Happy Earthday To You

A perspective on green that I liked... (reading required)
SHOPPING!

Set your hypocrisy beams on stun so we can all get through this.

Much of the following I am guilty of, complicit in or tend to facilitate with extreme prejudice. It doesn't mean I don't have a differing opinion from my actions. Let the bloodletting begin.

Reduce reuse recycle.

easy as 1-2-3, or is it 3-2-1.

We create so much trash. So much recyclable trash, even. Recycle! Great! We recycle the 4 quadrillion plastic bottles of water we consume each year. That we created them in the first place is waste, pure and simple. Reuse? Well some clever artistes make sculptural chandeliers out of the used bottles. That is a drop in the bucket, or bottle, and it is useless as well, though may have some value for social significance, so long as it is lit up by a compact fluorescent bulb powered by a wind turbine, solar array or Ed Begley pedaling a generator bicycle. Reduce! Reduce? Not a viable option. Nothing can change the fact (fact in this case meaning my passionate opinion) that something that should not be produced was still made and used... or to clarify, we do not need all this bottled water, Haitians, Rwandans and Darfurians do. But that is beside the point, for now. There is a company in New York City that bottles local tap water and sells it locally at a profit. Now, this more sustainable but not realllly sustainable. Return to the average bottled water company. That's a factory making the bottles, people and machines filling them with water, planes, trains and trucks transporting them to our favorite Wal-mart store so we can by a case for $5. And then we dutifully recycle the empties (which makes it all ok). All of which requires fuel to transport the empties and energy to process and clean them to turn them into the next generation of ridiculous products for us to buy. Wasteful from the word go. The upside? Jobs and industry. 10 years ago, bottled water was a $35 billion industry, (due to a limited research budget at McBlogland Enterprises, current market numbers are unavailable). What is most disturbing is that the US is not leading the world in consumption of bottled water, rather, Western Europe has us by about 4 times. We can do better! I would assume we pump much of our drink buying dollars in sports drinks and sodas, which is fodder for another day. I guess Europe drinks in fear of their bad tap water and plagues and such. Back on topic.

We make a lot of unnecessary stuff. We are in a rough economic time. It is pretty messed up, the engine of the economy is stalled, but we are still producing and consuming garbage. Bottled water... garbage. A new cell phone every 18 months... garbage. The ipad... garbage. The answer isn't recycling and taking 3 minute showers and buying clothes from thrift stores or hippies that make everything out of hemp, it's wayyyyy bigger than that. And until the global community gets a sense of that (you know, thinking exactly like me), we'll find ourselves climbing out of this economic abyss on the back of novelty ice cube trays and baby on board signs. I firmly believe that we already make enough stuff to satisfy the world, it just isn't getting to the right places. I'm not arguing for a redistribution of wealth, just a redistribution of stuff. Ever see the show about hoarders in the US, people living with piles upon piles of stuff in their homes? Granted, there is a psychological element here... but America makes for a perfect setting. Ever see the episode of the family in Kazakhstan with so much stuff they couldn't walk through their yurt? That's what I thought.

Happy Earthday!

End of diatribinous outburst.