| |
BGonline.org Forums
Teach your children well... (OT)
Posted By: Bill Riles In Response To: Teach your children well... (OT) (Chuck Bower)
Date: Wednesday, 23 April 2008, at 3:33 p.m.
I certainly agree, in part.
I live a couple of hundred yards from an elementary school and it is absolutely ridiculous every afternoon when a half-mile long line of idling vehicles (mostly SUV's) line up to pick their little darlings up. This line blocks one lane of a four-lane street well past the entrance to my subdivision. This also occurs in a school district which provides free bus transportation to all students -- regardless of how close they live to their school.
Further, a vast majority of elementary schools have discontinued PE classes for various reasons. Combine this with fast food lifestyles and lives spent on videogames and the computer (at least those of us here are past our formative years .... lol), rather than playing games and sports outside, and you have fat kids.
Global warming is another issue. Is it occurring? -- perhaps, though many learned individuals take issue. If it is occurring, is it caused by man or but merely another phase in an eons old warming/cooling cycle on our planet? I think the latter, with perhaps some minor exacerbation by humans.
Unfortunately, the whole issue has become a football for rival political agendas who neither have serious legitimate interest in the science. Only political leverage/power, economic steerage, and taxing possibilities form the majority of the 'concerns'.
Should we conserve more? Absolutely. Waste less? For sure. But compact flourescent light bulbs and ridiculously expensive hybrid vehicles are not really solutions, only over-hyped marketing ploys for making money.
The most serious current environmental concerns? -- biofuels (and their impact on world food supplies and costs), destruction of much of the forests of the world (a huge element in the engine of oxygen/CO2 exchange), potable water supplies, and overpopulation.
Where should our concerns be focused? the unbridled, unconstrained, environmentally unregulated growth in India and China; and the obscene population growth and destuction/use of natural resources in the third world
Undeveloped countries can not now sustain their populations with their current states of food, water, and other natural resources. Yet their populations continue to dramatically increase while their food, water, and other natural resource supplies decrease.
We approach a time when the natural selection process -- including consequent wars, gross migration patterns, famines, etc. -- will change the way the whole world lives. There is a limit to the sustainable population of the planet and, to this point, no one seems to care.
| |
BGonline.org Forums is maintained by Stick with WebBBS 5.12.