Overpopulation NOT Consumption

We're seeing more often And I have just heard from a mouth of an "environmentalist" a debate that Consumption is a bigger problem than Overpopulation. The logic goes, since consumption is a bigger driver of environmental degradation than population, we should ignore population and focus on consumption. Someone reasons that rich people consume a lot while poor people consume little. We have to push for reduction of consumption of the rich.

"...per-capita emissions of carbon dioxide will likely rise in poor countries for some time yet, even in optimistic scenarios. But that is an issue of consumption, not population."

Human consumption of natural resources and emission of CO2 requires humans. More humans equals more of what humans do.

Per-capita CO2 emissions will rise greatly in poor countries as they begin to afford the technologies we take for granted. No matter how efficient cars, appliances, machinery and so on become, increased production and use of them will increase CO2 emissions. It's cornucopian fantasy to think a population increasing by 50% can have a "First World" standard of living without causing serious ecological damage. It's fantasy to think it can be done in the first place.

Even if humans discover means to produce enough energy to support ourselves, even with ZERO damage to the environment, our use of energy will increase and we will cause damages, due simply to our increased numbers if nothing else.

Thank you for the answer to this debate from the VHEMTers (www.vhemt.org)

Extraordinary 2-Sentence Conversation

Miss I, after watching "Baby Boomers" TV show advertisement on TV : "Baby Boomers are killing the planet."

Mr. D : "We have been killing the planet since we started our civilization, Miss I."

................... ......... ...................................... .... ........ .................................. .... .................... ... ....

What a nail in the head ^0^

Likes and Don't Likes about Melbourne & Victoria

Likes

1. Clean and neat. Completely opposite to Bangkok in every aspect of cleanliness. For example, no merchant pouring dirty water from cooking on the streetsides. And that's the only example.

2. Not much pollution, fume, black smoke, horrible smell from cars, dust.

3. Big parks all over with big trees where humans and non-humans are so happy. But, no, they are not only happy in parks, they are happy almost everywhere, almost all over the state.

4. Vegan food - Yes, vegan food everywhere. Yes, and many vegan, organic and fair trade shops. Every town in the countrysides I went to, there are vegan, organic and natural product shops. Many restaurants have vegan menus. And.... vegan bakery - You don't know how good it is. There's this shop I found that ALL bakeries are Organic Vegan and has organic vegan soymilk coffee. What's so bad about spoiling myself once in a while?

5. No traffic jam (there may be some in peak periods, but Bangkok is terrible, TERRIBLE! - you can get stuck in traffic for an hour, hours, hourss....)

5. Sea Shepherd is here. I love what they do and their ethics.

6. Animal welfare here is so much respected.

7. There're many social causes that I like.

8. Whereever I go it's clean and beautiful. Whether in the CITY, suburbs and the countrysides. Pretty houses, thick trees line up everywhere, forests next to streets like Ferntree Gully National Park I went to. It's right next to the street and it was so so so beautiful forest. I was hiking up steep hills..so much pleasure, fun and exercise.

8. The train system is excellent comparing to the State Railway train system in Thailand - you know what I mean. There are even clean toilets in the train stations and on the trains.

Don't Likes

1. No train from the airport.

2. You have to wait for the trains according to the schedules, unlike the Sky Train and Subway systems in Bangkok - you wait only for no longer than 5 minutes for each train.

Getting a job and living here would be great, hey? Not so high cost of living here too, comparing to other western countries, and with the great quality of living and with most things I love there...it's undenialably the place to spend my life.

The only thing

Life is my only possession, the only thing I live for, the only thing I can give.

3 Reasons to Stop Smoking

1. The environmental toll of tobacco farming is high.
Tobacco cultivation leads to deforestation and requires extremely poisonous pesticides.

2. It is a silent killer.
Tobacco makes you more prone to pneumonia, Tuberculosis - virtually any respiratory
infection. It makes you more likely to get cancer. Not just cancers you'd expect, like lung
and throat, but all kinds of cancer. It makes you more likely to get heart disease, the
primary killer of the developed world, and more susceptible to the often-deadly respiratory
infections of the developing world.

3. It tortures non-human beings.
Although health officials have known for decades that cigarette smoking leads to lung
cancer, emphysema, and other diseases, the tobacco industry, in a desperate bid to find
evidence to the contrary, still conducts painful experiments on dogs, cats, monkeys,
rabbits, chickens, rats, mice, and other non-humans animals.

At this very moment, pregnant monkeys's fetuses are exposed to nicotine, beagles' throats
are cut into holes and they are forced to breathe concentrated cigarette smoke for a year,
Dogs' penises are inserted with electrodes to measure the effect of cigarette smoke on
sexual performance, masks are trapped to the faces of rats and monkeys and permanently
restrain them to force them to breathe cigarette smoke constantly, dogs are forced to be
on mechanical ventilators and chronically exposed to cigarette smoke, rhesus monkeys are
restrained in chairs with head devices and exposing them to nicotine and caffeine to
determine how caffeine and nicotine affect breathing.

Am I losing my religion?

Well, I don't have any religion though some authority labelled me as one.

Well, I have nothing to say in this blog. I just want to post this song.

This song has been humming itself in my head for 2 days but I didn't know the lyric so I read it and I am posting it here.


(VERSE #1)
Oh, life is bigger
It's bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Oh no, I've said too much
I've said it all


(VERSE #2)
That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no, I've said too much
I haven't said enough


(CHORUS)
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
(THIRD TIME THRU, DS al CODA "GO TO CODA")


(VERSE #3)
Every whisper
Of every waking hour
I'm choosing my confessions
Trying to keep an eye on you
Like a hurt, lost and blinded old, fool
Oh no, I've said too much
I've said it all


(VERSE #4)
Consider this
Consider this hint of the century
Consider this slip
That brought me to my knees pale
What if all these fantasies
Come flailing around
And now I've said too much


(CHORUS)
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try


(BRIDGE)
That was just a dream
That was just a dream


(REPEAT VERSE #2)


(REPEAT CHORUS)


(CODA)
That was just a dream
Try, cry, why, try
That was just a dream
just a dream, just a dream...

Ah, now I know what to write in this blog; about this song. I interpret this song this way: "Religion" in this song does not mean any particular world's religion, but the singer's own way of thinking and looking at the world. Losing my religion means losing his belief in the one he's singing to. The singer has been observing her ways of thinking and life which is like an ego-swallowed person. She may be so materialistic, behave blindly and live life in illusion. She has wrong understanding of life and love. She's out of touch with reality of the world. Therefore, he is very sad to see her living wrongly and suffer spiritually.

"Life is bigger than you and you are not me" means life has its true meaning, not her wrong meaning of life ("Life is bigger than you"). And he knows that true meaning but she is not him so she doesn't know what that meaning is. She has never experienced it ("You are not me").

"Try, cry, why, try" is a really good ending. He saw her try but he cried because he was hurt to see someone wounded by her wrong understanding of life.

So back to my blog's title: Am I losing my religion? Well, I have lost hope in the better world. Everything is in a trashy state. A better world is possible with the solutions that most people are ignorant of. I've also lost my "religion" in humans' inner state which is the cause of their and the world's sufferinng. But I've never lost this religion of mine: freedom and love. Not that I am a perfect person. Sometimes I have to try to get myself back together.

What is Worse?

Is a life spent in suffering worse than a fate that is death?

To Mr. Chuck, Mark, Iyoet and Bunny

Thank you the four of you for giving me the good singing-along-with-guitar time. I had never sang among guitars for a very long time and I had never sang and listened to guitar playing of the songs that I liked!

You guys inspired me to play guitar but I wonder how I can hand-switching chords that fast. Piano becomes a lot easier for me. You guys inspired me to start practicing piano again.

The only thing I didn't like about singing with you guys was the smoking smell. I want to sing and listen to the beautiful sound of guitar in a campfire in a thick wood where there is only a smell of trees.

I Like the Words in the Songs, not the Songs

Some songs I don't like the lyrics (eventhough I like the music). I like some words in the songs because those words connect to my heart. For example, "But I'm in so deep" in Linger by The Cranberries. I don't like the lyric of that song but I like that sentence.

Nuclear and coal industries make scandals for profits

This message from wecansolveit.org applies to all countries, including Thailand. The Thai government is funded by nuclear and coal industries. --

The solution to our climate crisis seems simple.
Repower America with wind and solar.
End our dependence on foreign oil. A stronger economy.
So why are we still stuck with dirty and expensive energy?
Because big oil spends hundreds of millions of dollars to block clean energy.
Lobbyists, ads, even scandals.
All to increase their profits, while America suffers.
Breaking big oil's lock on our government ...
Now that's change.
We're the American people and we approve this message.

The US consulting firm Burns and Roe Corporation has been chosen to conduct a feasibility study for a nuclear power plant in Thailand.

Thailand's first two nuclear plants have been scheduled to be built by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) in 2020 and 2021, with a combined capacity of 4,000 megawatts.

Why should we be against nuclear energy?

Because despite what the nuclear industry tells us, building enough nuclear power stations to make a meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would cost trillions of dollars, create tens of thousands of tons of lethal high-level radioactive waste, contribute to further proliferation of nuclear weapons materials, and result in a Chernobyl-scale accident once every decade. Perhaps most significantly, it will squander the resources necessary to implement meaningful climate change solutions.

The Methane Time Bomb

Melting ice-caps at the poles of the planet could end up releasing massive reservoirs of sub-oceanic methane into the atmosphere, amplifying the greenhouse effect and accelerating climate change to an even greater degree....

Read more at The methane time bomb by The Independent

Wake up and vote OBAMA for PRESIDENT!

Juniper R. from Care2.com said:

THIS is what gives me nightmares-the way she treats the environment and nature with absolute IGNORANCE and INDIFFERENCE. Mercury in your fish? Sarah adds more- "The Miami Herald reported: The Alaska governor has said that she has tried to persuade McCain to agree with her on drilling in the wildlife refuge. She also has said that she was happy that he changed his position over the summer and now supports offshore oil drilling." So McCain will let her make the decisions? GREAAAT! I'm putting the blame on her for Global Warming. "Palin said, "Let me take my governor's hat off just for a minute here and tell you, personally, Prop. 4 -- I vote no on that." And what is that? A state initiative that would have banned metal mines from discharging pollution into salmon streams. She also approved legislation that let oil and gas companies nearly triple the amount of toxic waste they can dump into Cook Inlet, an important fishery. It looks like being an avid outdoorsperson doesn't mean Palin really has the health of watersheds, natural resources or our environment at heart."

Drill, Drill, Drill

Esther Eve Ensler, the American playwright, performer, feminist and activist wrote the following about Sarah Palin:

Drill, Drill, Drill

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference.

This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether
we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill."

I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain. Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

Eve Ensler
September 5, 2008

Sarah Palin Earns Prestigious Rubber Dodo Award

The 2008 Rubber Dodo Award goes to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. (For a high-resolution version of this image, click here.)

The second annual Rubber Dodo Award goes to... Sarah Palin. The Center for Biological Diversity honored her with the 2008 award for her valiant efforts to protect her state's oil industry -- sacrificing the well-being of our earth, our climate, the polar bear, and numerous other warming-threatened species in the process. Starting in 2006, Palin worked hard to block the government from protecting the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act -- and when the bear was declared "threatened" anyway, she sued, joined shortly thereafter by her oil-industry friends. According to the Center's executive director Kierán Suckling, Palin's lawsuit will put her in the history books as perhaps the only person ever to have accused the Bush administration of excessive use of the Endangered Species Act.

The Center's Rubber Dodo Award is reserved every year for the person in public or private service whom we feel has done the most to contribute to endangered species' extinction. Last year, we gave the award to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.

Check out this press release and learn more from the Guardian.

Elect Sarah Palin, Elect Extreme Evil

TOP TEN REASONS SARAH PALIN SHOULD NOT BE ELECTED VICE PRESIDENT

#1: Palin opposes a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body, opposing the right to an abortion even for rape victims.

#2: Palin believes that Creationism should be taught in public schools, which runs both counter to well-settled evolutionary science, and to the Constitutional separation of church and state.

#3: Palin is a global warming denier, who (as with her views on evolution) has expressed skepticism about the well-settled science.

#4: Palin opposes listing polar bears as an endangered species, because it means oil and gas companies might have to be just a little bit careful out there.

#5: Palin is rabidly dedicated to drilling in the Artic wildlife refuge, known as ANWR.

#6: Palin is in the midst of a growing ethics scandal, involving the alleged abuse of her gubernatorial power to punish a State Trooper who is her sister's ex-husband, firing a State Commissioner who refused to go along.

#7: Palin called Hillary Clinton a "whiner", even as she cynically tries to woo Clinton voters to the McCain ticket.

#8: Palin has very little experience for the Vice Presidential job, serving less than two years so far of her first term as Governor of a state with fewer residents than Fort Worth, Texas. (Previously, she was Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, pop. 8,500.)

#9: Palin has no foreign policy experience at all, so little in fact that her supporters are reduced to citing Alaska's proximity to Russia.

#10: Palin is virtually untested, unvetted and unknown to Americans, a fact which throws into relief the hypocrisy of the many unfair criticisms leveled at Barack Obama during this campaign.

BONUS REASON, #11: Palin only recently said that she doesn't even know what the job entails, saying on the CNBC show Kudlow and Co. that:

"[A]s for that V.P. talk all the time, I’ll tell you, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the V.P. does every day?" (July 2008)

Wolf dying in agony. Sarah Palin causes this, supports it 100% and even PAYS for it with tax money.





Skinned wolves. Sarah Palin initiated a program where the state of Alaska pays $150 for the left front leg of wolves.





Shooting a scared, tired wolf from a plane. Sarah Palin approved a $400,000 state-funded propaganda campaign to promote aerial hunting.





Sarah Palin introduced legislation to make it even easier to use aircraft to hunt wolves and bears.













This undated photo provided by the Heath family shows Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin with one of her daughters posing with the caribou she killed.





"Pro-lifer" Sarah Palin.
From http://gov. state. ak. us/bio. php




Gov. Sarah Palin responds to a question in her downtown Anchorage office next to a grizzly her father shot in Denali Highway country.









Sarah Palin's family.
The bumper sticker on her dad's truck says "Vegetarian - Indian word for 'bad hunter'"
















YouTube "sarah palin rifle training" and "sarah palin: party animal mom"




It's ok to kill this? Sarah says YES!
See: http://abcnews. go. com/Technology/wireStory?id=5514992








Owned by big oil.