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Originally Posted by pig
I am going to be honest, I have turned into a clost environmentalist. I am not quite sure what has done it.
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The large increase in coverage of the issue over the last twelve months?
That isn't supposed to be a criticism btw, it's just I've noticed a significant amount of pro-environmental coverage in the political mainstream when compared to four or five years ago. Every single day any paper I pickup has at least three stories on carbon neutral schemes or climate research being announced, etc. There is still some anti-global warming stuff (a few months ago The Sun had a truly hilariously bad article about how it wouldn't make a difference if the average went up two or three degrees because Rochdale would still be quite mild...) but it seems to be firmly in the minority for the time being.
A good proportion of the global elite seem to have come around to the idea that we might have to do something.
On recycling, I find a good number of the arguments on this (and related fields) miss the point. It might be that some resources aren't worth recylcing at present but this might depend on market prices and will presumably change in time when such processes become more efficient. Also, even if we could prove that paper was always going to be impractical to recycle then the response would hardly be to do nothing.
I am a public transport zealot and despise many of the more wasteful aspects of modern consumerism, but I am also a deeply lazy man and as such have some empathy for all the fat bastards out there who want to drive everywhere or can't be bothered to reduce their use of air travel, etc. If someone is using their car, they're not doing it out of spite, they're doing it because it's cost effective, easier, etc. Why not adjust the cost-benefit analysis so it's not rather than railing against them like it's some moral point?