5 Ways People Are Trying to Save the World (That Don't Work)
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#5. Buying Organically Grown Food
#4. Rejecting Vaccinations
#3. Recycling
#2. Using Antibacterial Soap
#1. Buying Carbon Offsets
I'd go so far as say I'd share their skepticism of most of them.
Anti-Vaccinatio, Anti-bac soap? - totally with that. Recycling and carbon offsets, I'd say the jury's still out. There are countless specific examples of how both are done now that are inefficient and just plain wasteful.
(I'm reminded of a community in the UK, where the local recycle program ended up dumping everything they collected into the landfill.)
My dad was big on kicking such programs when they were down - but the current state of them isn't the ultimate state of them. What is labor intensive now may not be so with a few years of innovation.
Organic food? That's a tough one. I'm all for eating food that isn't bathed in chemical baths and flown from around the world. The organic movement has its charlatans and hucksters, but it not as if agribusiness is without sin. I really do question if we can feed everybody with organic produce - but I simiarly doubt that our current faith in speciallized, chemically-dependent high-yield crops isn't due for a catostrophic realization.
Cracked's just trying to tick people off - but I wonder where the current state of the science is on these.
(H/t to Bad Astronomy)
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