We we'rnt "Green" in the old days.

[Arragonis]

Agreed 100%. Its how we help them adapt I suppose.

And thanks

[ron]

Well, Im from the 50s, we(USA) were green. we grew it. we made it. we kept it.and when it breaks it can be fixed! we also gave it away.list what we still make here. Makes Me Sick to think about the old days when we had it all.

[shovel]

The old days sucked and nostalgia is lame.

The people who came before us had literally all the time in the world to make paradise and where is it? We're still terrorized by disease, we still fight with our neighbors in real wars with real body counts, we still have resource shortages. Sorry, everything we've done so far is a failure.

Where's our 50 year, 100 year, 500 year plan? Do we have one? Do we want to make the act of working obsolete? Do we want to make it possible to pursue research and personal development an attainable full-time occupation for anybody?

F nostalgia. F everything we've done already, it all sucked. F dying of the common cold, F not having access to all the world's knowledge on a pocket sized magic window, F classic cars that had oil leaks on the showroom floor, F carburetors and drum brakes and F the things we still have to worry about today, like getting a life ending disease from doing what our bodies demand. F borders, they're imaginary lines drawn by idiots who aren't even alive anymore.

Sorry, the past may have been incidentally green in some ways but it wasn't paradise. To maintain balance we either have to engineer more closed-loop solutions to our energy needs or we have to make less people. I don't see us working too hard on either of those things and our grandparents didn't even try at all.

[Frank Lee]

Hey man I love drum brakes.

[redpoint5]

Americans are short-term thinkers. Politicians would gladly trade the future (10+ years) for immediate (4 years) results that help their next election. This could be a good argument against term limits. If a politician could potentially still be in office long enough to suffer the consequence of their decisions, it would force them to think longer term. No longer could decisions be made that harm the environment, or social programs implemented without funding, that could be blamed on the new guy in office.

[scivicblu83]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

Hey man I love drum brakes.

+1 my 68 buick tuna boat has drums the size of my civics' rims

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by shovel

The old days sucked and nostalgia is lame....

I kind of agree, but with less implied swearing

If you took Mr and Mrs 1970s and let them spend a week or so in today, and then asked them if they wanted to go back I suspect they would prefer to stay. Most of yesterdays hippies are living in McMansions along with everyone else.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by shovel

The people who came before us had literally all the time in the world to make paradise and where is it? We're still terrorized by disease, we still fight with our neighbors in real wars with real body counts, we still have resource shortages. Sorry, everything we've done so far is a failure.

I beg to differ. Ever know anyone with smallpox, or polio? This is what life was like in the old, old, days:

Upon a general calculation, threescore persons in every hundred have the small-pox. Of these threescore, twenty die of it in the most favourable season of life, and as many more wear the disagreeable remains of it in their faces so long as they live. Thus, a fifth part of mankind either die or are disfigured by this distemper. But it does not prove fatal to so much as one among those who are inoculated in Turkey or in England, unless the patient be infirm, or would have died had not the experiment been made upon him.

Voltaire, "Letters on the English".

[Varn]

I remember back when. My parents took the family to mass inoculations for polio. We got it first with injection and another time later on a sugar cube. I still know several people who have post polio syndrome. Most are very weak and can barely get around. Many are gone now.

Doesn't everyone have a small pox vaccine? I thought it was mandatory.

Thankfully hardly anyone smokes any more. It killed generations, self inflicted.

McMansion's, most of the ones owned are held by 30-40 somethings who think it makes them something, most of the ex-hippies I know are closing in on 70.

I live simple and as cheap as is practical for my family. With retirement looming I hope to simplify another two fold.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Varn

Doesn't everyone have a small pox vaccine? I thought it was mandatory.

Hasn't been for decades, because (except for samples held in a couple of high-security labs) the smallpox virus is extinct.