Carbon Neutral Is A Scam, Go Plant A Tree!

Am I the only person who sees through this poop? Everyone's so worried about going carbon neutral, carbon credits and carbon dioxide causing global warming. Hello, trees take carbon dioxide out of the air an replace it with oxygen, an non-greenhouse gas. We don't need fancy companies to sell us carbon credits, or celebrities to sell us on the value of going carbon neutral. Plant some trees and shut up already! The fact is we've deforested so much of the earth that the trees that are left can't keep up. If people worldwide planted one tree for everyone they cut down, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. Although emissions from the burning of hydrocarbons (fossil fuels) did get us here quicker.


The value of a tree goes way beyond what importance humans may place upon it. Take a stroll through the woods sometime and you will see what I mean. A pile of evergreen cones shaved by a red squirrel here, the remnants of bitternuts and a gray squirrels cache there. The torn up ground under an oak tree where a deer was using its hooves to rake acorns. A big hollow up a dead tree where a raccoon has chosen to raise its family.


Every tree tells a story about the environment in which it resides. Stunted from lack of sun, or drowned by too much water. Witches broom from overbrowsing by deer and moose. Uprooted by wind an wet soils. Fire marks, and porcupine chewed. There are those that sprout various barbed wire out each side marking the edge of an old pasture.


Trees serve humans in many ways. They can be planted as windbreaks or for shade, depending if you want warm in winter or cool on summer. Fruit trees provide food and steady income for some. Others are planted to restore or preserve lake and streambanks. Trees give us clean air and quality lumber.


If anyone's bought lumber recently they understand the toll natural disasters take. Wood has to come from somewhere and if the supply doesn't go up, the prices will. I guess its what humans get for trying to create permanent fixtures in an impermanent, and everchanging world. This is why planting trees is important and demonstrates foresight.


If you plant a tree today its performing future community service. you are helping your kids, grandkids, and their kids, to have clean air in the future. Our forests act like big scrubbers taking in carbon dioxide, and releasing oxygen. Please plant a tree today and do some future community service.

OK Verdemontis, Red Will Blog On, Just Not As Often

Thanks Matt and J.D. for you kind words. Verdemontis you make one heck of a point, why not just post less often? Between nights and weekends I should be able to come up with the time for a post or two a week. The root of the problem is I have this love/hate relationship with technology. I love the ease with which technology allows people to stay in touch, communicate, and share ideas and perspectives. But I hate having to sit inside at the computer to do it. Makes me feel kind of caged.


I'll be back at it soon, first I've got to fillet the 60 or so bullpout I caught the other night. Some for my grandfather, parents, in-laws, sister's family, and other sisters family. Right now they're in water filled tubs that I keep changing the water in. I swear it makes them taste even better. There's a reason they call bullpout the fillet mignon of the fish world.

The Last Rednalsi Post Ever, I Think

After a short life in the blog world, its time for rednalsi to move on. I've enjoyed it, and learned a few things. I just hate spending so much time at the computer when the weather is so beautiful outside. Too much gardening and nature to enjoy. Maybe I'll become a winter blogger. Who knows? Good luck to all and thanks to those who've checked out Rednalsi Of Vermont. Blog on.

Third World Vermont, A Conspiracy?

What if the everyday involvement in our lives by the government was aided by unseen influence of the private sector (business)? Based on our needs for money and profit, these external forces could shape American society and their self-interest. Case in point, the consumer perpetuating nuclear family. What we're looking at is the destruction of communalism by instilling "possessive individualism", which down the road leads to good capitalism and consumerism.


Communalism is when neighbors and communities work together, interact, and communicate. When you know your neighbor, you know how bad the times really are. Divide and conquer, if people are talking to each other they're not divided. This is how communication undermines the control of large populations, but how would someone stop people from having conversations? What if another means of communication were available, an artificial means of providing information (or disinformation) to people? Now they know all of what's going on so they don't have to leave their homes and talk to their neighbors.


Enter the newspaper, radio and the television set. What if one could influence and control media? Knowing that it's the means by which people who lead busy productive consumer driven lives working for the private sector stay informed? They rely on the media as a means of communication to know how their neighbors are doing, because they never see them anymore. The public believes in the freedom of the press, and trust that because its free, it's without influence and truthful. The question you ought to be asking is who owns the media, and are you willing to let the media tell you how your neighbor is doing, instead of asking them yourself?


Individualism promotes self-reliance and a self-first attitude that puts people, families, communities, and states in competition with each other. People compete for better educations, to get better jobs, to make more money. the goal of every parent is to help their kid get ahead. In our modern democratic society you are judged more by the money you make than your worth to the community in which you live.


Municipalities compete for state funding, and states compete for federal funding. They compete by conforming most to what the government higher up wants. Often times the federal government forces mandates on the states by threatening to withhold federal funds. The drinking age in Vermont would still be 18 if the federal government hadn't threatened to withhold transportation money from the states that didn't raise the drinking age to 21. This leads to the question of a government of, by, and for the people. So if government isn't acting in our best interest, who's interest are they acting in? Ever hear of a lobbyist?


Obviously our government doesn't act in the best interest of labor, otherwise among the other industrialized nations of the world, we wouldn't stand alone with South Africa in tolerating ancient union-busting devices. The right to strike is lost when there is fear of permanent replacement workers. The decline in strikes in the U.S. is paralleled by a decline in workers income. Labor hasn't been helped by its negative portrayal in movies, or media where it's labeled as a special interest. Years of support for labor by communities has eroded, when in fact the interests of labor are the interests of communties.


If striking workers are replaced and left with no job, is that not heading them down the road to welfare? What about kids having kids, and teenage mom's on welfare? Is it right to make the true costs of bearing a child out of wedlock clear, by letting them be felt when they are incurred, namely at the child's birth? Many people harp on welfare because they think these are lazy, unmotivated people. Maybe some are, maybe they're not, but is it right to deprive their kids the means to survive, better themselves, and potentially one day lead a normal life off welfare? By punishing the poor instead of helping them, are we not continueing the cycle of poverty?


What about interjecting a religious issue such as wedlock into government? What about separation of church and state? This is where you have to wonder about the roles of religion and government. The encouragement of religious enthusiasm has a long history within the psychic processes of counter-revolution. It has long been used to tame the masses, breeding the chiliasm of despair. The desperate hope for some world other than this one, which can offer little.


Religion is where many people get their beliefs and values. Let's take for example christianity which is the predominant religion in the U.S. Christianity dictates that in this life people must work hard, to get to the next life (heaven), in which they will be rewarded. Whether or not heaven really exists, religion helps to disspell the notion that people control their own destiny.


In this way everyday Vermonters are being exploited the same as is done to people in the third world. The difference is that the exploitation and control is unseen in the U.S., because it is so buried and ingrained in our culture. How many average citizens realize the multitude of ideals that are the foundation of American society, actually shape and mold up into controllable workers. If the system that is supposed to be of, by and for the people is truly not, hasn't our nation been built upon a lie?

Stupidification Of America

The downfall of the public education system is that public schools must accept all students within their district. Totally unlike private schools who can pick and choose who they take. Not only are there more kids with disabilities than ever before, but also behavioral and emotional issues. This is why school budgets keep going up, requiring more and more taxes.


Essentially we are requiring our teachers and school administrators to not only lead the horse to water, but make it drink as well. Coupled with unfunded federal mandates such as No Child Left Behind, it puts our schools between a rock and a hard place. More time is being spent dealing with behavior, leaving less time for instruction. What results is what I call the stupidification of America.


It's hard to be positive when you spend more time trying to convince a kid why they need to learn math, than teaching how to do the problem. With more households having both partners work, kids are coming to school looking for attention they should be getting at home. We are asking schools to educate our kids, and double as substitute parents as well. Parental accountability is the heart of the issue.


I don't believe in losing civil liberties, but I don't believe everyone should be able to breed either. I know a couple who is getting divorced and putting their kids in a foster home, that's not right. Some end up foster homes or with relatives because parents are in prison. Then there's the kids having kids. A lot of these youth end up misguided, lacking direction and positive role models.


I submit that education issues are community issues that need to be solved by the community. Problem is these kids get bounced around from school district to district, never settling long enough to truly get an education. All while having negative impacts wherever they end up. The whole thing is a viscious cycle. Educators get burnt out, childeren's education is impaired, and the general public and taxpayers say enough is enough.


Fundamentally a solution needs to be sought to appease all. Most importantly is the future of our society, which first and foremost depends on our youth. If our kids lag behind, so will our country in the future. Kids today don't appreciate our history. Kids today seldom do homework. Kids today talk back to adults. Kids today, put down one another constantly. I fear for the future of America