Here we go possibly the most controversial .
# 3 Recycling
We have been raised to think that if we don't recycle in this world that it will end up living on mountains of garbage ala Wall-E. Of course if we recycle we use fewer resources and create less pollution, whats wrong with that?
We have been bred to think of the logging companies chopping down all the trees and causing pollution to soar from the lack of trees. However
the logging industry is one of the most responsible conservationist entities that we have. Their livelihood depends on there being trees to cut down for the decades to come. Over the past 50 years logging companies have actually planted more trees than they have cut down to ensure that future supply.
Also growing up we were bombarded with images of streets overflowing with garbage as the result of not recycling. This garbage taking thousands of years to biodegrade it would seem we would be in trouble. A "expert" from Gonzaga University calculated that at current rates all the garbage in the US over the next 1000 years would fill up a 35 square mile landfill 100 yards deep. Now that sounds like a very large overwhelming figure, but consider this that is only one thenth of one percent of the land currently used for grazing in the United States. Also this is accumulation over 1000 years and by then we will have to beg the robots to let us out of our cages before we will need to worry about trash.
Now this is the tricky part, saving resources. This depends of whether you consider human labor a resource. Is your time and energy a resource to you? Recycling also requires more trucks, and crews to pick up and sort the waste. Los Angeles has twice as many garbage trucks than it would have had without its recycling program. I liken this whole wasted energy to someone getting in their car and driving to the gym to run on a treadmill, and then driving a block down the street to buy a gallon of milk. How much benefit is there at the end of the day?
VS 
Reusing something is also not always better than throwing it away. Sounds like a terrible point correct? A chemist at the University of Victoria calculated that you would have to use a ceramic mug 1000 times before you would see benefits over using Styrofoam cups and throwing them away. This is due to the great ammount of energy used to make the mug and the energy and water used to wash the mug each time.
You obviously should save from creating more garbage when you can and attempt to be good to our planet but the problem really wasn't ever as bad as they wanted you to think.
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#2 Antibacterial Soap
Bacteria make us sick. The only way for us to stay healthy is to kill them.
The thing is good old nature she is a funny thing, not like HAHA funny but horrifying death preceded by agonizing suffering funny. The thing about biology is while it is really easy to kill alot of something its alot harder to kill all of something, and the survivors tend to be alot tougher than the dead and somewhat angry.
There is a growing concern that the surviving bacteria will become more resistant than the weaker versions of the bacteria that we killed off. Thank you Mr. Darwin for explaining survival of the fittest. This has already happened with staphylococcus bacteria which have developed strains that basically laugh at penecilin.
If these super germs isnt scary enough, it turns out the same chemicals were using to try to kill those germs may actaully be making us sick as well. The active ingrediant in antibacterial soap is now thought to have potential to affect sex hormones and the nervous system. In fact these chemicals have been found in the urine of 75% of people meaning this poison is probably in you weiner right now!
(You can take a break to go piss now if it will make you feel better ill wait)
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Okay hopefully you feel better so ill continue.
If all of this isnt ironic enough consider that getting rid of all this bacteria may actually be worse for us in the long run. Scientist believe that kids kept in sterile environments develop more allergies. The theory is that these kids were never exposed to the germs so their bodies never developed immunities to them. Basically their immune systems are busy trading Magic cards in the basement instead of lifting weights and banging chicks.
My final thought is this study that shows that using antibacterial soap is no better for you than regular old soap, its just a marketing gimmick. Hope they didnt trick you into buying.
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This one is probably really not the worst it just happens to be the one that bothers me the most on some basic internal level.
# 1 Buying Carbon Offsets
Unless you are actually interested in living on Tatooine then you probaly would like to see the end to the global warming of Earth. These carbon offsets are supposed to make you carbon neutral by paying money to have someone else reduce their carbon dioxide output in the ammount that you are putting into the air with your Hummer, or your nasty smoke spewing factory.
Like buying your wife a huge ring after possibly having sex with a woman in a Denver hotel room (Kobe) its hard to determine if you are actually doing anything other than paying to clear your own conscience. You are buying a promise from someone else that they will reduce their carbon emittions. The probelm is there is no authority that monitors the offsets.
Investigations have shown that often people are just buying empty promises. Even if the company does follow through there is no way to determine if there was actually an aditional benefit. Often the companies who take these offset payments were planning to reduce emittions anyways.
In this example the company sold offsets based on their plan to reduce methane gas at a landfill. It sounds great except the methane reduction plan
In conclusion there is no way to easily fix / save the Earth. Just do what you can to be smart and dont let some talking head tell you that you have to jump on this or that bandwagon, because odds are they have no idea what the consequences of that action are either.
was already in place well before the offsets were offered. The plan was great and it did help but it completely undermined the idea of buying offsets because nothing was being offset. They were already doing the work anyways.
