Hello, everybody! I'm the EnviroBecca who ran recycling programs for Looney Labs at several conventions a few years ago, as well as one of the authors of The Earthling's Handbook <www.earthlingshandbook.org>, and I just joined this list. I wrote a long rant about the P&T show which I will post soon; some of my points already have been made (I read the list archives) but some have not. For now, a response to some of the discussion that's been going on: > What I was trying > to articulate was a defense of the motives behind the desire to recycle > -- I don't think people should feel bad for wanting to take care with > what they throw away. I agree. The problem is that this is not as simple an issue as we might wish. It's not a matter of "put everything with a triangle on it into a blue bin and feel no guilt whatsoever." Some materials recycle better than others. American society has come a long way in the past 15 years in making recyclable items easier to identify and recycling bins easier to find...but at the same time, we've drastically increased the amount of packaging used on many products, the consumption of many products, and the use of plastic vs. more enviro-friendly materials. The challenge now is to inspire people to be conscious consumers, to think about their choices at the point of purchase as well as the point of disposal. Some of that is happening with the trend toward organic food. As always, though, marketing distracts people from the real issues in favor of urging us to buy buy buy! > Unfortunately, there isn't any debate about recycling. When I try to tell > people that it really doesn't work, I usually get rolled eyes or quickly > dismissed. Recycling is an issue that, in general, has moved beyond > reproach. Boy, I don't. The more liberal and/or intelligent people I know don't get far into a discussion of recycling before they start talking about better options and the need to "close the loop" by demanding products made from recycled materials. Other people either have read/heard/seen something about how recycling doesn't work (often from economic rather than environmental perspective; Reader's Digest is the most frequently cited source) or say recycling is "too hard" and they can't be bothered. > We're in no > danger of running out of oil nor are we in danger of running out of land. > It's like going to the doctor for a runny nose and getting sent in for > chemotherapy. This is my biggest problem with the general environmental > movement. Everything is a crisis that has to be fixed NOW, and fixed > using whatever drastic means are necessary. I see what you mean, and it's a problem I have with many non-profit organizations: They blow up everything into a crisis in order to motivate people to send money now. Certainly there are many issues that are NOT immediate crises. But I think your analogy is inaccurate: A runny nose is not a symptom of cancer, so you're saying that there's no connection between using oil and someday running out of oil...but there is. I think that efforts to reduce oil consumption are more similar to my parents' efforts to save money throughout my childhood so that they could afford to send me to college. They really scrimped pretty hard in many areas, motivated by what you might call a Peak Money scenario that my dad had drawn up, which showed that in the two years when my brother and I would be in college simultaneously, they would have only $400 a month to live on. Well, as it turned out, my grandma died while I was in high school and left us some money, and my brother and I both got some scholarships, and my dad got a raise, so we wound up much better off than predicted. That doesn't mean it was wrong to live as if crisis was coming. All that excess money they saved is now available for other uses, like their recent trip to Scotland. The years of economizing taught all of us to be comfortable with a lower-cost lifestyle, so we continue to have "extra" money to save in case of future crisis (you never know...) and also to give away to worthy causes. I think conserving for the sake of conserving is a fine thing. > I wanted to say that the best way to help with population growth is to get > these countries more economically stable and with a higher standard of > living. Make it so that you have less infant and child deaths, and so > that it isn't critical for people to have as many children as they can. Also, make it so that people who want contraceptives can get them. This is a huge problem in parts of Africa and Central and South America, and it's more of a problem in the USA than you might think. I recall back in 2000 when Andy and I were debating about Nader, he said it wouldn't be such a big deal if an anti-abortion president appointed Supreme Court justices who banned abortion...and he was astonished when I told him that ONE IN FOUR American pregnancies is aborted, so banning abortion without increasing contraceptive access and knowledge (something anti-abortion politicians generally oppose) would mean 1.5 million more mouths to feed every year. > But even in the population issue, I don't think we're anywhere near a > crisis point. And even so, how can you control it without trampling over > people's rights? You can't control, but you can encourage: by making contraception widely available to those who want it, by providing health insurance coverage for contraception and abortion as well as birth, by making insurance premiums increase for each child added to the plan instead of having a "family rate" such that families with one child pay for those with ten, etc. There is a wonderful organization called Population Communication International that funds TV and radio dramas in the developing world and works with scriptwriters in the developed world to convey, through fiction, messages about how having smaller families and making smart decisions about sexual health can improve people's lives. They have some good evidence that their stories influence people's personal choices. ---'Becca