Latest comments posted about Watching a living planet on ChinaDialogue en-gb http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/501-Watching-a-living-planet http://staging.chinadialogue.net/images/cdlogo.gif http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/501-Watching-a-living-planet We might not be able to persuade everyone overnight, but I think I can at least influence the people around me. Excessive consumption of resources is already what we have to confront now. Why don't we start action right away? Let us remind everyone to turn off the light and to stop extra water from running out of the tap. I believe we should be able to do that. -------Hanson C K Sat, 11 Nov 2006 02:14:01 -0500 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/501#comment-454 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/501#comment-454 Some of us recycle a bit, try to take public transport, take holidays closer to home. But then our friends find you a bit ‘obsessive’ when you asked them why they used a dishwasher when only half full. The idea of choosing a house that is smaller, to reduce space and energy demands sounds positively mad right? We are still in the pre-environmental enlightenment era, no doubt about that. Our material comfort is so important to us we cannot see the link between our car(s), dishwashers, over-heated homes and the television reports on Darfur, FAO’s advert saying that 25000 people die of hunger every day, and the Stern report on climate change. We are still fast asleep, or worse: we choose to be. And until we reach a sense of priority and urgency, our politicians will think the people do not care and will not accept radical changes, and they will keep fiddling on the margins. WWF's footprint analysis links well with Pan Yue's comment (27/10/06) on consumption, pollution and the need to propose a 'new type of industrialisation', and his work advocating new patterns of consumption. China’s leaders are amongst very few talking explicitly about the impossibility to follow the ‘western’ mode of life. Yet we all need to think very differently about how we live and relate to this world. Viola Violante, Lisbon Tue, 07 Nov 2006 09:46:32 -0500 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/501#comment-434 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/501#comment-434 We are faced with the urgency of reducing our ecological footprint - our own consumption levels. An open question to readers in China and the rest of the world, then: are you trying to do this? How? And is there any point? As for me, I have been trying to recycle as much as possible, and want to give up air travel. What are other readers doing? What is the most important thing I could do, do you think? Thu, 02 Nov 2006 13:39:25 -0500 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/501#comment-392 http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/501#comment-392