Before the holiday shopping mania sets in…
November 19, 2007
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , trackback
This Friday, a day after Thanksgiving, is traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year. And the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas account for nearly 25% of annual retail sales. In other words, the shopping mania is about to kick off. Before we all run out the door and lose ourselves in the shopping malls and big box stores, we at Organicpicks are doing a bit of listening. Marketplace on American Public Media has been running a 5-day series on CONSUME. We want to highlight some of the interesting stories and facts. Maybe they will re-orient our thinking a bit while we dig through racks and bins of stuff for our friends and family.
It (most American consumption) all happens with hundreds of container ships pull into American ports every day, loaded with consumer goods produced globally. About 40% of those ships come “through the waters off Long Beach, California”.
The Long Beach port complex, which is than 10,000 acres, will be expanded to 30,000 acres in the near future.
Then “giant cranes lower containers down from the deck onto the beds of these waiting trucks”. And this happens 80,000 times a day nationwide. Daily these container ships spew dirty bunker fuel residuals and noxious sulfur into the air.
(courtesy of AA Environmentalist Association and eNewsBuilder)
From there thousands of trucks haul them to the other parts of the US while mercilessly pouring out diesel pollutants.
(courtesy of Zocalo and American Public Media)
19% of the children in Long Beach have been diagnosed with asthma.
The U.S. EPA has noted that pollution from diesel engines has shorted the lives of more than 20,000 American each year. In other words, these people die from consumption and its related infrastructure.
Nobody “realistically expects the air at Long Beach to clear any time soon, because after all we all really really need the stuff in the container ships.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Comments»
Los Angeles - Long Beach - Riverside, CA topped the American Lung Association’s worst air quality city while Cheyenne, WY topped the city with the cleanest air list.
http://envirostats.info/2007/08/25/0332/
I was down in Long Beach in Sept. I did a speed workout like I do in Halifax, NS, Canada, and it nearly killed me without even running at nearly the speed I know I am capable of. The air quality difference will be more noticeable if you push your usage of it.
Not good! We also have to think about the recent SF oil spill - I’m not exactly sure what that ship brought in or out of port but at least some of the ships coming into Oakland are filled with junk for us Americans to consume. Now is as good a time as ever to stop.