Do teenagers care about charity?
December 22, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 6 comments
Last week I wrote about giving to charity in lieu of presents for our teenage nieces and nephews. My husband was of the opinion that teenagers would not care about any charity causes. I had some hope.
Here is the early report, as the nieces and nephews all got their charity gifts early (darn that thank-you email from the receiving organizations).
My fifteen year-old nephew who spends a lot of time surfing and thinking about surfing thought that the membership to the Surfrider Foundation was the coolest thing. In fact he found out that the Foundation had a local chapter on the island where he caught most of his waves. The fact it was founded by eco-minded surfers is way cool, dude.
Our horse crazy niece, to whom we gave a donation to the National Horse Protection League, was happy for a day. But she was saddened after learning on the website that nearly 100,000 horses were slaughtered for meat or sold to foreign countries for meat every year. I regret the gift somewhat. Is it fair for a twelve year old to learn the dark side of the world? Will it depress her or motivate her to learn more and act?
For our other niece, who thinks nothing when charging $500 to her mom’s credit card but is passionate about music and performing art, we donated to her community school of music and art. On the phone she told me that this was one of the most surprising presents she had ever received. “very cool” was her exactly words. I don’t think it can compete with the over-the-top presents she will get from her parents. Hopefully she will remember this one.
Nature conservancy membership went to our nephew who will embark on an international exchange program to Costa Rica next year. He called to say thank you. When asked whether he had checked out what the organization did, he said no but commented that he was glad someone was doing the conservation work in Costa Rica. “Hey, there are people who give money and there are people who do the work. I am definitely the former,” he half-joked.
I was ticked off, “Kid, you’ve got no money. What you have is all your parents’. So don’t you act like you are already a billionaire and throw money at all the problems.” I wanted to tell him that he missed the point of our donation for him - a chance for him to learn the various eco-hotspots in the world and what this wonderful organization was doing to preserve the biodiversity for his generations and beyond. But it seemed sort of pointless, as he has already adopted his parents’ world view.
Do teenagers care about charity? I’d venture to say yes if it is directly speaks to what they care about. Who knows, perhaps they will renew their membership/donation to these organizations and actually learn and act. One can always hope.
Happy Holidays!
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Christmas wish?
December 8, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 8 comments
We got a call from my mother-in-law the Saturday after Thanksgiving, “I know you guys are busy. And I’ve been here only for three days. But can I trouble you to come and get me and dad tomorrow?”
My in-laws flew in from the east coast to visit their two sons in the west coast. The plan was for them to stay with us for a week before Thanksgiving and a week with their other son’s family for a week after Thanksgiving.
Their week with us was delightful, family beach trips, yoga classes, cacophonous singing sessions, nature walks, and three-generations running around in various playgrounds.
Then Thanksgiving day came. We drove an hour and a half north to my brother-in-law’s house. It was always a shocking experience to be there – new kitchen again, new bathroom again, bigger cars, bigger TVs, 9-hole course around the house.
This time around, there was a brand new outdoor fireplace, which was ablaze when we got there at noon. Sadly no one was around to feel the warmth. And it was still heating the unlimited quantity of chilly air when we drove away well into the night.
By now, we have come to realize that every time we go to my brother-in-law’s house, we come back needing a special shower to lose the smell of senseless profligacy. So we go as infrequently as a cordial but distant sibling relationship allows.
Still I was surprised at my mother-in-law’s plea for our help. She sounded exhausted, “I will explain later when you come tomorrow.” One more trip there? It would have exceeded our annual quota.
On the way back in the car, my MIL poured it all out, “I could not deal with it any more after Crista (her 12 year old grand daughter) called with a sales person from Nordstrom, asking for her mother’s approval for $800 on the credit card. I mean she’s 12 years old. What are they teaching her?” She was disgusted, “Have you ever seen her closet? You cannot fit one more piece of clothing. Nothing.”
I did however had the luck of seeing her bathroom counter – covered with make up bottles, tubes and jars. I had to remove a dozen of items from the sink to wash my hands.
Growing up on a farm in Ohio, my MIL is frugal in every way. Though she is quite well off, she rarely throws away a paper cup without exhausting its usage. By no means does she do this for the environment; it’s simply a lifelong habit enforced in an early age. No matter. Our end goal is the same.
In any case, seeing the material recklessness of her son’s family up close and personal almost hurt her in a visceral sort of way.
“Have you noticed that every room in the house has a large flat screen TV? All of them are on all day and all night? I have a headache from the constant noise in every corner of the house,” she continued, “Ken bragged that their utility bills ran a couple of thousand a month.”
“A couple of thousand!” she was clearly in disbelief.
We still had an hour before getting home.
“Remember the turkey we had on Thursday? We barely touched a quarter of it. Janet (her other daughter in law) threw it away after you left, because she said nobody would want the leftover meat.” She was mad now. Food touched a raw nerve, as she was born in the depression era and had images of hungry people burned in her memory.
I thought about the increasing number of people lining up outside food banks.
She wasn’t done, “Yesterday, a huge delivery truck came by. They got eight new dining room chairs. They have twelve right now. Janet did not have space for them, so they all went to the basement. She told me those chairs cost $1500 a piece.”
She shivered, “Do you think Janet is sick? She is on so many prescription drugs. And my son, what about him?”
Knowing they were rhetorical questions, I just sighed. She was so pained by the assault of excessiveness that she could not stay longer even just to be with her grandchildren.
“Perhaps the kids could’ve used your guidance,” I ventured to break her anger.
She waved her hand, “they are smart as hell. But unless there is a miracle, they are done for. I just wish the parents would spend more time with them, not more money on them.”
The mention of her grandchildren turned her fury into sadness.
A sense of helplessness and hopelessness hung in the car for the rest of the trip.
This was not what holidays were about.
This was not what family-get-togethers were about.
But I did not know what to say other than suggesting a long shower for her when we finally got home.
As I helped my kids write their cards to Santa this weekend, I wrote one too.
My wish for Christmas is for the have-nots to have a little bit more and for the have-too-muches to just stop accumulating. May we all seek joy within.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Giving credit where credit is due
November 24, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 4 comments
Can you believe that Thanksgiving is this week?! Time seems to go faster and faster each year. Or is it just me?
Last year this time, I lamented on our seemingly thoughtless shopping culture and how the national shopping mania was damaging our environment.
My sentiment seems a bit different this year. We are in an unprecedented financial crisis. Many large companies in the Silicon Valley are in a panic mode, freezing all hiring, cutting jobs, and drastically reducing spending. Nationally it isn’t any better if not worse.
I almost feel guilty for not buying much stuff. Almost.
Here comes the biggest shopping day of the year, this Friday. What’s one to do? Honestly it is ridiculous that I am debating with myself whether I should go shopping to support the economy. Sigh.
Let’s say that somehow I decide to contribute to the economy this year, where should I put my dollars?
I’ve always been proud for not visiting Wal-mart, which has notorious labor and environmental practices.
So it surprised me to hear that the company announced in a sustainability summit in Beijing that all their suppliers were required to cut energy consumption by 20 percent, starting at the beginning of 2009.
Wal-mart has been working hard on supplier issues because they realized that the biggest part of their impact was not really their own operations, as big as they are, it’s what happens upstream, as they say, with all the products and where they’re made and there was only so long they could work on supply issues without going to China.
China supplies 70, 80 percent of the toys in the world, a huge chunk of the apparel, etc, etc. So they had to go there and what they’ve set is very tough goals – they said you have to meet certain environmental and social standards, you have to comply with the law in China, which is not something most manufacturers do.
Why is Wal-mart making such a seemingly stringent demand on its suppliers? I, for one, don’t believe a corporation is able to be or required to be altruistic.
Andrew Winston, a green consultant working for Wal-mart said, “I think the number of people who will pay more for green or sustainable products is still pretty small, and it’s probably going to stay small, especially now in tight times. But there’s sort of a different group of consumers, which is what some people call the conflicted consumers or conscious consumers. People who want more from their products. They think about where the product came from or how much energy it uses. And they care about those issues nearly as much as they care about the price and quality. But they want those things, I think, with no tradeoffs and that’s the big goal, I think, in sustainable products, finding ways to satisfy customers and satisfy their environmental and social needs without asking them to pay more.”
I think Wal-mart is just running a smart business. Years ago, little known to most customers, Wal-mart had the most advanced information system which served to reduce their operation cost a great deal.
Today they are simply betting that energy reduction IS the future. Product safety and labor fairness will very soon become a part of standard business practice. Wal-mart is staying ahead of the curve. When the rest of the retailers catch on, Wal-mart will remain to be the leader. This kind sound business strategy, I can respect.
Now that Wal-mart has talked the talk, it is time to watch whether they can walk the walk. For me, who remains to be somewhat a skeptic of Wal-mart for now, Walmart Watch is a place to monitor the company’s true behavior.
Shop at Wal-mart this year, anyone?
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Economy vs environment
November 17, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 7 comments
The daily dose of ever so depressing economic news does not exactly cheer up any of us. A couple of days ago, a friend forwarded me the now famous doom and gloom slides many entrepreneurs had recently received from one of their elite venture capital firms.
The gist of the 56 page presentation is that this recession is unprecedented in a perfect-storm sort of way – housing recession, over-leveraged financials, frozen credit market, global slowing, and a few other factors have all come together and pushed our economy to where we are today. Worse yet, there is no telling where this storm is taking us.
Yeah, all very depressing.
The slide that really caught my eye was the one that screamed consumer-driven economy. In 1987, the US GDP was $4.7 trillion, to which consumer spending contribution 66%. Twenty year later, the US GDP grew to be $13.8 trillion and 73% of which came from consumer spending.
In other words, we shop to generate three quarters of our GDP!
In comparison, consumer spending accounts for 55% of the GDP of Japan, the second latest economy in the world.
I have been an advocate for buying less and enjoying life more for a couple of years. But I am beginning to feel that I am contributing to the recession.
Do I feel bad about wrecking the economy? Not really. We have an unsustainable economy driven by an unsustainable consumption lifestyle both from the financial and environmental perspectives.
But in front us is a tanking economy that is threatening to take more jobs away from productive members of the society. Then what? Social unrest?
How do we approach this dilemma? Do we really only have a bad option and a worse one – economic collapse or consuming the planet to death?
Is it possible to keep the economic pie just as big and the consumer spending slice just as hefty without pillaging natural resources?
A friend of mine thinks buying high quality and durable goods that are made with more renewable material is a step forward. Instead of having twelve pairs of throw-away shoes, she suggests that we buy four pairs that are made from sustainable material with durable quality, “You use less raw material, but pay a lot more per pair, thereby still contribute to the economy.”
But isn’t the concept entirely anti-fashion? Can the fashion world ever be convinced that durability can be trendy and classy? I don’t see it.
How about electronics? Stop making crap that falls apart at the magic two year mark (so called planed obsolescence)? But the computer industry, and by extension the electronic gadget industry, are based on Moore’s Law – a new generation every 18 months.
Then we also have the question about the employment. If we purchase fewer items, albeit things with much higher quality and durability, do we still require the same number of designers and workers? Shall we institute a 35 hour workweek to spread the work like some European countries? I’d personally enjoy the shorter workweek, but also recognize that it would be somewhat an anti-competition policy.
Instead of stimulating the consumer-based economy, should the government boost a green economy that is based on overhauling our long-term infrastructure?
Build national grid to connect energy sources (where solar and wind energy can be optimally generated) to consumption centers (where the energy is used)? A huge project with work for a whole lot of people.
Weatherize millions of old buildings to significantly cut down energy waste? Another tremendous project with massive employment opportunities.
Support innovative companies in driving renewable energy cost to lower than coal?
Alas, I have a lot of questions and clearly no answers. But by asking myself these questions, I begin to see opportunities rather than just the doom and gloom.
With crises come opportunities. If you are down from listening to the morning news, just imagine if we do it right this time, we may just be able to survive the perfect storm and change the world.
One can always hope.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Just one more, I promise
November 10, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 4 comments
I know I know, we are all very tired of the election. It’s all done. Let’s move on to the real tasks, and our equally historic challenges aren’t getting easier by the day.
I for one, really want to move on to a personal rant about how instead of giving $25 billion (they already got $25 billion not long ago) bailout to the big three auto companies, we can kick start a green economy, no matter how local, small and nascent it may be.
But I will do one last election related post - a forwarded letter from a good friend’s dad, who has been a minister in the rural areas of North Carolina for more than forty years. It made me want to work hard towards a better and a greener world.
Dear (my friend and his wife’s names),
I hope that you all are as happy today as we are about yesterday’s election. We have never been as involved in an election before as we have been this year–actually going out and knocking on doors some this past Saturday. This has put me in a reflective mood and I want to share some thoughts and observations with you.
The leadership of the country has passed to your generation. (I am really relieved that it didn’t pass up to my generation.) Since I still think of you as young (parents always do) this is an astonishing change, but it is also an exciting and important step forward into the future for our country. You are now in charge! This means we can really look forward to the future and get away from focusing so much on the past. But this is an awesome responsibility for Barack Obama and all of you in that generation. Your children’s future and the future of the world which are a matter of real interest to grandparents is in your hands. I have great confidence in Obama and in all of you to fulfill those responsibilities. For the remainder of our lives mom and I will watch the unfolding future of our family and all the world’s families with great interest.
Of course, this is has been a transformational election with the elevation of an African American to the Presidency. This is even more marvelous to my generation than it might be to yours. I grew up in the segregated South. I vividly remember my childhood movie theater in Clemson where all blacks had to sit in the “colored balcony.” I remember separate bathrooms and water coolers for whites and coloreds. The only black persons I knew as a child were a few women who worked in our home occasionally and for my grandparents. I never attended school with a black student until I was in graduate school at Duke Divinity School.
I lived, studied and began work during the Civil Rights days of the 1960s. Post 60s persons may have a hard time believing the tension and difficulty of those days–but then so do I! I will never forget the horror of the night that M. L. King was shot in 1968 (a year before Eric and Sara were born). As the operating head of Brevard College that year I was hosting the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, when someone came in the room with news of King’s death. The President of the board, a man I had always respected as a leader and generous benefactor to the college, actually clapped and said something like, “it’s about time!”
Now just 40 years later many millions of white men and women have helped to elect a man of African descent to become our President. As your mom and I said to each other this morning as we got up–”It’s a new day!” I am just grateful that I have had the opportunity of living through such a time as this and to be able to see the changes for the better that are occurring. Though I still know that in many quarters racism is still alive and I fear the nuts that are still out there somewhere hating Obama and all people not like themselves.
But enough about the past. As you can tell mom and I are excited about the future even at our age. We are proud of all of you and thankful for the wonderful children you have brought into the world and the positive direction you are giving them. Continue to let them learn about the world and life. Help them to have faith in the future and not to ignore the spiritual side of life. I cannot begin to comprehend the world they will live in when they are 68 years old.
In any case this is an historic week. I face the future with more confidence than before. I am proud of and love my family very much. Thank you for letting me share some of my reflections on the meaning of what has happened this week. AND REMEMBER YOUR GENERATION IS NOW IN CHARGE!!!
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Seems like a dream. Yet…
November 5, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 1 comment so far
From New York Times:
His triumph was decisive and sweeping, because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens. He offered a government that does not try to solve every problem but will do those things beyond the power of individual citizens: to regulate the economy fairly, keep the air clean and the food safe, ensure that the sick have access to health care, and educate children to compete in a globalized world.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Earn your right to complain
November 3, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 8 comments
Tomorrow is a big day. If you can vote, vote. If you cannot vote, take a friend to vote.
When it comes to this particular political process, I must admit that I have a very pathetic record. Embarrassingly I have never voted until this year. You are aghast. I know, I know.
I never thought my vote mattered. Texas , where I lived for 10 years, reliably went Republican regardless how I voted. California , where I live now, is staunchly blue.
But that is not the point. It took me a dozen of years to realize that voting is my way of earning the right to complain. It has broken my heart to see the environmental destruction in the last eight years. But you know what? I could not be bothered to vote in 2000 or 2004. So I shouldn’t be whining.
Vote. I have sent in my absentee ballot.
But before you vote, please consider a number of recent events.
The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.
Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining.
Thanks, this is really timely, since our drink water already contains rocket fuel.
Definitely check out the environmental scorecards of presidential candidates, senatorial candidates, and house candidates, thoughtfully put together by League of Conservation Voters.
Last, but not the least - if you are in California, you know that proposition 8 is highly contested. Please please read the incredibly touching and personal letter written by one of Greenbean’s family members. Every time I think about it, I am in tears.
It reminds me of Loving vs. Virginia case in 1967. I am stealing Wikipedia’s notes here:
“The plaintiffs, Mildred Loving (a woman of African and Rappahannock Native American descent, 1939 – May 2, 2008) and Richard Perry Loving (a white man, October 29, 1933 – June 1975), were residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia who had been married in June 1958 in the District of Columbia, having left Virginia to evade the Racial Integrity Act, a state law banning marriages between any white person and any non-white person.
Upon their return to Caroline County, Virginia, they were charged with violation of the ban. They were caught sleeping in their bed by a group of police officers who had invaded their home in the hopes of finding them in the act of sex (another crime). In their defense, Ms. Loving had pointed to a marriage certificate on the wall in their bedroom. That, instead of defending them, became the evidence the police needed for a criminal charge since it showed they had been married in another state.
Specifically, they were charged under Section 20-58 of the Virginia Code, which prohibited interracial couples from being married out of state and then returning to Virginia, and Section 20-59, which classified “miscegenation” as a felony punishable by a prison sentence of between one and five years.
On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on condition that the couple leave the state of Virginia. The trial judge in the case, Leon Bazile, echoing Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s 18th-century interpretation of race, proclaimed that
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix.”
The Lovings moved to the District of Columbia, and on November 6, 1963 the American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion on their behalf in the state trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the grounds that the violated statutes ran counter to the Fourteenth Amendment.”
After years of going in and out of different levels of federal and state courts, the Lovings was finally vindicated in 1967.
“The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions in a unanimous decision, dismissing the Commonwealth of Virginia’s argument that a law forbidding both white and black persons from marrying persons of another race, and providing identical penalties to white and black violators, could not be construed as racially discriminatory. The court ruled that Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statute violated both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In its decision, the court wrote:
“Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”
Despite this Supreme Court ruling, such laws remained on the books, although unenforced, in several states until 2000, when Alabama became the last state to repeal its law against mixed-race marriage.”
Mere forty years ago, my husband and I would have been considered criminals by marrying each other.
We’ve come a long way and we have a long way to go.
Please vote.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Green payoffs?
October 13, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 4 comments
I had lunch with a former coworker and friend Ben last Friday. We were sitting by the window, eating our sandwiches, and updating each other with kids, work and life.
A Prius car stopped at the light outside the window. Ben scrunched his face and snorted, “Do you know what I do when I see a Prius?”
“Admire it?” I had no idea why anyone would do anything specific to a Prius.
“Whenever I see a Prius on the highway, I floor the gas and show the driver how wimpy his car is,” Ben bragged.
“Why?” honestly I was puzzled.
“I don’t like green people. They really bother me. You know, I am just suspicious of their real motivations,” Ben was frank.
“What do you think their motivations are?” now I was very curious about the whole thing.
“They think they are morally better than everyone else. The Prius itself is a giant bumper sticker, screaming ‘Look at me, I am green!’” Well, I suppose that was one way of interpreting it.
I suggested an alternative view, “What if I buy a Prius because it cuts down my gas expense and it allows me to drive in the carpool lane?”
Ben thought about it for two seconds, “Good point. Then it’d be okay with me, because it is a rational decision, not a moral show-off. By the way the break-even point for owning a Prius is when the gas is around $4 per gallon.”
Our discussion so far betrayed the business training and experience both Ben and I had. Consumers generally make rational economic decisions. There is always a calculatable payoff with the price they pay. To Ben, the payoff of driving a Prius is either gas savings or a moral superiority complex.
“What about people who drive BMWs?” I asked.
Ben came back without blinking, “That’s just sheer vanity at play. They are announcing to the world that they are rich and successful,” he continued after seeing my sneer, “Their payoff is so blatantly obvious, straightforward and easy to understand.”
“So you are more comfortable with shallowness and vanity than your perceived moral superiority?” I pushed him.
“Vanity is a natural human frailty and completely predictable. The whole being green thing is irrational and therefore unsustainable,” Ben seemed to have an answer to every question.
We continued our now sort of philosophical discussion. He said, “CFLs make sense because the savings in utility expense exceeds the cost of the bulbs. Solar roofs don’t make any sense because it takes too long for consumers to recuperate the upfront expense.” Ben was ready to make the rough estimate on the napkin.
I began to understand that he was not necessarily opposing being green. He needed spreadsheets to show him some sort of payoff from being green.
“How about buying second-hand items instead of new things for environmental reasons?” I mentioned “Story of Stuff”.
“Bah. If there weren’t new things, how could there be second-hand things? Plus, it reduces demand on production. We don’t need this in our financial condition today.” Ben was going by the traditional economic theory – consumption generates demand which stimulates production. The end result: everyone is rich and happy.
I pointed out to him that the traditional economic theories assumed unlimited natural resources (water, minerals, forest, space to live, top soil to plant, etc.) and zero-cost for harmful byproducts of production and consumption (CO2, landfill, many other pollutants).
He acknowledged that it was a RATIONAL point. But until there were well-established economic theories that factor in the resource and cost of byproducts, the traditional theories were still the gold standard.
There was also the intangible happiness factor. “How about that being the ultimate payoff?” I argued. Perhaps happiness should be factored in economic theories, as difficult as the calculation might be. Perhaps the seemingly morally superior motivation of “green people” was really just one of the facets of happiness. They might derive abundant happiness knowing that our world was beautiful and sustainable for them and for their children.
“Yeah, I suppose so,” Ben admitted many imperfections of the “gold-standard” economic theories but remained to be skeptical of green people’s “motivations”.
After our lunch, we walked to our respective cars. As I beeped my Prius, Ben bent over laughing and said, “I am gonna choose to believe that you are a rational being with gas price and carpool privilege in mind.”
I gave him a hug and laughed too, “Maybe I am just morally superior to you.”
As much as I disagree with Ben’s straight rational interpretation of everything, I always enjoy talking with him. Part of it is that he provides a different perspective to my own. Part of it is that he is right in terms of incentives and motivations.
I would venture to say that most of us respond to financial incentives. Recently I read “Earth: The Sequel” which provided an amusing example of incentives. German government required that utility companies buy electricity from renewable-producers, including owners of rooftop systems, at above-market rates. “In 2007, German utilities paid up to 72 cents per kilowatt-hour for solar energy, about triple the price at which they sold energy back to consumers.”
Not surprisingly, solar panels sprang up on lots of roofs. Hey, at that rate, who wouldn’t want to put up a cash-generating system, even in the not-so-sun-filled Germany.
The next 5-10 years will be a fascinating and critical time in our political system. Not only will we need the will power to confront global warming, we also need to navigate various incentives, subsidies, and tariffs to encourage green behaviors and discourage environmentally destructive behaviors.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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Yet another reason for not visiting Starbucks
October 8, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 2 comments
I am coffee crazy but I go to Starbucks only about three times a year. I don’t have anything against Starbucks. It’s just that I’d rather spend my money in local mom and pop non-franchised coffee shops.
Well I don’t have anything against Starbuck until now when a friend has forwarded me this:
Starbucks has been slammed for wasting 23.4 million litres of water a day at 10,000 cafes around the world. This could supply two million people with water in countries suffering drought.
Starbucks rules state that the tap in the “dipper well” may NEVER be turned off to prevent any contamination due to health and safety rules
A water efficient expert said:”The chance of a build-up in the spout is extremely remote. And if there is one, they’re not cleaning the tap properly.”
There you have it.
In California where we have a serious drought (did I say drought again?), every bit counts.
By the way, I haven’t looked into shade-grown fair-trade coffee issues yet. I am procrastinating because it may turn out that I can’t in good concience have coffee any more, at least not outside my house. Sigh, that will be for another day.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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How much is $700,000,000,000?
September 29, 2008
Posted by CindyW in : Opinions & Thoughts , 6 comments
Yup, lots of zeros. Research shows that the human mind isn’t very well equipped to make sense of a figure like $700 billion. Since we usually don’t deal with numbers that large in our daily lives, a million, a billion or a trillion is just an indistinguishably big number to us.
As the wall street bailout of $700 billion is coming to all our neighborhood soon, I start to think about what this means for us.
According to New York Times, $100 billion is sufficient to provide universal health care to all people in the U.S. without it.
$6 billion is our annual cancer research. With the bailout money there is a good chance we can significantly expedite the cure for cancers.
Last Friday we learned the bad news on the greenhouse gas emissions. “Carbon dioxide output rose 3% from 2006 to 2007″, exceeding the most dire outlook for emissions from burning coal and oil and related activities as projected by a Nobel Prize-winning group of international scientists in 2007.
Worse - “Meanwhile, forests and oceans, which suck up carbon dioxide, are doing so at lower rates, scientists said. If those trends continue, the world will be on track for the highest predicted rises in temperature and sea level.”
In 2007, the U.S. spent a putrid $28 million on basic solar research. Imagine if we can spend 25,000 times of that on alternative energy research and development.
$700 billion can also put solar roof systems on 1/3 of the households in the U.S. Imagine 1/3 of the homes stop contributing to the unforgivable practice of mountaintop removal.
And no one can tell me what exactly the $700 billion will do.
I am an optimistic and hopeful person in general. But today I have a nagging feeling that we are merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, because so many of us on the Titanic refuses to believe that the ship is going down. You have to excuse my dark mood today. Recent events have piled on all of us.
Tomorrow, hopefully, will be a better day.
CindyW at Organicpicks
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