Ban Ki-Moon: Looming Water Shortage, Guns, & War

Nobody dares to touch the real problem, the huge use and waste of water for unnecessary industrial activities to prolong the very profitable "built in obsolescence" syndrome.

Much of water and energy waste is used to replace human labour with automation, strictly for profits and not for genuine economic needs. The numbers of wasted energy to replace single workers is incredible.

Then there are thousands of products that could be made to last several times their present life expectancies with a few percentages of more resource/ energy inputs. Clothing is one of the most obvious, but obsolescent electronic junk is the worst.

Personal computers, among the biggest and worst case of water users in their manufacture, are now made to last only 1-2 years. Look at the amount of water that goes into the manufacture of a single chip.

Then there is the Green Revolution, the GM racket and generally agribiz corporations, with animal feedlots among the biggest and worst water wasters.

So, stop this useless moaning and groaning and start looking at the real causes.

Ed Deak.

<a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/australian-households-worlds-worst-at-water-use/2007/05/20/1179601242802.html">http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/australian-households-worlds-worst-at-water-use/2007/05/20/1179601242802.html</a><p>---<br>"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." <br />
-Max Planck<br />
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The figures in the article are obviously based on factory farming and manufacturing methods.

My cows don't drink 16,000 litres of water in their lifetimes, let alone for 1 kg. of steak, and my calves, sold at 6 months, only a few hundred litres for 150 kg of meat.

The problem starts at the disgusting feedlots, where they're pumped full of grains and chemicals to put "marble" into their meat, while standing up to their bellies in manure. That's where it takes thousands of litres to grow a single kg., counting the huge cleaning etc. problems amounting to environmental disasters.

I've been in manufacturing and farming most of my life and know how things can be grown with the least environmental destruction, but it isn't "profitable" for the big investors, out to kill the efficient family farm with the help of their pimp politicians.

Thanks to the corporate control of the markets, we're subsidizing every kg. of meat and every egg we sell from our old age pensions, while feeding over 100 people with eggs and meat.

Why are we doing it? We must be nuts!!

Ed Deak.

"Personal computers, among the biggest and worst case of water users in their manufacture, are now made to last only 1-2 years. Look at the amount of water that goes into the manufacture of a single chip."

Interesting that you mention this, since many people (mostly business operators) believe that computers automatically become worthless junk after only 2 years, which is completely false. I've been able to extend the life of a computer up to 7 years (which is an extreme case), however doing so requires some creativity and know-how, which of course would be way too expensive for a business to undertake when replacing old computers is far cheaper than extending them. The reason is that it's much cheaper to buy a completely new computer rather than pay for the downtime and knowledgeable manpower to upgrade RAM and CPU's, ect.

Another factor often overlooked is software bloat, where over time as computers become more powerful, software becomes increasingly inefficient because it's far cheaper to write inefficient software rather than write efficient software when the increased power of a newer computer can make up for it.

The above is true when computers are designed to become worthless junk (and very cheap), since it is possible to build computers that can be upgraded well past sticking in more RAM and a newer CPU. Even with current designs, it's possible to toss in a new motherboard and associated devices without replacing the whole computer system, however why bother when the price of a computer case can be less than the cost of upgrading?

The funny thing that's been going on recently, is that we hear about recycling old computers and other electronic based devices, but exactly how can an old electronics be recycled? There's been no answer that I've been able to find because you can't pick an old computer or radio apart and use the components for something else (other than making art work perhaps).

I recently had to throw out an old CRT monitor, but my wife wanted to do the "right thing" and take it in for recycling, 2 weeks later with the monitor still bouncing around in the trunk she finally gave up and had me toss it in a trash bin for burial because she simply could not find a place to take the monitor in for recycling.

In any event, businesses have no interest in extending the life of their products since an early obsolescence is far more profitable than building things that last a life time.

The bottom line is that the entire system of earning profits is designed to generate waste, and often purposely so. There will be no solution until BOTH businesses and consumers are forced into paying for their own waste instead of throwing it back at the general expense of the tax payer and the environment.

I hear you. I'm a student a computer science, a programmer, and I have been able to make my computer last for 5 full years. It's not that complicated to upgrade piece by piece, it usually costs less (unless you need to upgrade everything at the same time, but that doesn't happen that often). I can tell you that computer technicians are mostly thieves, charging ludicrous amounts of money for simple tasks (like 100$ for reformatting and reinstalling the operating system, something which takes very little effort, I assure you).

You're also absolutely right about software bloating. Windows Vista is an absolute piece of crap which seems to have be designed on purpose to make sure people will need to buy new computers. Hell, I've tried it for one week and discovered that:

--it uses more RAM than some new generation 3d computer games (768 Mo just to *run* Vista)
--just moving your cursor around a bit quickly can use 33% of your processor (Dual-core 2.0 GHz)
--it takes more space than quite a few games I have on my computer (25 Go)

My "expert" conclusion, though it's really common sense if you have just a bit of know-how: Vista is crap and has been made for profit, and to make sure people have to shell a few thousands buck on a new computer, end of story.

Same goes for most industries, really. Our economy is built on the principle that we *must* produce something, no matter what. The system *will* crash. It can't do anything else than to self-implode, sooner or later, because the only way to keep it running is to infinitely keep producing useless crap and for this crap to be "consumed", and infine "growth", or rather infinite *waste* is physically impossible in a finite world.

I just wonder when this will get through the thick skull of most people...

The Sharp Wolf

"So-called "sustainable developmen" is simply stupid, because it is still infinite growth, only slower. Rather than seeking long-term parasitism, we should strive to establish sustainable *balance*, to create symbiosis between ourselves, each other and our environment. *That* is the only way possible to survival."

I'm still running Windows 2000 and never "upgraded" to XP partly because it lacked basic server capabilities, but also because it did nothing new that I needed. I heard about Vista and laughed. Everything I now do, with a few exceptions, is moving over to Linux - a free open source and very capable OS that is at least as good as any version of Windows and is often better for many tasks. It uses less system resources and can run on very old computers or the latest and greatest. You can load it up or scale it down to suit your needs - unlike with Windows, the "bloat" is under *your* control.

To bad we cannot yet manufacture "open source" cars and so on because if we could the world would be far better off for it.