Transfer Payments

[cakadu]

Should support payments and subsidies be attached to incentive programs for conservation and preservation of biodiversity and environmental sustainability?

What about using the carrot instead of the stick?

[Deb]

On the one hand, yes, we should encourage farmers and ranchers to practise conservation measures. And if money is the only thing preventing him from selling his land to a land developer to be subdivided, then I guess we better subsidize him.

On the other hand, nobody pays me to pick up my garbage if I go for a walk in the wilderness. Nobody paid me to buy a fuel-efficient car, or to recycle paper. I just do these things because it is the right thing to do. Because I care.

[Deb]

What is this enviromental susbtainability and conservation preseveration employment opertunity, sounds like it could keep us from stravation, being homeless and out of the dark. Mr. Vanclief and you girls will lead us out of the dark and away from dust, manure,chemcials, organic organisms, compost piles of e-coli and mouse droppings in to the light of total econonic despair.

I think most family farms are vary enviromentally responsible now. Maybe more attention should be placed on the waste and chemical disposal of urbanites.

Scientist are running about predicting that the sky is falling on a daily bases. But I predict that if those scientist said the world is in good shape and will keep on that way for thousands of years. They would be amongst the unemployed tomorrow. So do what you may to keep your employment.

All I say is lets be real careful how far we tip over into unproven scientific though.

[Deb]

Continuing to work against nature is a losing situation. Check the temperature outside your house, read what is happening to the shorelines of PEI and Nova Scotia and other coastal places around the world. The oceans are rising, the weather is getting less predictable, the glaciers are melting at a tremendous rate, the Great Lakes are dropping. The cancer rate is going up. Why? Because we have failed to follow the rules of the earth.

Scientists warned us about all this. They didn't do studies and warn us as a method of "job creation" for themselves. Millions of environmental volunteers around the world don't try to do what they can to save the planet because they have nothing else to do. They do it because they care and they can see that poverty, starvation and an increase in environmental refugees is going to be way worse in the future if we keep going along this resource-sucking, earth-trashing, human-centred road.

If we love our children and future decendants, we must love what will sustain them, which is the very generous earth, nature, the soil. If all we did was furnish our "needs", instead of our "wants", our resources would last longer. If we all put more stock into human relationships, local community, and maintaining a healthy personal spirit, we would come to the realization that love is worth more than money, material possessions, fame or power.

[rookie]

Youth and objectivety are two things I possess along with the diploma and rubber boots. What I think I need now is an answer about the idealism : Show me the money? I not only want it, but need it.

[Deb]

First we have to teach those that have lost the connection to the land where there food comes from and how it is grown.

Then we have to teach them the importance of rural communities and the farmers that support these communities and vice versa.

Then we introduce them to community supported agriculture, farmer direct markets and other land to consumer concepts.

If we could somehow make urbanites understand the importance of keeping farmers viable, I'm hoping they will willingly subsidize small to medium farms and ranches. The urban centres are where the money and power is. We need to tap into it through awareness-building.

But educating them will be tough since most of the media is controlled by a few corporations that couldn't give a darn about the disappearing farms (as opposed to the increasing vertically integrated confined feeding operations which are not farms.)

As well, there are few rural organizations with the single focus of saving rural farm life, reforming farm communities, or studying the issues of rural sociology. The Canadian Association of Rural Studies may be one good "think tank", I have to check it out. SALTS, NCC, RMEF, are great, but they haven't connected with urbanites yet and they only involve ranchland, not crop-farming land.

The problem is, rural areas are becoming the places where urbanites like to go play in and use whatever way they want. The rural towns and villages, are slowly succumbing to cultural urban imperialism.

You have food, city people want it. Make them pay for it directly to you. Forget the efficiencies of scale, that will ruin the Canadian farmer once and for all. The most stable economy is not the economy of scale but small scale economy. The community that you support, will support you.

And remember this: A man is rich according to the things he can do without.

Are you out to support yourself with a little extra or are you out to exploit the world for whatever you can get and that will make you rich?

Sometime it will dawn on everyone that we are now living way beyond our means. We may have cash in the bank (or not) but the ecological Bank of Nature is way overdrawn.

Idealism can be realism!

Keep talking!

[Deb]

Deb the sky is not falling. Settle down alittle. The world has been through all of the above that you have mentioned in years gone by. Quess what life has never been better and get your rubber boots on because the drought will disappear.
We are all better educated than our forefathers were but by the sounds of this thread common sense has taken a kick in the head.
Now settle down and watch where you go to the bathroom.. My apologies The Kernel.

[rookie]

The thoughts and ideas of reconnecting the urban users with where meat and potatoes really come from wouldn't hurt anyone. And I suppose it 'could' happen. Making them understand the importance of keeping farmers and ranchers viable does need to occur I beleive at some level. Just do you really beleive ( seriously ) that it will ever happen?

[Deb]

Remember the Dr. Suess book "Horton Hears a Who?" the little people from Smallville, on the speck of dust on the clover flower had to scream, yell, blow on horns, etc. as loud as they could so that the creatures that had Horton the elephant all tied up wouldn't destroy the clover.

Horton kept imploring the folks of Smallville to make more noise so they would be heard. Everybody in Smallville made noise except one little boy who was found playing with a yoyo. The mayor of Smallville grabbed him and ran to the top of the highest tower and told the kid to yell. He did. And that noise was enough to top the sound off and the evil creatures heard and spared the clover.

Anyone who has learned the importance of small town prairie and real family farms and ranches must do all they can to make noise (like the squeaky wheel, I guess) and force the eyes and hearts of the urban centres to listen up.

It CAN happen only if we all pitch in and yell and blow our trumpets! Let's not go down without a fight.

It is hard to fight cancer because it creeps up on you without your noticing until it is almost too late, like a snake. The real estate and economic and social consuming powers of the urban centres have been chewing away at us for too long. One by one, schools are shut, elevators pushed over, corporate farms displacing mixed farms, and morale is lost. People think it's too big an issue to fight and maybe cutting and selling out now is the answer. It isn't. I LOVE rural!

Like I said, keep talking!

[countryguy]

DEB you are right on the money with your observations of what is happening in our world.A few years back I took a course in holistic management.It was very interesting to learn how and why past civilizations failed and get my eyes opened to where ours is headed.Past civilizations failed due to starvation.History always repeats itself.Acre by acre being taken out of production and gene by gene being tampered with we will soon meet the same fate that our predecessors met,all at the expense of society's big fat wallet.

[countryguy]

Deb its minus 30 C wheres that global warming and all the melted ice at again.

And the rain came and the sunshone and everyone rejoiced. CO2 made the grass green also.

[ianben]

I think I 'm with the Kernal on this one.
How do people know what is happening weatherwise. It has never been predictable in fact one report I read stated that todays weather is unusual for its small fluctuations in temp etc.
Ice cores showed that over millenia temps had varied greatly year on year even during ice ages and warmer periods.
How do people think they know the correct diversity of plants/animals based on personal memory.
How far back do we go?
Do you want the plains and the buffalo back?
I havent seen a dinasoaror lately but I understand you had plenty once.
Is this evolution?
Someone famous once said "The only certainty is change".
Darwin I believe said "It is not necessarilly the largest loudest or the ones with the biggest teeth who survive but the ones who adapt to change."
We should all do our bit for the enviroment but I dont think we can achieve much or influence things long term one iota.

[Deb]

Weather is short term (a cold winter day here and there, like the old days.) Climate is longterm trends.

We know the atmospheric carbon dioxide level has risen steadily since the beginning of the industrial age. We know there has been a simultaneous rise in global temperature. (Find a copy of "The Next One Hundred Years" by Jonathan Weiner.)

We know that drought is bad for us here in the Palliser Triangle. To continue down this path, adding more and more greenhouse gas, is not going to make the situation better. Cutting down all the carbon-storing trees is dumb too, as is increasing fossil fuel use. We're just asking for it.

If you were suspicious that you were coming down with a cold, would you go out in cold air without a coat? No, you would use your common sense and follow the precautionary principle and dress warmly and put on a hat too. If we think we are at fault for warming the globe, should we maintain the status quo? No, we should do things to reduce our greenhouse gas output.

The real reason people don't want to drive smaller cars or conserve energy is because North Americans especially, are spoiled and lazy and are addicted to convenience.

[nakodo]

I think the real reason is the price of fuel is too low, raise the price of fuel and car size decreases gradually, lower it and cars increase in size. Tax the bejeebers out of it and they may even car pool, but then farmers maybe dont want to get rid of the big 3/4 tonne 4X4 supercab they drive to town on saturday night either :-)

[Deb]

That could be true. The rich could afford to drive anywhere anyway, the poor, like my friend Sue, would be in a pickle if driving their car was the only way to get from Lethbridge to Taber to work at the sugar factory or potato processing factory. She can hardly afford to feed her children. Those people I feel sorry for if the price of gas goes up. I think the passenger/commuter train should come back and there should be a train going to and from Lethbridge and Medicine Hat several times a day. Mass transit would sure help the dozens (hundreds?) of people like Sue.

Also there's the issue of people who live in "bedroom" communites who go to the city to shop instead of supporting their local stores and letting money circulate in the community. If we all supported our local communities and shopped there, we'd burn less fuels driving elsewhere for groceries.