The Great Copenhagen Cock-up (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

So what is the phenomenon I am referring to? We usually suppose that when it comes to anything Green, governments are moderately 'good guys'. They don't want the earth turning into a fiery ball any more than anyone else does.

We understand too that it pays them--because it pays us--for everyone else to be saving the planet while we carry on with the old ways. Unless you're American or Chinese, what your country does is not going to determine when or whether we reach the fiery ball stage. So 'boxing clever' we understand.

'Hypocrisy' we understand too but it struck me the 'tyre recycling scam' went beyond hypocrisy, beyond careful ignoral, it verged on the downright criminal. It is the very fact that both the British and Indian governments -- and presumably other governments as well, both in the first and third worlds -- have erected a sophisticated 'tyre recycling scam' they know is a scam, is the phenomenon I was referring to.

* It is not like, say, the 'wood pellet electricity' scheme. It is possible, just about, to argue (to believe) that this is doing some good or at least not causing much harm.
* It is not like, say, the 'carbon capture scheme'. Who knows, despite all the evidence, that might turn out to be viable.
* The 'recycling tyre scheme' is just an assemblage of actual, honest-to-God, well-known facts.

Of course my own scheme is to use it to put the boot into recycling generally but this will do as a first step. If only I could find a way of getting the message out there.

[Mick Harper]

Do you want to know why 'recycling' is and always has been a dead duck? I'm going to tell you anyway.

Human beings have had a hundred thousand years--or however long it's been--to learn how to recycle. In fact that's how they began (according to Ishmael anyway) by recycling bits of animals they didn't want to eat.

They soon found, generally speaking, it wasn't worth it. Unless you couldn't find whatever it was in nature, nature itself provided everything in such abundance it sure as hell wasn't worth going to all the trouble of re-using what nature had already provided and you had already used.

Have you any idea how much work is involved in recycling animal skins? You certainly wouldn't do it if either (a) you could find leather hanging up in trees or (b) you already had a skin of the quality all the animals around you find perfectly adequate for local conditions.

So what, in those hundred thousand years, did humans find was worth recycling? Um... scrap metal. It was difficult and marginal but just about worth rag-and-bone men doing it. Rags and bones not so much, but a bit. Night soil. Anything else?

I'll give it some thought, maybe you can too, before we move on to The Recycling Era...

[Grant]

Recycling is a religious rite. We do it to show we are good people who love the planet

[Mick Harper]

That is true, Grant. The question is why is it true and why wasn't it true before? Up until the late twentieth century, humanity's attitude was strictly utilitarian:

You ransacked nature for raw material
You used this raw material to make useful things
You used the things until they wore out
You threw them away
They eventually returned to nature

This was replaced by 'a religion' that urged:

You selectively take stuff from nature
You use this raw material to make useful things
You use the things until they wear out
The things themselves become raw material
For making new things or producing energy.

But, as with all religions, there was a severe price to pay.

[Mick Harper]

The most obvious cost is the cost. If things can be recycled profitably they will already be being recycled. It follows that to recycle things that hitherto haven't been, someone is going to have make up the shorfall.

Sometimes we do it less now than we did before. For instance, the ancients were very fond of re-usng stone, not just building stone but foundation stones. This is deprecated by modern health and safety concerns. But that is not really recycling, just extending the life of a product.

If the recycling movement was just a faddish hobby, it would be no more harmful (or useful) than, say, the arts and antiques trade. But, as you say, it is a religion and we know what happens when a religion takes hold...

[Mick Harper]

We have reached the stage when everything, however theoretically, is supposed to be recycled. How weird is that? Five thousand years of recycling next-to-nothing, then fifty years of recycling next-to-everything.

Since in those fifty years of the new religion, the recycling rate has gone from a bit less than 12% to a bit more than 12%, we would be forgiven for suspecting a false God has wandered in from somewhere. Which wouldn't be worth worrying about if this is like most religions, perfunctorily observed once a week.

[Mick Harper]

For a start the world's oceans are now knee-deep in deadly plastic shards which will be there for ever. And all in the name of recycling. It went thataway thisaway:

1. Plastics are immensely useful and immensely cheap. This means they are produced in immense quantities and thrown away in immense quantities.

2. Recycling plastics is never worthwhile, partly because they are so difficult to collect and separate, partly because they can only be recycled into more plastic, partly because recycled plastic is always vastly inferior to and more expensive than virgin-made plastic.

3. Plastic doesn't easily break down in nature so they present an epic disposal problem. Common sense says they should either be incinerated or put in landfills in as safe a way as possible. A nuisance but not exactly an epochal one.

4. But Recycling Mania meant it couldn't be, not routinely. The sorts of plastic that could be recycled were (after a fashion). Plastics that couldn't be, were ordained to be made of plastic that did break down in nature.

5. Which turned out to mean shards that ended up sooner or later in the oceans of the world.

[Mick Harper]

But undoubtedly the main harm of the recycling movement is the creation of the illusion that

[Mick Harper]

The Great Green Wall

In my Deserts YouTube I warned against greening deserts because windblown intercontinental sand seemed to be essential for adding trace elements to equatorial rainforests where the high rainfall leaches them out.

However an exception needs to be made for modern human-induced deserts. These have to be stopped because they are creating droughts all over the place (as well as other lesser but still major inconveniences). Have a look at this to see the way the Chinese are doing it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGrmfBFAWvo

I can't tell how much is propaganda but it rang mostly true.

[Mick Harper]

Which of these is best for salmon farming?

1. Norwegian fjords
2. Scottish sea lochs
3. The Gobi Desert

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnjq0YjsW2o

[Mick Harper]

I have had complaints from 'one who knows' that this is all just Chinese hype. I have to disagree.

[Mick Harper]

Looking through this thread I belatedly noticed