09-03-2023, 11:07 AM
(09-03-2023, 03:43 AM)Oh_hunnihunni Wrote: Every material we use that has gone through a complex manufacturing process has a serious downside. Paper has a huge environmental foot print, with its energy, water, and labour consumption. Add chemicals, heat, and transport and that product has come a long way from its origins in the ancient world. But no one who uses paper wants to go back to that genuinely clean green paper making process, and even if we could the market for it is so huge that process would never satisfy demand.
Same with wool. Those of us with access to a flock of sheep might be able to sling a sheepskin over our shoulders come winter, or gather wild wool tufts to spin and weave to make a rough blanket, but the rest of humanities billions would have to find some other way to keep the weather off our backs.
The problem is not the product, but the market. We simply have too many people with needs and wants and demands to satisfy. And until we don't the planet will continue to be the resource we all depend on.
Until it isn't.
Which reminds me of something I came across earlier:
“The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on earth, living or dead, as we now have. That lays upon us, whether we like it or not, awesome responsibility. In our hands now lies not only our own future but that of all other living creatures with whom we share the earth.”
David Attenborough
in order to be old & wise, you must first be young & stupid. (I'm still working on that.)