[Stoves] Drinking straw that eliminates the need to cut any firewood at all

[ajheggie at gmail.com]

On Thursday 29 December 2011 02:16:22 Andrew C. Parker wrote:
> If the target population does not currently boil, or in any other way  
> treat, its water, I would think that education would, in the long term,
> be   preferable to distributing free "magic tubes" in order to profit
> from carbon indulgences. 

Whilst I agree with the sentiments I feel there's too much invective in 
that statement and it covers a number of points.

1) Educating populations seems to go hand in hand with the prosperity of 
the population, being recursive it appears to be a slow process. Western 
economies have evolved a system of co operation in exploiting all the 
resources available to them but have not addressed the costs of 
externalities, like pollution or biodiversity loss or simple quality of 
life in doing so. Part of this system is a sophisticated, though 
necessarily inequitable (because it is driven by the need to reach top of 
the heap), financial services sector.

2) Your "indulgences" are a symptom of this in the same way that hedge 
funds, financial futures etc are. They are justified as providing a 
service to industry but they seem to have the propensity to go wrong in a 
big way, as the toxic debt problem has demonstrated. The cost of these 
services is banking profits and rides on societies back just as the 
priesthood did in pre mediaeval times. Profit is what has "grown" western 
economies. These lifestraw people have seen a market, ticked the boxes, 
and been paid to distribute the straws in a mechanism designed to address 
the distribution of "indulgences" as penance for chucking fossil carbon 
into the atmosphere but it looks like the rules they won by are flawed.

I might agree that teaching a man to make a rod and catch fish is a better 
long term solution, aiding his survival to learn that lesson may be a 
necessary step.



> We have created a very bizarre world of late, 
> have we not?

Yes, it's not what I expected would happen half a century ago, in fact as 
I watched the enthusiasm of my grandaughter, who arrived on my 44th 
birthday 16 years ago to the day, pinning a badge on me, I realise how 
pessimistic I have become. Especially as I surmise from the plume of 
smoke ahead that we're thundering up the slope of a volcano with Crispin 
in the driving seat and Kevin asking me for my fare ;-).

AJH