"Weatherlawyer" wrote in message
oups.com...

Adam Lea wrote:
"Tudor Hughes" wrote in message
ps.com...
snipped
I think the problem is that to live a more energy efficient lifestyle
initially requires more effort and planning and people will instinctively
make choices that require the least effort. Once you get used to the
increase in planning required then it is really not that hard, it's just
getting over the initial hurdle.

But how much does insulation cost? Or is it a by product of the pot or
iron making industry?

Modern house building consists of stitching together strips of tin with
plasterboard. No amount of insulation is going to compensate for the
dereliction when after 10 years they start coming apart.

Fortunately I shall be dead before any of this gets at all serious.

And this sort of attitude is part of the problem.

I would have called it the final solution if someone else hadn't come
up with the phrase first. How about: "You can get over the initial
hurdle easily enough once you realise where the finish line is."?

How do you tell a farmer not to use a certain product when he is not
making a profit as it is? Who is going to tell Tesco to pay a decent
living to those who live at the sharp end?

How do you stop an influential South American Maffioso family raizing
the Amazon and killng all the locals? They are funded by you and me,
not just Monkey and Sock.



As long as the relationship between what we use and need is produced under
the relationship that all of us have to abide by-Capitalism. This problem of
waste is almost impossible to resolve. If a may give an example.
My ex, ex father -in -law (divorced and he died) was a paediatrician at
kings College hospital in London, ran the premature baby unit in fact.
Anyhow I remember chatting to him about the problem of waste and cost in his
dept and the issue came up of sealed sterilised equipment, which was opened
straight from the vacuum sealed packaging used and then discarded.
..
It simply wasn't cost effective to sterilise this stuff without adding
oncosts to the baby units budget.

It's the same with the thing that brings us lot together-PC's. No one
bothers repairing say a Mother Board. Their cost generally hovers between
50-100 quid to look for a fault on the PCB and repair would cost far more
than the probably improved replacement item.

Another example is modern tools.
I've no doubt that many here indulge in a bit of DIY. When you down to
Wickes, Jewson's and Homebase ect. the tools on offer are ridiculously
cheap!

A rip-saw for example, nobody these days sharpens their saws as used to be
the practise, they simply dump this beautifully manafactured piece of
plastic and steel and buy a new one at something like £5.

Now all these examples in economic terms make perfect sense yet some how we
rightfully feel uneasy at the sheer waste.

Under captitalism time is money it can be no other way. If this new proposal
to make the manafactures responsible for their old discarded commodities
came about it would simply push prices up and then the percieved improvement
in standard of livinfg is shattered then it get very political.

When you actually put it into perspective the output per human in production
terms has simple gone of the scale post ww2. Yet for all that phenominal
output the socially acceptable amount of working hours has hardly changed.

Our homes go up in price and cost and seem impervious to the price fall that
all other product experience. So the only improvement in real terms to what
we percieve as a standard of living is in the amount a goods that we can now
afford due to crashing prices.

So the production treadmill of increased commodity output, climbs
exponentially as does the dumped commodities they replace.

The only solution I can see is to change this relationship or to my way of
thinking ithe nvisible cooercement that captialism imposes on us all, and I
don't mean by that some idealogically driven load of hate filled leftwing
nutters taking over.

None the less it's only words, there's a whole world out there of economic
competition and conflict still to come, so don't hold your breath.