# Can the US become sustainable? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 10, 2010, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-us-become-sustainable/538903 "2010-05-10T13:17:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Baboonanza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f475e1/32.png) [@Baboonanza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baboonanza)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-us-become-sustainable/538903/41 "2010-05-14T11:46:54Z")
> [@AClockworkMelon](#): > > I fail to see why it’s better to love cooking, gardening or hiking more than to love your collection of ceramic cats, your car or your golf clubs. It’s like you’ve completely misunderstood my point. Are you really saying that you don’t think anything is wrong with this: [QUOTE=Stoneburg] The culture itself seemed to focus almost exclusively on materialistic consumption as a way of self expression. Buying stuff, talking about buying stuff, planning to buy stuff and dreaming about buying stuff seemed to be a big part of peoples lives. Basically, it felt like I hadn’t travelled a few thousand miles west, but rather a few decades back in time to the 80’s. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Sage Rat] What else is there in life but stuff? Sitting in a vacuum isn’t very fulfilling spiritually or otherwise. [/QUOTE] Fair enough you can make an argument that existence without physical matter is pretty pointless, and I’d agree, but in response to a concern about modern consumer culture it’s pretty stupid. So instead I took **SageRat** ’s remark to be a defense of the pusuit of happiness through materialistic gain alone. Therefor I was pointing out that the buying, owning and consuming of ‘stuff’ as the focus of your life is not the only way of finding fulfillment in life. Sure the things I mentioned require the products of modern society, but that ‘stuff’ is owned to allow the pursuit of other activities. It’s a clearly differrent context from the meaningless consumption of ‘lifestyle’ products. I have nothing against ‘stuff’ since I have a lot of it myself, but it is not the most important thing in life. I must admit that I didn’t really expect anybody to be pro-trash. It’s not an attitude I’ve ever met before in the UK. Apathy sure, but maintaining that the production of all the unnecessary plastic crap is not some sort of problem is quite odd. When you live on a densely populated island that’s been in constant habitation for thousands of years maybe it gives you a different perspective. There are very few places you can go in the UK that are so remote that there isn’t a piece of plastic shit lying about. My main bug-bear with it is the habit of people drop it anywhere they happen to be like untrained animals. There are two ways to reduce this problem: train people better and reduce the amount of trash generated (of the non-biodegradeable sort particularly). Since 2 is difficult to completely achieve we should also work on 1. I don’t really care what you do in your own country but I don’t believe for a second that your cities are trash-free havens of cleanliness and that there is no improvement you could possibly make. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-us-become-sustainable/538903/42 "2010-05-14T12:11:08Z")
How are you defining trash? How did you reach the conclusion that material that people discussed buying , planned to buy , dreamt about buying and then bought is actually trash? Surely that material is valuable, not trash. It seems to be an incredibly elitist and snobby attitude to claim that anything that other people value and plan and strive to possess is a trash just because it doesn’t fit into your value system. ---
**Author:** ![carm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c2a13f/32.png) [@carm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carm)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-us-become-sustainable/538903/43 "2010-05-14T12:19:18Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > How are you defining trash? How did you reach the conclusion that material that people discussed buying , planned to buy , dreamt about buying and then bought is actually trash? Surely that material is valuable, not trash. > > It seems to be an incredibly elitist and snobby attitude to claim that anything that other people value and plan and strive to possess is a trash just because it doesn’t fit into your value system. From the OP: > [@Stoneburg](#): > > Everything (hyperbole) came in small, plastic non-recyclable packages. At breakfast in the hotel, three people eating would produce a shopping bag full of waste which was non-recyclable. It just seemed incredibly wasteful. There was a huge milk container with a tap, for cereal, and right next to it a big basket of small plastic packaged with milk for coffy drinkers. People would stand next to a huge tank of milk and still pick up a handful of plastic containers for their coffy, rather than just pour some. No one is saying the food itself is trash. The PACKAGING is trash. What ends up in your trash bin is trash. ---
**Author:** ![Baboonanza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f475e1/32.png) [@Baboonanza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baboonanza)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-us-become-sustainable/538903/44 "2010-05-14T12:24:21Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > How are you defining trash? How did you reach the conclusion that material that people discussed buying , planned to buy , dreamt about buying and then bought is actually trash? Surely that material is valuable, not trash. > > It seems to be an incredibly elitist and snobby attitude to claim that anything that other people value and plan and strive to possess is a trash just because it doesn’t fit into your value system. Sorry it wasn’t clear, the section of my post on trash is entirely separate from the first bit. It was in response to several posters so I didn’t include a quote which was perhaps a mistake. And to be clear, I’m not against people wanting to buy things or as you put ‘striving’ to own things. But to have the pursuit of material possessions (and arguably things that people don’t need beyond marketing driven ‘need’) as your only focus in life is pretty shallow. I didn’t think this was a particularly controversial view. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-us-become-sustainable/538903/45 "2010-05-14T13:17:58Z")
If the US comes back into community with each other and accepting the earth as our mother, which as her children we are suppose to make some messes - some that we can’t clean up but our mother is willing, and accepts that all people are her children no matter what country they are in, or were born in - these are our brothers and sisters and we need the total of the human family, along with God as the head of the family, then this nation will survive. The problem seems more of one of isolation and individuality over community. Riding in a car is fine, but using it to separate yourself from others, putting a wall of glass and metal (and plastic), is exactly opposite what the human heart needs. Wasteful packaging makes sure no other hands gets to touch your products, paper coffee cups makes it easy to get stuff to go, not stopping and talking to other people in the shop. It is this isolation of the heart that will cause the undoing of our society, which does include isolation and disrespect of mother earth and not wanting God. We are all interdependent, and it’s designed that way, independence is ultimately death. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-us-become-sustainable/538903/46 "2010-05-14T13:24:41Z")
> [@Baboonanza](#): > > But to have the pursuit of material possessions (and arguably things that people don’t need beyond marketing driven ‘need’) as your only focus in life is pretty shallow. I didn’t think this was a particularly controversial view. How many people actually set the attainment of material things as their only focus in life? I’ve met many, many Americans, and don’t recall meeting any obsessed with the acquisition of stuff over all other pursuits. ---
**Author:** ![Stoneburg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@Stoneburg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoneburg)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-us-become-sustainable/538903/47 "2010-05-14T17:22:28Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > The research has also found that everybody says that too. But it is almost never actually true. or example, how much of your discussion with the Solmalis was political? And what jobs did the Somalis hold back hoe? The fact they they are now penniless refugees won;t change their views if they were a dentist and lawyer back home. > > Apparently everybody knows somebody the associate with that is outside their self-percieved “type”, but in reality such interactions are usually limited in some way, or less divergent than they think, or else very minimal. Maybe you really are the exception, there’s no way of knowing, but it would be statistically unlikely that you really are one of the very, very few rich, middle aged people who mix widely. > > At this stage the best evidence says that you’ve just fallen into the common tourists observational bias. > > What exactly do you think that tells you? For the top tier countries the ranks run from Sweden at 360 to the US at 720, with a perfectly uniform distribution between. Can you answer the following questions please: > > Is the difference between these countries statistically significant, and if so what test was used to determine this? > > What is meant by "Municipal Waste per capita "? Is it a measure of material placed into landfill or all material disposed of? Because if it’s the latter then all it tells us is that the US has less capacity for recycling or other use. That is hardly surprising, the US has a much more dispersed population and that makes recycling of almost everything impractical. It certainly does not indicate that Americans actually generate less waste or have a different mindset, which is what you are trying to present evidence of. > > What factors were taken into account when generating these figures? For example was the mean temperature (which affects spoilage) or population density (which affects recycling capacity) taken into account? > > What are we to read into the fact that the Norway ranks in the top 5, while neighbouring Sweden ranks 25th? Doesn’t that tell us that the US isn’t in fact any worse than most of Europe? > > Until you can answer those questions (and I have others) then you haven;t actually provided any evidence at all for your contentions. All you have is a meaningless table of figures. > > Ecological foot print is a meaningless term, so it can be ignored. > > The CO2 emissions per capita is, once again, a meaningless metric. How did you factor in the effects of distance on there? If you didn’t then it’s once again totally irrelevant to your claims about the American mindset. > > What you need is facts to support your contentions, not just random unadjusted figures. If you can provide them we can have a debate. If you can’t then all we’ve really got is a vaguely offensive racist screed. > > Any racist and stereotypical remark is hurtful to me. I agree it is statistically unlikely that I am rich or middle aged. In fact I’d say that the likelyhood is 0. And… How come I have to produce evidence, which you can then say isn’t enough and which I then according to you have to research and present to you until you are happy with it? While you can simply say something is “meaningless”. How about I just discuss it with people who accept the premise? Works for me. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-us-become-sustainable/538903/48 "2010-05-14T17:54:58Z")
> [@Stoneburg](#): > > How about I just discuss it with people who accept the premise? Works for me. Which is pretty much Blake’s point. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-us-become-sustainable/538903/49 "2010-05-15T08:06:16Z")
> [@Stoneburg](#): > > I agree it is statistically unlikely that I am rich or middle aged. In fact I’d say that the likelyhood is 0. And… Well you claim in the OP to personally remember people’s attitudes in the 80s. For that claim to have any sort of validity you must have been a minimum of 18 in 1989, or IOW you are 39 now. That’s as close to middle aged as makes no difference. If you are claiming that you, as a child, knew what people’s attitude were you OP becomes about as credible as a claim of alien abduction. > [@](#): > > How come I have to produce evidence, which you can then say isn’t enough and which I then according to you have to research and present to you until you are happy with it? While you can simply say something is “meaningless”. Because that is the nature of rational debate. Argumenst are weighed upon evidence and logic. When all you have is a racists screed and an anecdote that appears to be a classic and well documented perception bias, you have no argument. I that case your actual evidence has to be extremely strong. If I can poke massive holes in your “evidence” in a matter of moments, then your argument is indeed baseless and can be dismissed out of hand. You don’t have to do anything. You can fail to support your evidence if you wish, just don’t expect anybody on these boards. > [@](#): > > How about I just discuss it with people who accept the premise? Works for me. I know it does. I said precisely this in post #37. That’s the problem. A debate requires one to start form an agreed premise and reach a conclusion. Preaching to the choir isn’t a debate, as comforting as it may be. ---
**Author:** ![Marmite\_Lover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e495f1/32.png) [@Marmite\_Lover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marmite_Lover)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-us-become-sustainable/538903/50 "2010-05-15T08:55:02Z")
> [@Stoneburg](#): > > _(Prelude)_ > > I spent two weeks in Florida in 2008 and came away with some opinions regarding sustainability and enviromental awareness that made me rather pessimistic. > > The US infrastructure seems incredibly car-focused. During my stay I saw only two busses, and a total of four people riding bikes. Other than me and my friends, practically nobody walked the streets. The cities seem built with _only_ car-travel in mind. Areas are heavily segregated, meaning you have to travel by car from your residence to shop, work or recreate. Public transportation seemed underdeveloped or non-existent and people usually responded with polite befuddlement or outright fear/suspicion when we said we were walking somewhere. > > Everything (hyperbole) came in small, plastic non-recyclable packages. At breakfast in the hotel, three people eating would produce a shopping bag full of waste which was non-recyclable. It just seemed incredibly wasteful. There was a huge milk container with a tap, for cereal, and right next to it a big basket of small plastic packaged with milk for coffy drinkers. People would stand next to a huge tank of milk and still pick up a handful of plastic containers for their coffy, rather than just pour some. > > The culture itself seemed to focus almost exclusively on materialistic consumption as a way of self expression. Buying stuff, talking about buying stuff, planning to buy stuff and dreaming about buying stuff seemed to be a big part of peoples lives. Basically, it felt like I hadn’t travelled a few thousand miles west, but rather a few decades back in time to the 80’s. > > _(Actual question)_ > > Assuming that material resources are not infinite (which makes sense), and some are closer to running out or peaking than others, can the US be made sustainable? My observation too. We stayed in Franklin Ave and walked along Hollywood Boulevard to try find the Beverly Centre. We stopped near Graummans to ask directions in a shop and they thought we were completely mad to be walking. We felt a bit like freaks when all the curious giggling assistants came to ask why were we walking when you could ride a taxi or get a bus. They couldn’t seem to get their head round it at all. Guess that’s why they say by 2030, 86% of Americans will be obese. Another thing that puzzles me is the Americans here in Egypt use tumble driers!!:eek: 360 days of sunshine, temperatures in the 70’s to 100’s year round. That really is unbelievable. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-us-become-sustainable/538903/51 "2010-05-15T12:25:48Z")
> [@Marmite\_Lover](#): > > Another thing that puzzles me is the Americans here in Egypt use tumble driers!!:eek: > 360 days of sunshine, temperatures in the 70’s to 100’s year round. > That really is unbelievable. Many housing associations, even in sunny places in America, have regulations against clotheslines (“lowers the property values”). So even if you wanted to not use a clothes drier, you can’t. Which shouldn’t be a slam against those that _want_ to use a clothesline, because many in America do, but still… ---
**Author:** ![figure9](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f0a364/32.png) [@figure9](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/figure9)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2010, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-us-become-sustainable/538903/52 "2010-05-23T19:03:45Z")
> [@](#): > > Industrial ecology is the shifting of industrial process from linear (open loop) systems, in which resource and capital investments move through the system to become waste, to a closed loop system where wastes become inputs for new processes. > **[Industrial ecology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_ecology)** > > Industrial ecology (IE) is the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems. The global industrial economy can be modelled as a network of industrial processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform those resources into by-products, products and services which can be bought and sold to meet the needs of humanity. Industrial ecology seeks to quantify the material flows and document the industrial processes that make modern society function. Industrial ecologists ... Here is a site for the idea of a closed loop economy. It is much better than my explanation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-us-become-sustainable/538903.md?page=2)