A life on our planet (David Attenbrough doc)

Inane baanter or words of wisdom - you decide...
Post Reply
User avatar
MattyP
Baaaaaa!
Baaaaaa!
Posts: 2905
Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2003 10:23 pm 0
XBL Gamertag: CypherQ
PSN: CypherQ
Location: Hull, East Yorkshire

A life on our planet (David Attenbrough doc)

Post by MattyP »

So grabbed a few moments over the weekend to watch this.

It is a very sobering watch especially the predictions at the end. Its common sense stuff really. We are overrunning the earth and gradually making it a worse place to live.

I've not always been the best of how I use resources but have been more mindful over the past 10 years or so - however its getting ever more challenging living a world that is continuously pushing new technology in our faces at seemingly ever shorter time cycles, making things obsolete by the nature of OS updates and incompatibility with older devices (mobile phone manufacturers looking at you mostly).

So I work in the tech arena and I am trying to be more mindful of how can have a more sustainable lifestyle:-

I bought a PC case and power supply and built a PC myself. When I upgrade I do so every five years or so. I keep and re-use as many bits as I can. I sometimes buy second hand components to upgrade my current system where I get what I need without buying new.

The next mobile phone I get will have a removable battery. Things that do frustrate me with phones is that these things cost as much - or if not more than most PCs these days yet I can still run Windows 10 on pretty much any machine with 4-8GB memory and a processor of over 5 years old. What is it with phones? Most models have 4GB of RAM and most 4 or 8 core processors. Run a mobile OS. Why cannot new versions of the OS run well enough on these? Why can't patching continue as long as say a mainstream Windows? It just seems crazy that after 2-3 years they effectively become useless because you can't change the battery or you can't run any apps (because your OS is out of date!) Sure there is a whole hardware business driving this but it shouldn't be forcing people to upgrade by making their phones effectively obsolete. Not really sure of the solution to this. Probably just get a battery for my old Nokia and ditch the "smartphone". All this is seemingly getting more of a problem as time goes on.

As far as other bits of my life - I have moved to an area that supports re-cycling - we have bins for re-cycling food waste, general re-cycling waste and finally general waste. I have never seen my general waste bin so empty! :) Great to see. I also try not to get water in plastic bottles. The volume of single use plastic water bottles being thrown around our planet is scary - and the fact it ultimately ends up in our food chain.

I try and source food from local stores - butchers and greengrocers. It not only has a lower carbon footprint it supports our local community.

I have a 13 year old car. When this beyond economic repair I will seek out a way of getting cost effective more sustainable transportation. Not sure what this will be yet - rental when needed, contract? looking at a usership model not ownership. Why are cars so expensive to hire? Or contract out? Hmmmm

I am trying to walk and cycle everywhere where possible. Not only better for my carbon footprint but my health too. The fact I'm working from home pretty much permanent is lowering my carbon footprint too as I hardly use the car.

Really on a day to day basis being more mindful about this and don't want to leave the place we live in a worse state for those that follow us.

Not sure what the solution is long term as we need to sustain ourselves - which means we need to earn money - which predominantly means we have to make stuff. Think its just being mindful in the end as to whether we *need* or *desire* things. Where is the balance?

Also there are just too many of us I guess which is the ultimate problem. We have no natural predators etc and we are living longer. :D So lower the birth rate or? Not sure. Conspiracy theorists may have a point that COVID is man-made and a way of culling our population slowly.

Anyway its an interesting watch. :)
A light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

Steam/Xbox/PSN User Name: CypherQ
Switch - 8177-9514-5116
User avatar
F-ZeroOne
Baaaaaaa!
Baaaaaaa!
Posts: 8208
Joined: Wed Sep 29, 2004 8:27 pm 0

Re: A life on our planet (David Attenbrough doc)

Post by F-ZeroOne »

Just to pick up on the last sentence, and this is directed at conspiracy theorists - they can't have it both ways. Either COVID-19 "only seriously affects 1% of the population" and we should do away with all the facist prevention measures *or* it's designed to cull the human race. There's something of a contradiction in aims there.
"Stars don't twinkle in space." - Char Aznable.
User avatar
gilesgoat
Sheepie Whore
Sheepie Whore
Posts: 27258
Joined: Wed Sep 03, 2003 7:54 am 0
Location: Monfalcone, Italy
Contact:

Re: A life on our planet (David Attenbrough doc)

Post by gilesgoat »

Conspiracy theorists may have a point that COVID is man-made and a way of culling our population slowly.
If it would be true is not very effective nor very "selective".

So far the estimated worldwide Covid deaths are about 1.09 Million of people.

Compare that with WW2 casualities that was around 70 .. 85 Million of people approx 3% of world wide population of that time.

I think "to have significant climate/envirronemental effects" you should act "bigger and faster" I don't think even a 3% of current world wide population would do "that big impact".

So no, I don't think Covid is "designed for that at all" .. unless it turns out that in 5 years or less there are "ton more deaths" than what we see now.

I am not sure "how big numbers" you should go but I think "by eye" you should go in the range of 10 .. 20 % of world wide population ? So you are talking quite some hundreds of millions.

According to Wikipedia :
In demographics, the world population is the total number of humans currently living, and was estimated to have reached 7,800,000,000 people as of March 2020. It took over 2 million years of human history for the world's population to reach 1 billion, and only 200 years more to reach 7 billion.
So you see "the problem is in the last 200 years" ... so let's say if you say "would be nice to be back environnementally speaking like 100 years ago" .. you should remove 3.5 BILLIONS of people ?

Sort of ?

[edit] - the other question is .. "can this trend continue" .. so in 100 more years let's say could be 13 billions of people ? At that point what's going to be of Earth ? "Life Blade Runner style" ? "mega cities full of mega shit ?" ..

"Humanity destroyed itself because too prolific ?"
Giles the billy goat
"Baa"
User avatar
Harlequin
Baaaaaaa!
Baaaaaaa!
Posts: 6505
Joined: Wed Jun 05, 2002 4:19 am 0
Location: London, directly above the centre of the Earth.

Re: A life on our planet (David Attenbrough doc)

Post by Harlequin »

F-ZeroOne wrote:Just to pick up on the last sentence, and this is directed at conspiracy theorists - they can't have it both ways. Either COVID-19 "only seriously affects 1% of the population" and we should do away with all the facist prevention measures *or* it's designed to cull the human race. There's something of a contradiction in aims there.
That appears to assume that belief systems among humans are monolithic. Not all, if any, of the people who believe one thing are necessarily the same people who believe another.
Emoticon and contraction free since... quite a while ago.
User avatar
gilesgoat
Sheepie Whore
Sheepie Whore
Posts: 27258
Joined: Wed Sep 03, 2003 7:54 am 0
Location: Monfalcone, Italy
Contact:

Re: A life on our planet (David Attenbrough doc)

Post by gilesgoat »

Harlequin wrote:
F-ZeroOne wrote:Just to pick up on the last sentence, and this is directed at conspiracy theorists - they can't have it both ways. Either COVID-19 "only seriously affects 1% of the population" and we should do away with all the facist prevention measures *or* it's designed to cull the human race. There's something of a contradiction in aims there.
That appears to assume that belief systems among humans are monolithic. Not all, if any, of the people who believe one thing are necessarily the same people who believe another.
Maybe it's more correct to say "affects the 1% now" but if we let it go uncontrolled it could affect more and more ? Also we don't really know that well how it affects all the others that don't die but still get it, nor what would happen 1 generation after this.
Giles the billy goat
"Baa"
User avatar
F-ZeroOne
Baaaaaaa!
Baaaaaaa!
Posts: 8208
Joined: Wed Sep 29, 2004 8:27 pm 0

Re: A life on our planet (David Attenbrough doc)

Post by F-ZeroOne »

It was bit of a quick reply as I was at work but I’m aware that theres no single conspiracy theorist organisation. I was just trying to point out that like many conspiracy theories, theres inherent contradictions in the logic (using that term loosely). And yes, currently its only 1% of the population, I’m using a percentage figure that pops up a lot in discussions of COVID deniers on a couple of blogs I frequent.

I think further discussion about COVID-specific topics should probably go on in the relevant thread, and this thread can go back to discussing the most soothing voice on TV... :)
"Stars don't twinkle in space." - Char Aznable.
User avatar
gilesgoat
Sheepie Whore
Sheepie Whore
Posts: 27258
Joined: Wed Sep 03, 2003 7:54 am 0
Location: Monfalcone, Italy
Contact:

Re: A life on our planet (David Attenbrough doc)

Post by gilesgoat »

F-ZeroOne wrote:It was bit of a quick reply as I was at work but I’m aware that theres no single conspiracy theorist organisation. I was just trying to point out that like many conspiracy theories, theres inherent contradictions in the logic (using that term loosely). And yes, currently its only 1% of the population, I’m using a percentage figure that pops up a lot in discussions of COVID deniers on a couple of blogs I frequent.

I think further discussion about COVID-specific topics should probably go on in the relevant thread, and this thread can go back to discussing the most soothing voice on TV... :)
Sure, all we need to do is get rid of 6 billions of people and voila', we'd be back to a time where the envirronement was less stressed :mrgreen: :lol: :roll:
Giles the billy goat
"Baa"
User avatar
Nixie
Baaaa!
Baaaa!
Posts: 983
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2003 12:12 am 0
Location: Montreal
Contact:

Re: A life on our planet (David Attenbrough doc)

Post by Nixie »

It convinced me to go pretty much vegetarian, I say pretty much as this would be my main reason to not eat animals so I'm just going to avoid it as much as I can. perhaps every couple weeks we may eat meat/fish and avoid battery farmed anything.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
https://www.artstation.com/artist/nixie
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Post Reply