Day 23: Cut and Run

Freegan Girl

RSS

Author

Raina Kelley

Featured Postings

The Freegan Experiment

5:15 PM, August 17, 2007 | Comments (3)

Hypothesis: Given the current debate about whether Americans are profligate consumers, I will abide by the rules of those (commonly called Freegans) who are protesting this alleged over-consumption. The point of this experiment is to investigate what...

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30

Raina Kelley

Breakfast: Another rut … whole-wheat toast with jam and a sliced apple.

Lunch: Skipped!

Dinner: I plead the fifth. I didn’t cheat. I just didn’t eat very well and I’m ashamed.

Cravings: More Skittles.

Mood: Angry!

I was going to write about sustainable food practices today. You know--healthy, good tasting food (meat and veggies both) that isn’t bad for the environment or cruel to the animals and pays fair wages. And I will, on Monday, but I just want to get something off my chest first. Check out this story in the New York Times:

“The group whose $10 million prize spurred privately financed rocketeers to send a small piloted craft to the cusp of space in 2004 has issued a new challenge: an unmanned moon shot. With the audacious new contest comes a much bigger prize: up to $25 million, paid for by Google, the ubiquitous Internet company. The “Google Lunar X Prize” was announced yesterday in Los Angeles at the Wired magazine’s NextFest. The contest calls for entrants to land a rover on the moon that will be able to travel at least 550 yards and send high-resolution video, still images and other data back home.”

Are you kidding me--twenty-five million dollars for a moon car? I’m sorry; do we live on the moon? Does anything live on the moon? Let me tell what how I read this--global warming will soon render the planet inhospitable for polar bears, penguins, frog and thousands of other species, including quite possibly our own, so let’s tie up the biggest and brightest minds in America and figure out how to get a remote control camera to the moon. I’m sorry to drop my fair and balanced act but that is the STUPIDEST THING I HAVE EVER HEARD. And I’m going to go one step further and say this is the reason people hate scientists and other assorted intelligentsia. First you tell us that Earth is going to hell in a hand basket; but instead of dedicating your efforts to fixing the problem, you cut and run … to the Moon.

Didn’t we just talk about this two days ago? Here’s what I said then: “Some consortium of billionaires can get together this huge pot of money and host a competition for sustainable methods of reducing America’s carbon footprint. Can you imagine how many great ideas would come out of that? Honestly, I know our self-esteem is battered right now; but average Americans build rockets in their backyards, invent Ferris Wheels and somehow find time to make wine even the French have to like. We can do this.” So what do the billionaires do? They raise a bunch of money to turn their childhood fascinations into reality. Great, I should just stop writing this and dedicate myself to developing magic powers like in “Bewitched.” Let’s consider what else $25 million dollars might be used for:

1. Stop Alaska from melting. Stop Greenland from melting if you want to. And yes, it’s expensive; but so is traveling to outer space.

2. Find a source of fuel that doesn’t come from fossils.

3. Get cracking on preventing the extreme weather and destabilized ecosystems caused by rising temperatures.

Or we could put an SUV on the moon. Don’t get me wrong; I love the moon. I even have a moon tattooed on my leg (I really do.) I’m just so mad about this; I can’t keep still. We have to change our whole way of living from cradle to casket to save the planet and the smarty-pants are concerned about going to outer space. Why don’t they just offer $25 million dollars to find Atlantis? I know what all those analytical minds are going to say back to me--the technology from these kinds of contests can be used far and wide for the good of humanity. And they’re probably right; but we don’t know what that new technology will be--it could be a miracle cure for climate change, but it could also be a microwave oven and I already have one of those, thank you.

But wait, I need to calm down. There is a contest. Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Air, will give you $25 million dollars if you find a way to remove one billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere. Sounds good, right? I should just shut up, right? But consider for a second how many tons of carbon are emitted due to Virgin’s airplanes and nascent space program. And besides, at least the Robocar is a possibility--we’ve been to the moon before. Getting one billion tons of carbon out of the sky sounds like science fiction. I’m just so confused--is global warming a public relation ploy or a marketing bonanza?

Good News: The New England Patriots have been punished and no one in National Football League will ever cheat again.

Bad News: This quote from London’s Daily Telegraph: “Prof Singer, a specialist in atmospheric physics at the University of Virginia, said: 'We have a greenhouse theory with no evidence to support it, except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events.'” So does this mean we can all buy Hummers?

Worries: I’ll never be invited to be a civilian in space.

You must be a registered user to comment. Click here to register. Already a user? Click here to login.

Member Comments

Posted By: Eddie_D (July 27, 2009 at 2:20 PM)

Ah the lack of vision , you demonstrate a profound lack to understand simple levels of scale. Do you know what the budget is of all the Nature conservation and global climate change groups in the USA alone? 25 million is a drop in the bucket. But of course in your ill conceived and poorly researched emotional outburst you didn’t look in to the actual numbers. Furthermore not everyone cares about polar bears or carbon foot prints. You know what humans do? We change things, if things get to bad we will make an effort to save ourselves and funds will follow, until then what tangible effects have there been to global warming? But change is inevitable, even in nature there is change. Humans simply have a greater impact than other creatures because they are more powerful.

Space technology is the future of the human race. We have fully explored this planet and though the “Earth maybe the cradle of humanity, but one can’t stay in the cradle forever”- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky .

Finally the simple fact here is that your values are not everyone’s values, and trying to force people to accept you view of what is important will lead only to your frustration. I would say that I think what you believe to be stupid and fundamentally flawed. But I will let time demonstrate this to you instead of rationally reasoning with you, for from this post you are far beyond that point.

I really enjoyed watching you suffer through this experiment of yours, trying to live by the beliefs that you morally condemn others to follow. It was tremendously amusing.

I’m going to go work on my CO2 producing (actually it / they produce a lot of worse stuff than CO2, more like ammonium, and nitrates, sulfides and trace amounts of nerou toxins) environmentally unfriendly rocket now and try and save and empower the human race so they can try and take us back to the stone age so we can be more environmentally friendly.

Report Abuse

Posted By: Anonymous (November 1, 2008 at 9:54 AM)

Wahm com the online magazine for work at home moms. Work for stay at home moms. Work at home ideas for moms wahmoms net.