. In my time living in Europe the majority opinion was that the US Marshall Plan to rehabilitate Europe after WWII was not altruistic at all, that it was a self serving thing for the Americans to reconstruct a market for their goods so Europe would become dependent on them.

They believed this because it is largely taught in their universities. And nothing has really changed about that to this day:

https://www.politico.eu/article/vlad...ting-from-war/

https://www.politico.eu/article/germ...runo-le-maire/


I am entirely capable of considering the EU ungrateful wretches who are too cheap to pay for their own defense without desiring them to be ruled by a dictator though.