Speaking of donuts…
It may be worth taking a look at the results of a report in latest issue of the International Journal of Epidemiology.
The study concludes that being overweight or obese “should be recognized as an environmental problem” because of its contribution to climate change from additional food and transport emissions.
Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine found that a lean population, like the Vietnamese, consume about 20 percent less food and produce fewer greenhouse gases than a population in a country like the United States, where about 40 percent of people are obese.
The authors also found that transport emissions will be significantly less in countries with healthy average body weights because it takes less energy to transport slim people.
Some airlines want to charge the overweight a fat tax or for a second seat which this guy thinks is silly.
Yea the global alarmists want to tax and profit from every carbon cell in your body so this guy would have to pay up big. Regarding airlines charging two seats, are city taxi’s going to charge two seats? And what about kids, two can fit in one plane seat, and I have two friends who are anorexic and can fit in one seat so they should only pay for one seat. I smell ACLU all over this.
Not every “true fact” SHOULD BE “recognized as a problem.”
Lots of things, if not everything, when multiplied by 7 Billion is an environmental problem. You don’t solve a problem by redefining it.
I think “overpopulation” may be a legitimate environmental problem ((that assumes creating as many souls as possible is not an end good in itself)) but the height, weight, size, dietary habits, hygene, etc of the individuals involved do not rise above the individual autonomy rights involved.
Next is that parents are the cause of global warming. Every new child is yet another C02 machine on this planet.
This morning I watched the (large) recycling truck come up the street. It would stop at a house, 2 guys would jump out, grab the recyclables (bundles of paper, cardboard, glass, plastic and and cans and sort them into their respective bins… as one remained behind the wheel of the idling truck. They jump back in, and the truck accelerates to the next driveway, brakes… repeat of collection and sorting…. accelerate, brake, idle, sort… accelerate, brake, idle, sort… accelerate, brake, idle, sort. Just the beginning of a long voyage through further shipping, sorting, shipping, reprocessing, shipping, distribution and reuse.
The point I guess, is that we can’t avoid the inevitable of living the good life. Fatness is just one symptom. Many of the slim and fit do way more damage to the environment than the fattest of the fat. The energy used to create garbage, is probably around equal to the energy used to reuse it… multiplying the net strain on the environment. Conversely, NOT creating the garbage in the first place reduces the net energy expended by that multiple.
The only way to stop pollution in all its manifestations is to lower our standard, and way of living…. perhaps to Vietnamese standards? … and I bet Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine aren’t prepared to do THAT.
Nope, much too easy to preen their professional feathers and attack fat people.
Hey, cities generate waaay more pollution per person than do small towns, so we should carbon tax the hell out of everyone living in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, LA…
oh, is this where 99 percent of all the environmentalist freaks happen to live? too bad!
Remember Star Trek?
“Carbon based life units infesting the Earth!”
or something like that!
Go ahead TAX me.
#6, Bill, that’s a funny reference! It was the probe Nomad in the episode “The Changeling” that uttered those words. Carbon based life forms, indeed. I guess we’re inefficient filth makers and need to be sterilized.
So we’re supposed to eat Vietnamese people, because they are low in fat?
OTOH, Al Gore is a fat tub of goo – so he should be taxed to pay for his share of global warming.
No offense to republicans but walruses like the one above need to pay for two seats. I’ve had the misfortune of having to sit near one these things such that a third of my seat was occupied by at least 80 pounds of his lard.
Sorry, I paid for a whole seat. Charging more is simply the practical thing to do.
Not a private pilot – yet. But weight is the number one enemy of flying. A few pounds here or there make a difference the smaller the plane.
Regardless, sitting next to a 350 lb person in the cattle section is horrendous. Tax them and give me the bailout for the inconvenience.
#10, EvilPoliticians, you’re in for a good ride. BubbaRay and I have really enjoyed flying, but not with an overweight instructor. BR had one that would require rudder trim on a Cessna 150.
Shouldn’t the excess CO2 emissions of the supersized be offset by the genocides in places like Darfur & Bosnia? all those Carbon footprints eliminated, gotta look at the bright side eh?
The idea that genes, not eating, makes people fat is in violation with the law of conservation of mass.
One can not get fat if one doesn’t consume the constituent components of fat.
Having lost >50 lbs myself by eating less, I laugh at anyone who claims otherwise.
Maybe fat people would do well to change what they eat too, but you can not maintain your fatness on a 750 CAL diet and a tiny amount of activity.
Fat people damage the environment?
Talk about An Inconvenient Truth, Al.
How much extra co2 do tech guys emit over non techies? Let’s focus on banning or taxing wireless routers, large monitors, big TV screens, and so forth.
As with all global warming science, the math needs to be double checked by outsiders. The peer review process utterly fails to catch basic errors with these guys who are moved by ideology, so ‘sounds good’ is all that’s needed to pass peer review.
The guy who invented the hockey stick for temperatures did another temperature ‘reconstruction’ where he flipped temperature graphs upside-down to show a correlation, where warmer meant narrower, he used wider to mean warmer.
http://climate-skeptic.com/2009/04/numbers-divorced-from-reality.html
[Please leave the “www” out of links. — Ed.]
Fat people should be paying my Federal and state taxes.
#15 – Hey Mike, I believe I heard that the UK is considering a ban on plasma TVs. Why? Use too much energy, i.e. hazardous to the environment!
Interesting how the fattening food makers don’t get blamed, OR TAXED! It’s the weak willed human victims that get punished, and further exploited. Maybe if the crappy, fattening, food cost more then the healthier alternatives. The waist lines of America would shrink.
As for this demonizing coal as a power source. I find it highly suspect that coal just happens to be America’s number one energy resource. US coal reserves out rank any in the rest of the world. And naturally, as the world has been made to hate the US. It’s prime domestic source of energy has become hated too. So we’re expected to abandon what’s cheap and readily available. And use more imported oil and use more nuclear fuel (which will take decades to build plants for). How convenient that the US and Canadian coal reserves are just “no good” and bad for the environment. Well it’s not stopping China and India from building new coal powered plants every week. And they’re both far out polluting the US, right now. So the US going cold turkey on coal use, won’t make any difference. Except to raise the cost of energy, dramatically. So only millionaires like Al Gore can afford to power a light bulb.
Hey, I just heard that Pepsi Cola is bring back a version with “real sugar” in their sodas, for a limited time. I’ll bet it’s in response to all the complaints about HFCS being more fattening that real sugar. But this will be Pepsi’s chance to claim that they tried selling it, and not enough customers like it. So it back to the HFCS sugar substitute. I wonder if Pepsi would deliberately sabotage its cola’s taste, just with this product’s run, to win their point?