Eco-Friendly Photography? Inkjet/Digi or Silver? or ?

[Marko]

Let's face it - almost anything we do as individuals is just a fool's errand.

Decisions made by a few people in Washington steered by a few hundred lobbyists for various interested industries/corporations is what really makes an impact. The remaining 299 million of us get to sort our garbage and try to behave in a way that makes us feel good, but the impact we make is miniscule in the long run.

If we are really serious about conserving natural resources - and please note that I am not saying "preserving" because we have to use some energy and some resources in the course of our lives - then we need to affect the policies much more than simply our day to day behaviour.

If we think that switching from Sequoia to Prius will make any kind of real impact, we're simply kidding ourselves. What we really need is a thorough change of lifestyle and even more radical change in policy making. Invest heavily into clean energy sources and technologies. Reduce consumption. Reduce or at least meaningfully control industrial emissions and waste. That's where the real impact lies.

And above all, outlaw lobbying and redirect the millions or even billions expended on it toward research.

[Robert Hughes]

I'm not convinced that outlawing lobbying would be beneficial or make much difference. Besides, anybody can lobby if they want to, even the Sierra Club. Lobbying is just advertising to a small target market; Capitol Hill and its feeder departments.

Whether or not elected officials should accept de facto bribes is a different issue.

[Marko]

I'm not convinced that outlawing lobbying would be beneficial or make much difference. Besides, anybody can lobby if they want to, even the Sierra Club. Lobbying is just advertising to a small target market; Capitol Hill and its feeder departments.

Whether or not elected officials should accept de facto bribes is a different issue.

Not just anybody - only anybody with enough money. That's why the airlines, for example, can afford spending tens of millions lobbying - successfully - against consumer rights legislation but can't afford to accommodate stranded passengers with even the most basic amenities such as fresh water. Or that may be why we can afford to spend $4-5 billion a month on a single war that is now running longer than WWII did but can't afford general health insurance. Or for that matter any health insurance for some 45 million Americans.

The problem with money and power is that both inherently corrupt and lobbying is a way of bringing the two together to the detriment of the rest of us who have very little of either.

[Ed K.]

David - your link to the tech industry pollution article covers a great deal of relevant issues. The article covers many of the the "big picture" points.

Traditional stuff was made mostly with metals, glass and wood - plus it lasted a long time. There is the landfill computer issue - people change electronics way more often than they should have to due to "milking the cow" and holding back features for incremental model changes. Much of the "recycled" computer equipment actually leaves the US to be processed in other countries, which are then polluted by it. In the largest picture, polluting in other countries comes back to all of us even though it takes longer for the problems to be known or critical.

Marko - please put the political part in a lounge if you don't mind - not that I agree or disagree, but rather, I'd like to prevent this thread from gettting deleted posts. Your points are well taken regardless.

Everyone - keep the ideas coming - I know that this doesn't form a large study with good science, however with all of your experience, your thoughts are very stimulating as to where to look for more answers at minimum.

[Marko]

Marko - please put the political part in a lounge if you don't mind - not that I agree or disagree, but rather, I'd like to prevent this thread from gettting deleted posts. Your points are well taken regardless.

You are right, Ed, sorry for poluting the topic (no pun intended!).

I did not mean to be political, though. It just happens that my view on conserving the environment is that the road that leads to it is effectively blocked by politics and that any meaningful, long-term solution needs to take that into account.

[paulr]

I read an article last week, but don't know where ...The use of the car was about 2.5 lbs of carbon and the the walker used 4 lbs.

I'm beyond skeptical of this. I would very much like to see this person's methodology and numbers.

I imagine it would be possible to get results like this if you fed the walker 300 calories from the most inneficient calorie sources imaginable ... like kobe beef flown over from japan in a supersonic jet.

[Alan Davenport]

I imagine it would be possible to get results like this if you fed the walker 300 calories from the most inneficient calorie sources imaginable ... like kobe beef flown over from japan in a supersonic jet.

Perhaps the walker's diet produced excess methane? :-)

I can only suppose that the study in question was funded by the auto industry...

[paulr]

so beware of beans!

i just did some quick math. consider that the average person burns about 300Cal walking 3 miles.

a reasonably efficient car (30mpg) would burn 1/10 gallon, or .38 liters of gas in 3 miles.

the energy density of gasoline is about 34MJ/liter, so the car uses 12,920,000 joules of energy--about 3090 Cal. that's about ten times the energy of walking.

so for the carbon footprint to be the same for driving and walking, you'd need to show that producing gasoline (never mind the car itself) has one tenth the energy cost/carbon footprint of producing the food. or in the case of the author's thesis, sixteen times.

[Emrehan Zeybekoglu]

No offense meant, but the question you pose is, in my opinion, irrelevant. As long as consumer capitalism is the dominant mode of living, the environment will continue to be polluted, the resources depleted, etc. What we do or don't do as modest and conscientious individuals (or photographers for that matter) doesn't really matter. It is the wealthy that has to change its overall lifestyle and consumption habits. The capitalist socioeconomic structure causing all this destruction and pillage of the earth may very well bring about the end of the earth before we know it. Hoping for a better world......

[Greg Lockrey]

so beware of beans!

i just did some quick math. consider that the average person burns about 300Cal walking 3 miles.

a reasonably efficient car (30mpg) would burn 1/10 gallon, or .38 liters of gas in 3 miles.

the energy density of gasoline is about 34MJ/liter, so the car uses 12,920,000 joules of energy--about 3090 Cal. that's about ten times the energy of walking.

so for the carbon footprint to be the same for driving and walking, you'd need to show that producing gasoline (never mind the car itself) has one tenth the energy cost/carbon footprint of producing the food. or in the case of the author's thesis, sixteen times.

That's not the total issue, Paul. Don't forget the energy needed to produce the food that the walker needs to eat from the grass that the cow eats on up and all of those in the chain needed to get it to him. Apparently from the article that total is greater than the chain to make the car and pump the gas, etc. It was surprising to me too.