EnviroLink Forum

Environmentalist ideas for the rich

1. To spare more ink in the world, it would be better if mankind used better fonts. In current word processor programs, there are quite good fonts which can save more paper, for example, "Liberation Sans Narrow". However, we want to save more ink as well, and we could possibly do that by omitting some parts of the glyphs, for example, we could omit the upper straight part of the letter P, making the glyph something like a hook. In fashion and branding, there are already similar solutions for other letters, and they are popular. Now, a rich person or alliance could support the creation of a public domain font which would change all or most of the letter glyphs a little bit in a similar manner, and that could cause a considerable saving of ink for mankind, if it becomes fashionable. It is suggested to create these fonts on a competition between font developers, and reward the best. Árpád Fekete is not a professional font developer, but found a public domain font on the Internet, and changed it with the open-source program FontForge, spending the free time of more days on it, and it turned out that the font would consume more paper than others. That's why the help of the rich would be handy here.

2. For about ten or more years of their life, people are children and like to spend their free time with games and toys. That's why it is important to make the games and toys more environmentally friendly. A game or toy can be more environmentally friendly by consuming less resources or by providing a greater educational value. However, it is very important to make the game or toy very popular too, because otherwise the children would not really want to play with it. A rich person or alliance could support the creation of such popular eco games and toys, setting a competition between game developers with alike material resources, and rewarding them according to their success. Árpád Fekete, for example, had the idea to create a computer game which would be about saving the life on Earth in the 21st century, by cooperation. In this case, the term for game campaign would coincide with the term for environmentalist/political campaign. For the environment, it seems to be better if the computer game is turn-based and multi-player at one computer, or hot-seat. For the environment, it also seems to be better if there are parts of the game which can be played without a computer too, promoting new games which are more environmentally friendly. It is just a matter of money and brain to create such a game.

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Logics is beautiful, power is happy.

Sparing ink? Children's toys? "For the rich"? Who here is rich?
WTF? Useless garbage.......

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"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”
― Chief Seattle

OK, my translation from Hungarian might not be perfect. Maybe I should have written "Ideas to the rich" instead of "Ideas for the rich". I welcome criticism if I can improve from that.

For example, Bill Gates is rich and has a foundation and used to do many philantopic deeds from that. I'm going to convince such people as him.

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Logics is beautiful, power is happy.

It may be an admirable attempt at environmentalism and, whilst every little helps, I think there are much simpler ways to reduce our consumption of resources.
Rather than changing fonts, just print fewer documents. That would, at a stroke, reduce the use of both inks and paper.

Are you George Williams by any chance?

People do not easily print fewer documents for my sake. But if the font is better, they are more friendly to the environment automatically. If the Latin fonts would change to a new style thorough the world, it would have a huge impact - and I believe that that impact would be good.



I hear this name the first time (I'm not accustomed to American culture, I'm a Hungarian). It's not even obvious who would be him from here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Williams

My name is Arpad Fekete (Fekete Árpád). I'm a Hungarian programmer by profession, I regret that I was a Christian, and I want a better future in which I have health, money, girlfriend and honour (from my environmentalist deeds).

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Logics is beautiful, power is happy.

Arpad Fekete (AF2), you post caused me to laugh, but I don't think you meant to be funny. You are concerned about font size and toys while your country is suffering from industrialization just as every country is.

http://www.countriesquest.com/europe/hu ... issues.htm

You regret that you were Christian (why?) and you are hoping for more health, wealth and sex through your concern for the environment. I'm not making fun of you, but really, your post is hilarious!

Well, if there were no industrialization in Hungary, then other nations would probably be much stronger. Evolution drove towards industrialization, but the case might be different in the future when the mines will be depleted.

I regret that I was a Christian because I realized that it is very tricky and helps the Jews instead of the Hungarians. It's only value might be that it makes the people more sceptical through eugenics.

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Logics is beautiful, power is happy.

You used to be looking for the best ways to reduce population to sustainable before nature does it the hard way, and now little garbage like saving ink??
What happened to you?
From something very major to something laughably minor.

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"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”
― Chief Seattle

It is a matter of thinking what you think minor or major.
I have already written my essays about overpopulation, and there were very few interested.
That's why I realized that my current power is too little to persuade people to reduce or limit overpopulation.
That's why I've written a correction to my essay which is for a smaller community,
and let God or Nature reduce overpopulation the hard way in other parts of the world
(from spiritual experience I think God can do wonders so God can save the good people,
who also observe my overpopulation suggestion according to my conjecture).

Actually, I could probably do a greater impact with creating another type of font,
(Imagine saving 5% of the world's printing ink! Compared to convincing e.g. 100 people not to have children...)
but it is also my experience that I am not a popular person since my childhood,
so it's possible that I would not succeed as easily as a rich person could.
But it is your misconception that I am taking care for fonts currently
- no, I have more important things to do in my life.

For me, I am the most important person, and I need money, healing, and maybe a girlfriend.
Taking care of these things takes time, and I think it is righteous if I care for myself.
I just passed this font idea to those who have more free time (and more money).
By the way, I plan to write a book about environmentalism,
about the relationship of technology and Nature, maybe mixing with some wisdom,
but it's possible that I will not do it in haste - just conveniently, when I am bored.

It is even possible that I will not continue FEcoWebS if there will be no people joining.

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Logics is beautiful, power is happy.

Good luck finding the right girl, Arpad. I remember praying to God about it just before my future wife waltzed into my life.
I hear you about trying to convince people to have one child or less, and to reduce their eco-footprint to 1/20th as we have.
I am afraid Nature will take its course; the population will crash around mid century, and in a millennium or so, AETM and the completion of the 6th Great Extinction, including humans, will occur.
The human species on this planet certainly failed God by not replenishing the Earth and other sins like lust, sloth, and greed. I would also add, general stupidity to mankind's failure as a species.
2 million years or so to make up for what humans have done, with God's ways of nature.

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"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”
― Chief Seattle

And then .... it is up to us ... right?

Hi, today I've appended point (4) to the FEcoWebS homepage (BTW, I had this idea around the beginning of this year).

3. The masses of people didn't care much for the environment in their free time, that's why it may be important to remind them about environmentalism from time to time. Holidays or ceremonies like "Earth Day" can help reaching the masses, and can turn their spiritual development towards environmentalism. Religion used the same kind of trick a long time ago. The rich could support the environmentalist holidays or ceremonies, to make them better. By the way, it would be good if an environmentalist holiday were as widespread as Christmas, or maybe more. In order to achieve this goal, the rich could do a campaign or a lobby. Note that "Earth Day" might be called "International Mother Earth Day" incorrectly, as Earth is not an animal, so it has no gender. We can even deem it possible that the life on Earth has more decision power than the stars on the Sky.

4. In the beginning of the 21st century, people use computers on a regular basis. That's why the operation systems which they use matter very much. Some operation systems may be more environmentally friendly than the others. It would not be a too big task to create a Linux distribution like Debian or Ubuntu, but with much more care for the environment. A Linux distribution could care for the environment more by opening to those people who tend to like Nature more than technology. Its traits would be user-friendliness, enhanced internet security (firewall) and reliability, all the most important software on one CD or DVD (maybe more hardware drivers on the DVD), and support and regular updates to only those things which are on the CD or DVD. It could work as a live CD too, and it could have some environmentalist and educational software, games or documents on prominent places of the user interface. That would make this operation system a good choice for being used in education. If such a Linux distribution were used in education, countries could spare much of the costs of commercial operation systems, and use that money for the common good instead (which about environmentalism too). Professional programmers and IT people can try to work on this task, but it is probable that it would not be a long-term success without monetary support.

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Logics is beautiful, power is happy.

5. The next idea is from the example of the Gideons International organization. The Gideons International wants to spread Christianity by giving free, small-sized Bibles to the young and the old. If people spread the Bible this way, why couldn't they spread a good environmentalist book in the same manner? A rich person or society could support the good environmentalist teachings the same way as the Gideons International spread the Bible. Provided that the rich popularize truly good environmentalist teachings, it is probable that they would succeed in converting more people's way towards environmentalism, and this way the common good of Earth's creatures could be realized.

6. There are farmers who would like to produce raw food on the land in an environmentally friendly way, but it is difficult for them to sell that raw food. There are also restaurants which would like to have a trustworthy source of raw food, from which they could produce their processed food. However, there can be traders who stand in-between, taking away some of the profit. That's why an alternative construction might be more sustainable, where the farmer and the restaurant would form one company. This way they could produce not only conventional food, but special food based on rare plants too. Also, they could produce the seeds for their own plants to make sure they are all right. This would be a great opportunity to create environmentally friendly restaurants. The rich could make this process quicker by taking part in the business.

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Logics is beautiful, power is happy.