Concerning Filling the hole

For some time I've held the belief that environmentalism is a religion, but beyond that I haven't given it much thought. In light of what you have presented here I am now convinced that it is a fact. Thank you for providing some substance for my flimsy opinion.

David Bailey
Ladysmith, Wisconsin, USA

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Yes

[name withheld]

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Jim,

I have no opinion about the psyche thing, but as to whether the "the movement ... (is) ... so powerful" is questionable. Yes companies are scrambling to use "green" to sell products, make money. On the other hand, most people (of the world) keep marching along consuming the natural resources at an ever increasing rate, and consumption continues to increase as the population increases and more people become more affluent. So is consumption being affected very much by "the movement"? I think not.

That said, we find that civilization as we now know it may be in jeprody of collapsing (the only question is how soon?). Look at the following examples that mirror civilization's reality.

An individual owns a mine. The mine is his livelihood. The material taken from the mine is sold at a profit. However, one day the material in the mine is depleted. The individual's livelihood from the mine is kaput.

One recent theory proposed as to why the Maya civilization collapsed is the agriculture collapsed because the soil was eventually depleted of nutrients and crop yields faded away.

Now take our civilization. Oil and other raw materials will eventually be depleted (first law of thermodynamics). The conversion of energy into work itself depletes the resources (second law of thermodynamics). The only reasonable way to slow down the depletion (via both laws) is to start relying on sources of energy that will not run out in (more) hundred thousand generations (sun and perhaps nuclear).

Chuck Green
Webster, New York, USA

P.S. not sure if we even need the first law of thermodymanics in this explanation i.e. the second law may be sufficient.

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Jim

Oh my. C. J. Daly wrote you from Yucaipa, CA last week. My parents lived as retirees in Yucaipa from 1967 to 1990. Interesting place being about 2000 ft elevation. It's off of I-10 on the way to Palm Springs. Many lived there and worked in LA, a two hour drive away. Couldn't afford to live any closer. Many green yards were painted rocks! We visited about every two years from Georgia and Alabama. Tiz a small world.

Our world and universe is indeed a wondrous place. As we learn more we come to understand just how little we really do know. Each discovery brings more new questions than it answers. Pictures of earth from outer space also give us a new perspective on this space ship of ours. We see ourselves as very small just within our own solar system and miniscule in the universe.

My parents were the first generation to realize that mankind could destroy life as we know it. Perhaps your and my generation was the first to understand that catastrophic events drastically reshape this earth what, every 10,000 years or so? Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hitting Jupiter in 1994 put a period on that sentence.

All this knowledge reshapes our thinking and in turn our actions. Your discussion of us having to fill a void is interesting. And no doubt some are taking on "green" as others take on religion. But I don't see this as filling a void so much as it is a reaction to the knowledge that we are truly living on a planet with limited resources which we must use wisely. Our level of science is also at a point where we can measure some of the earth's changes and forecast the future. Unfortunately our window of knowledge is extremely small, relative to the age of the earth. This makes for interesting assumptions and conclusions, the subject of countless books and articles.

Well, hasn't this been fun?

Safe travels,

Peace

Gene Canavan
Prattville, Alabama, USA

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