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daddyssubbitch:
feministism:
Okay but i’m a republican and i dont “need” the $1200 check. But i’m not stupid enough to refuse it.
Right! So for you, even though Republicans say socialism is really bad, a terrible system, you still want it because it will ultimately help you out.
Do you see how those two things sort of cancel out? It’s so terrible, but it’s helping you, and everyone else? If it was that ineffective, it wouldn’t help the American people. Why is it that when capitalism fails, socialism is always brought in to solve the problem? (Remember the trade stuff and tariffs with China and Trump had to give farmers money? That’s socialism! Remember when Trump gave tax cuts to the rich even though of everyone in this country they need it the least? That’s socialism!) Maybe because it works a little better than the wealthy convinces you it does. Maybe because the 1% has convinced you it’s bad so they can continue implementing low wages, poor working conditions, no paid sick leave, and few benefits without any alternative (that socialism would provide) so that you have to accept all that so that they can keep profiting billions off of you. (And then somehow they’re so poorly run they still need 500 billion dollar bailouts in times of crisis!)
If the government can afford to pull $500,000,000,000 out of their ass to give to businesses right now, who should already have had that money anyway, they could afford to give working class Americans (especially those who are poor/paycheck-to-paycheck/in debt/etc) higher wages, lower taxes, and more than the $1200 they’ll be receiving from this recovery check. (Which you don’t even “need” it, like you said, but you still want it. So imagine how the 49% of the population living paycheck to paycheck feel. They need it. They need more, but definitely at least that much because that’s about what they’ve been surviving on anyway.)
I’m not even try to get you to like socialism as much as I’m trying to help you recognize the hypocrisy there. The irony there. You’re getting the short end of the stick. We all are.
Six talking points to use when debunking the myth that overpopulation is the root of the environmental crisis:
1. Rates of population growth are declining: Between 1950 and 2000, the world population grew at a rate of 1.76%. However, between 2000 and 2050, the rate of growth is expected to decline to 0.77%.
2. Overpopulation is defined by numbers of people, not their behaviors: Industrialized countries, who make up only 20% of the world’s population, are responsible for 80% of the carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere. The United States is the worst offender, with 20 tons of carbon emission per person. Therefore, it is not the amount of people that leads to degradation, but what they are doing. Permaculture design illustrates how humans can have a positive impact on the health of our ecosystems, bringing greater health and equity.
3. Overpopulation justifies the scapegoating and human rights violations of poor people, women, people of color, and immigrant communities: Often times the subtext of “too many people” translates to too many poor people, people of color, and immigrants. This idea has been used to justify such practices as the forced sterilization of 35% of women of childbearing age in 1970′s Puerto Rico, under the control of and with funding from the US government. This is a human and reproductive rights violation.
4. Overpopulation points the finger at individuals, not systems: This lets the real culprits off the hook. When we look at the true causes of environmental destruction and poverty, it is often social, political and economic systems, not individuals. We see militaries and the toxic legacy of war, corrupt governments, and a capitalist economic system that puts profit over people and the environment.
5. Supports a degenerative mental model of scarcity: Much of this ideology was created by Thomas Robert Malthus, an 19th century English scholar. Malthus gave us the erroneous idea that the reason there is famine is because there are too many mouths to feed. This hides the reality that we have a distribution problem, not a scarcity problem. Malthus’s work has been used as the philosophical bedrock to justify many human rights violations throughout history.
6. Focusing on overpopulation prevents us from creating effective solutions and building movements for collective self determination: Permaculture teaches us that how we define a problem determines how we design solutions. How does viewing overpopulation as a root problem impact the way we think of and design solutions? What would solutions look like if we viewed people, all people, as an asset? The myth of overpopulation has lead to solutions of population control and fertility treatments, rather than overall health care and women’s rights. The more we blame humans and think we are bad and evil, the harder it is to believe in ourselves, count on each other, and build a collective movement for justice and self determination.
Back to Basics: Direct Hydropower
In a modern hydropower installation, a water turbine converts the energy
in the moving water into rotational energy at its shaft, which is then
converted into electrical energy by the generator that is coupled to the
turbine. Next, the electrical energy is converted back into rotational
energy by the electric motor of the machine that is being powered. Every
energy conversion introduces energy loss.
In an old fashioned hydropower installation, there was
only one conversion of energy; A water wheel converted the energy
inherent to the water source into rotational energy at its shaft. The
same shaft also moved the machinery, so that the only source of
significant energy loss occurred in the water wheel itself.
Some small direct hydro powered systems in South America present a
strong case for combining the use of modern materials with old fashioned
methods of water power mechanization. The higher efficiency of this approach means that less water is needed
to produce a given amount of energy. This lowers the cost of hydropower
and enables power to be produced by the use of very small streams.
Read more… (Backup in case it’s cloudy in Barcelona)
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