Environment & Energy

... sounds like a hypocrite at best and a racist xenophobe at worse.

This first occurred to me the year I graduated from college, after a nine year struggle with severe mental health issues.

My personal environmental footprint was tiny then, I was living on a hundred dollars a month in a Vietnam War veteran's garden shed. My bicycle and my bus pass were the only forms of transportation I could afford, I had a working car parked on the street but I had to move it about every three days or it could be towed away by the city, and would certainly be towed away on street sweeping days.

That was not my lowest point, not at all.

I was still a member of the Sierra Club then and attended meetings regularly. The local chapter was largely composed of very affluent people with humongous environmental footprints, at least 50 times my own at that time, who, when they weren't talking about overpopulation, water shortages, or their opposition to new housing developments, were discussing their their trips to Machu Picchu, etc..

Fucking clueless...

I was there because I'd been advise to put myself out there if I wanted a job related to my education.

It's damned near impossible for any affluent person to reduce their environmental footprint below the world median. I've lived on both sides of it.

There are three proven ways of halting human population growth that don't involve war, starvation, and pestilence.

These are the political and economic empowerment of women, universal access to birth control, and realistic sex education.

The "conservatives" of many religions and ideologies do, of course, oppose all three. I oppose them.