Bissell:
> Certainly we can see that the English language is coming more and more to
be
> consider the primary language (take a look at the Web, I think that
English
> is by far the most common language), and up until recently democracy (or
> some variant) has been the goal of government.

This is so fabricated and false....the fact is that there are several major
languages which include Russian, Chinese, Spanish, English and Hindi ( or
Indian dialects). English is the language that is preferred by business, and
it is becoming the language of international commerce, but it will never
become the 'primary language'. These five language or groups will always be
seperate...and major means of communication...

What? ...the goal of government is democracy? You Yankees just had all your
rights taken from you a couple of days ago.....The US is the only nation
that has a democracy that still has capital punishment....now it has no
right to privacy....citizens can be arrested, detained, etc., without
appealing to a judge or court, etc.,

Is capital punishment not the anti-thesis of a democracy? Capital punishment
is 'state murder'...nothing more nor less....and in the US no one in
government is ever punished for the most horrible crimes the world has every
witnessed such as the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the killing of
innocent people in many lands (Vietnam, Iraq, etc.), the aiding and funding
of terrorists.

English will never replace Chinese, nor Hindu replace Spanish...give me a
break.

<cut>
> There are sound ecological and ethical reasons to try to live within the
> ecological/economic boundaries of your region. Energy use is just one
> measure the makes this point. I've always felt that a sense of local
> environments was essential to the development of an environmental ethic.
> And, this goes for those living in cities as well as those living in the
> country, a strong sense of place in a city will go a long ways to putting
> political pressure on government to end pollution problems.

Very good. You should be cutting your own trees down for building houses
rather than relying on British Columbian timber...Lets see....if the US
imports 50% of the wood it needs to build houses, well then that translates
into 'zilch' area of forests left in the continental US left for
conservation if you have to rely on your trees. Since there is less than 5%
of the US forests left in a pristine, unlogged condition, the cutting of
these previously uncut forests would not be enough to meet demand. Now the
next outcome is that if the US became wood self-sufficient, then there would
not be enough wood for new houses in very short order, and the poor and low
income families (eg 90 million folks living near poverty or poor in the US)
would not be able to afford to own or rent a wooden 'stick and mache' home.

Oh one other thing. 50% of the oil and gas that the US uses is imported.
Applying a made in the US policy on oil and gas would cause further impacts
to the wildlife refuges (ANWR) for instance which has enough oil to supply
the US for only one year. Soon the scenario becomes very scary for
Americans. By the year 2005 it would appear that the US may be in serious
and perhaps great economic depression.

The solution already exists:

1.    Don't build with stick and mache houses that come from endangered and
rare forests where the worlds last remaining salmon and bears live in peace,
buy houses made from Aerated Autoclaved Concrete (like most Europeans
already have been doing for 70 years)...


2.    Reduce the production of energy that relies on imported energy.
Construct more windfarms, instreame hydro-electric plants, etc., build
renewable energy facilities, make public transportation more affordable and
reliable (fast rail transit), and place high taxes on the use of the
personal automobile....

chao

john









>
> Anyway, my point is that I am distressed to see bioregionalism put in the
> same category as the anti-globalization/technology/science movement.
>
> Steven
>
>  "Our human ecology is that of a rare species of mammal in a social,
> omnivorous niche. Our demography is one of a slow-breeding, large,
> intelligent primate. To shatter our population structure, to become
abundant
> in the way of rodents, not only destroys our ecological relations with the
> rest of nature, it sets the stage for our mass insanity."
>         Paul Shepard
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion forum for environmental ethics.
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Jim Tantillo
> Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 9:23 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Bioregionalism, etc. was Re: Local Environment
>
>
> >Buying locally is considered one of the advantages of bioregionalism,
> >enabling regions to exist and prosper as units. Do I see a can of worms
> >opening here?
>
> an interesting article from Mother Jones by Walter Truett Anderson,
> "There's no going back to nature" at
> http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/SO96/anderson.html.  An
> excerpt:
>
> "Bioregionalism, too, is a useful idea in some contexts -- such as
> governance of air basins. But it becomes pure nonsense when people
> begin to advocate it -- as Kirkpatrick Sale does in his book Dwellers
> in the Land -- as a solution to be imposed on the whole world, by
> relocating people from the cities to rural areas where they would
> then take up ecologically correct lifestyles. There are indeed people
> who remain in one place, don't get hooked into the global economy,
> and rarely travel -- all parts of the bioregional answer -- and
> that's a perfectly fine way to live. The trouble is in turning it
> into a universal mandate and a political agenda -- a crusade to get
> everybody living that way. Not everybody does, not everybody wants
> to, and not everybody can.
>
> "Even the people who talk bioregionalism don't live that way -- and
> don't seem to notice the gap between what they say and how they live.
> Some years back, Sierra magazine ran an interview with poet Gary
> Snyder, in which he advised all of us: 'Quit moving. Stay where you
> are...become a paysan,
> paisano, peón.' He then proceeded directly, with no evident sense of
> irony, to telling of his recent trips to China and Alaska. A bit
> further on he added: 'I've been traveling eight or 10 weeks a year,
> doing lectures and readings at universities and community centers
> around the United States. I'm
> able to keep a sense of what's going on in the country that way.'
>
> "I don't think this makes Snyder a hypocrite. I think he's a
> perfectly honest guy who would rather recycle green platitudes for
> admiring listeners than think hard about what it really means to live
> in a global civilization. "
>
> etc.
>
> jt
>
> ps.  hey, at least I didn't cite Ron Bailey's piece in Reason about
> neo-luddites at http://www.reason.com/0107/fe.rb.rage.html . . . .
> :-)
>
>
>
>
>
> >-Tc
> >Anthony R. S. Chiaviello, Ph.D.
> >Assistant Professor, Professional Writing
> >Department of English
> >University of Houston-Downtown
> >One Main Street
> >Houston, TX 77002-0001
> >713.221.8520 / 713.868.3979
> >"Question Reality"
> >
> >>  ----------
> >>  From:         Jim Tantillo[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> >>  Sent:         Wednesday, October 31, 2001 4:15 PM
> >>  To:   [log in to unmask]
> >>  Subject:      Re: Local Environment
> >>
> >>  >Can't really see "locationist" as in the same league as racist. Maybe
> I'm
> >>  >locationally biased, but I hold nothing against other locations
> (wouldn't
> >>  >want my kids to marry anyone from another location however).
> >>
> >>  Hmmm.  Maybe there is a serious issue here.  If one considers
> >>  bioregionalism, for example, and in its more extreme guises, say,
> >>  then perhaps a strong attachment to place/location could actually be
> >>  a form of "placism," leading to all sorts of illiberal
> >>  discrimination.  E.G. buying locally, that kind of thing.
> >>
> >>  :-)
> >>
> >  > jt
> >>
> >