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Today's Top News
Putting the ‘I’ in Environment
For those who are not (yet) heartless cynics or emotionless Ayn Rand acolytes, the now-famous photographs of sludge-soaked pelicans on the Gulf Coast are painful to behold. It’s those hollow pupils peeking out of the brown death, screaming in silence. They are an avian version of the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg that F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote about—and they implicate us all.
As President Barack Obama correctly stated: “Easily accessible oil has already been sucked up out of the ground”—and drilling companies must now use ever-riskier techniques to find the oil we demand. While British Petroleum and federal regulators are certainly at fault for their reckless behavior, every American who uses oil—which is to say every American—is incriminated in this ecological holocaust.
If we accept that culpability—a big “if” in this accountability-shirking society—we can start considering how to reduce our oil addiction so as to prevent such holocausts in the future. And when pondering that challenge, we must avoid focusing exclusively on legislation. As Colin Beavan argues in his tome “No Impact Man,” green statutes are important, but not enough. Those oil-poisoned birds, choking to death on our energy gluttony, implore us to also take individual action.
This does not necessarily mean radical lifestyle changes—good news for those who remain locked into various forms of oil use. Millions, for instance, must drive or fly to workplaces where no alternative transportation exists. And most of us don’t have the cash to trade in our cars for Priuses, and don’t have the option of telecommuting.
However, almost everyone regardless of income or employment can take steps that are so absurdly simple and cost-effective that there’s simply no excuse not to.
Here are two: We can stop using disposable plastic bags and stop buying plastic-bottled water. Though no big sacrifice, doing this is a huge way to reduce oil use. The Sierra Club estimates that Americans “use 100 billion plastic shopping bags each year, which are made from an estimated 12 million barrels of oil.” Likewise, the Pacific Institute reports that the equivalent of 17 million barrels of oil are used to produce plastic water bottles—incredibly wasteful considering that clean tap water is ubiquitously available in America.
Here’s another: In a country that puts one-fifth of its fossil fuel use into agriculture, we can make a difference by slightly reducing our consumption of animal flesh, the culinary gas-guzzler.
Today, the average American eats 200 pounds of meat annually, “an increase of 50 pounds per person from 50 years ago,” according to The New York Times. Setting aside morality questions about executing 10 billion living beings a year simply to satiate an epicurean fancy, the sheer energy costs of this dietary choice are monstrous.
Quoting Cornell University researchers, Time magazine reports that producing animal protein requires eight times as much fossil fuel as producing a comparable amount of plant protein. Carbon-emissions-wise (which roughly reflects energy use), geophysicists Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin find that cutting meat consumption by just 20 percent—say, going meatless two days a week—is equal to switching from a standard sedan to a hybrid.
Using knapsacks at supermarkets, drinking free tap water and replacing meat with comparatively inexpensive vegetable protein—these are easy steps. Sure, they will not singularly end our oil dependence, but they will decrease it. As importantly, they will begin building a national culture that takes personal responsibility for combating the ecological crisis we’ve all created.
Are we willing to make minimal behavioral reforms? Are we willing to assume such responsibility? Those, of course, are the crucial questions—the ones nobody wants to ask, but the ones those crude-drenched birds beg us to answer.
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24 Comments so far
Show All"clean tap water is ubiquitously available in America"
There's another good reason to drop the bottle: if a deli sandwich were to be ratio'd up in cost by the same cost ratio that exists between bottled water and tap water, the sandwich would cost $12,000 (http://storyofstuff.org/bottledwater/).
The low cost and easy availability of tap water is scandalous, of course. Once Glenn Beck and the Tea Partiers recognize this socialist threat to our water supply, we can all pay a buck-fifty for a drink of water and thank Ayn Rand for saving us once again from the evils of marxism (well, the rich can pay a buck-fifty, the poor can pay fifty cents for sewer water).
I would like to believe that enough Americans were willing to go meat-free two days a week, give up plastic bags and bottled water, to say nothing of solar-heating their homes, for such meaures to make a real difference. Sadly, waste and gluttony are the hallmarks of "freedom" for enough Americans that such measures seem ridiculously futile.
I think it is much more likely that, since the Gulf will already be a catastrophic environemental dead zone, we might as well just drill there for every ounce of oil we can. And don't forget that all those folks who once depended on fishing and shrimping will need work, so "drill, baby, drill" will be an even more potent mantra.
"Using knapsacks at supermarkets, drinking free tap water and replacing meat with comparatively inexpensive vegetable protein — these are easy steps."
And these are easy questions:
(1) From what materials are the knapsacks made? Do these materials come from the U.S.? Are these knapsacks made by abused, foreign laborers?
(2) Drink tap water? Are you serious? "Since 2004, testing by water utilities has found 315 pollutants in the tap water Americans drink, according to an Environmental Working Group (EWG) drinking water quality analysis of almost 20 million records obtained from state water officials.
More than half of the chemicals detected are not subject to health or safety regulations and can legally be present in any amount. The federal government does have health guidelines for others, but 49 of these contaminants have been found in one place or another at levels above those guidelines, polluting the tap water for 53.6 million Americans." See: Over 300 Pollutants in U.S. Tap Water at http://www.ewg.org/tap-water/home
(3) Are the vegetables grown locally? Do they come from corporate, "chemically-enhanced" farms? Have these vegetables been genetically engineered?
David Sirota is a "progressive" shill for the status quo. He will never address the serious questions arising from his simplistic proposals.
Maybe.
But since we have to start somewhere, why not here? Since we have to start somewhere, and Inhofe and TVMOB and Koch and Exxon are not going to let us start with their actions, with meaningful laws or a real alliance of major corporations to avoid climate cataclysm, why not this? Since we have to start somewhere, and neither of the 2 big parties has any interest is helping or changing, why not us? Why not everybody who reads this article sending a message to everyone who reads Common Dreams that's there's something going on here, and everyone on Common Dreams sending an email to everyone he or she knows letting them know that we're doing it, that we're starting here?
We can pick at every solution offered and say it's not enough or there's something wrong with it or we can use the questions you offer not as excuses to do nothing but as suggestions for the exact place and way to start the actions. Tap water not good enough? Get together with people in your area and make it better. (it's not as if every faucet has 300 pollutants coming out of it) Then, with the same group, start action to reduce, stop and maybe ban or put a tax on single-use containers in your area. Not happy unless the vegetables are local, organic and non-corporate? Make sure that's how it happens. Make sure that's what's grown and sold.
These proposals aren't simplistic; they have latent connections to winning political action, through organizing as a movement, through a defacto ever-spreading boycott of corporations that engage in political speech, legalized bribery (aka lobbying), and especially unecological or unjust practices including first and foremost climate denialism or delay. They have connections to organizing for actions beyond the local and personal, into the state, national and international levels of government. We can do these actions any way we want; we just have to do them. Start now.
"Tap water not good enough? Get together with people in your area and make it better." If it were only that simple.
In order to make tap water safe to drink, the pharmaceutical and chemical industries and Big Ag (Monsanto, ADM, etc.) will need to be dismantled. Lazy-ass homeowners will need to get down on their hands and knees to pull out "weeds" by their roots, instead of spraying them with a hose and a tank filled with dangerous pesticides and chemicals.
To stop the runoff of cancer-causing chemicals into streams, rivers and lakes, we will need to halt the construction of more asphalt-paved roads and parking lots for our precious, personal transport systems.
We will need to stop suburban sprawl. We will need to dramatically raise the cost of gasoline to keep it in line with the true costs of delivering it to gas stations and the harm it's causing to our environment. Ten dollars a gallon seems like a fair price to me.
No more cosmetic changes. No more band-aids. No increments, and no phasing in. It's far too late for lame adjustments. Start now.
So J4zonian, how many americans would agree with what I just said? I'd guess only a small percentage. Most are glued to their TVs to find out the latest on the Gulf oil "spill" - and their major worry is the possible increase in their gas prices.
"...organizing for actions beyond the local and personal, into the state, national and international levels of government" is delusional. The national government (Corporate America) is a thoroughly corrupt duopoly and our state governments are only worried about their economic well-being - at the expense of everything else.
"We can do these actions any way we want; we just have to do them." From what I've learned, the biggest obstacles to community action are the distorted mindsets our next-door neighbors.
Yes, that's right, everybody else is the problem and you have no responsibility and no hope and can just go back to watching TV yourself with a clear conscience. OK bye. I'll put you down for one no vote on changing anything. It's unfortunate the people of Cochabamba were just too dumb and ignorant to know about your house-that-jack-built Web of Impossibility. They wasted all that valuable hanging-out time on defeating one of the biggest wealthiest corporations in the world, and all they got for it was their water back. Didn't even break the industrial system down to its knees. What fools.
Sirotas suggestions are nice, and it can't hurt to implement them personally. But let's be honest. All the good intentions and actions of individuals are completely overshadowed by giant industrial polluters, especially in China. I'd be interested to see some stats like "for every 10000 plastic bottles the US saves, China puts up # factories".
Not to mention the MIC, one of the most irresponsible, sloppy, mean petroleum-drunks around. Another possible "I" is, "I will do all I can to dismantle the MIC. I will devote a large percentage of my life to it." It's another way of putting the "I" in "environment".
My thoughts exactly.
Look this is the same old copout!
WHY do people have to drive to work?
Because there is no public transit or the transit runs only
peak hours or there is a 7 year wait for parking with no shuttles to get there etc.
This is NOT an individual choice!
What individuals CAN do however is go to their townhall meetings, county meetings, state meetings, Representatives, their company management and ask when in hell they are going to run civilized frequent public transit like the rest of the
civilized world!!
Over 150 transit systems cut when the world is running out of oil which is also creating what is now the hottest year on record.
On an individual basis
IF you wanna get serious about saving oil then dump your
polluting gas-powered lawn-mower and get the old-fashioned push mower. Those require no gas, virtually no maintenance
except an annual blade sharpening and are a lot cheaper.
They are actually no harder to use than the polluting, noisy gas mowers.
I do not eat meat myself but we need to solve the real problem which is our addiction to gas -guzzling, greenspace gobbling automobiles!!
That requires COLLECTIVE not INDIVIDUAL action!
Well there is one other thing - cut the oil wasted by the biggest institutional oil user on the planet - i.e. the Pentagon...
Those jets, tanks, aircraft carriers etc waste a helluva lot of oil themselves....
Again COLLECTIVE action!!
Agree.
This is a terrible article, putting responsibility on the public while ignoring the criminals responsible for all of this and for understanding at all how people are feeling about what BP was allowed to do, did, and is still doing, with the government using its agencies to cover up things for them and to keep media away.
These companies not only industrialized our world but undid all that was working (street car systems) or that was invented and would have made a huge difference - electric cars, for instance. The public was doing right and ready to move toward things that would have helped, but those things were crushed.
I think you do something individually because you're striving to be congruent and lined up in your wishes for us all to pollute less. It's like a respectful word to an oppressed stranger, something.
Collective action with who on what?
Your neighbors on local self-sufficiency projects that a group or few can do better than one. Have a meeting to talk - and listen - about what could be done.
Shouting at bad guys won't change them or help us.
Glad previous commenters covered what I planned to say. Sorry, David, it's not about being "addicted to oil", a meme I'm heartily sick of hearing, and it's not about plastic bags which are made from natural gas, not oil.
We have already long since thought about, and do use when we can: public transportation, alternative beverage containers and shopping bags, solar energy, less meat in our diet, organic and local produce, etc etc. In fact, it's not so much about meat as about agribusiness, factory farms, and their ilk who cheerfully pursue the dollar with no regard for the environment either above their heads or below their feet.
Changing personal habits and lifestyles cannot conceivably prevent future careless illegal destructive 'accidents' and depredation by BigCorps, good grief. A random boycott here and there can make a dent, but substantive societal change takes years, sometimes decades.
What we need is governmental and legal changes, now.
That's right. The issue is that our gov't has been hi-jacked by a thuggish owning/ruling class to serve THEIR ADDICTION to power & control & money. There's going to be a showdown over it & soon. We simply cannot do without the extremely useful tool of Gov't. We must recover it so it will serve the interests of the people. We are a tool-making species. ALOT of work & effort & blood has been put into fashioning this marvelous tool of gov't over the centuries, & to just let a bunch of pirates abscond with it, while no one was watching, will not stand unchallenged.The mass-strike phenomena has already started & growing.
I agree to an extent but if our actions and dollars don't follow our vote or demands of government will things really change?
Another article that implicitly passes blame on the victims of society's addiction to materialism.
Meat, though when all costs are truly considered is expensive, is in reality for many people the only financially feasible way to feed their families - and the addictive impetus meat provides, somewhat along the lines of caffeine (though more complicated than that) is central to the ability of many people to work long hours at a demeaning job. It is the privilege of a few to be in a work environment that makes healthier and less impactful eating habits possible - many poor people have no other realistic choice.
Likewise, without a large kitchen, the inconvenience of cleaning and re-using plastic bags makes such a 'choice' difficult - the inconvenience adds to the daily bureaucratic burdens which already submerge people and make life difficult.
The comment about bottled water is directed, again, at those for whom making this change would be convenient - and for them, it can only be a feel-good exercise, a smaller fraction of their overall energy use than for other groups. Citing statistics of the oil use of bottled water entirely devoid of the context of oil use in the packaging of other store-bought foods and in other related facets of life is like counting the germs who die when a drop of antiseptic is placed on a festering wound.
It is true that individual choices are important and the items highlighted by David Sirota have an impact, so in the context of a true movement, these points are important to make. But the story is reversed when they are presented devoid of that context. Simplification is sometimes good - oversimplification is not. Not that the answers are easy. But feel-good answers are very arguably part of the problem.
"As President Obama correctly stated".When has Obama stated ANY truth?Tony
"Slightly reducing our consumption of animal flesh." Can't we do better than that? Adopting a vegan lifestyle is really not so difficult, especially if we are truly committed to the health of the planet.
It can't hurt to do any of these things, but as Visiting Prof says, it also won't make any real difference. This is just another plea to people to make personal lifestyle changes to save the world because it's universally considered impossible to expect any changes from the corporatocracy, which in fact has created this oil-addicted world and leaves no one with any real options.
So, since we can't expect change from the Obama/BP conglomerate of politicians and Big Fucking Businessmen, we have to make believe that WE the tiny and irrelevant people can make All The Difference by not buying bottled water, eating less meat, and not using so many plastic grocery bags.
I have a better idea. Everyone stay home from now on, don't go to work ever again, grow all your own food, wander around aimlessly looking for mushrooms and wild berries, live without electricity, phones, cars, TVs, all those gimmicks, don't buy anything at all, sit on a rock somewhere and get super skinny. This is the only way we can save the planet.
There is a door out of the states of oil dependency.
Taking the door means to recognize oil as a non-renewable.
Ration, tax and make it even more expensive for everything.
Force the economy to start adapting to being low on oil.
This is the best of a bad situation.
The only way to adapt to the no choice that is coming.
Is to reduce choice now.
To encourage oil poor behaviour.
Then oil supplies may last just a while longer.
The curse is that if demand for oil widely falls, and
oil becomes cheaper, then some less thrifty
oil nation, will be able to use it more.
But to use oil more is to become more oil dependent, and become post-oil cursed.
No oil subsidies. No tax breaks. Break up the oil companies instead.
The alternative is to keep using it up, running entire national war, transport, industry, trade, agriculture, every last policy around getting it, until it suddenly it really is unobtainium. And then shock will be greater than any oil shock and financial crisis of the past.
It will be the end of the oil world.
Your world. Good riddance.
Since the solution to the water bottle use is very simple and yet we keep doing the same thing year after year, we are either incredibly stupid, or insane.
Solution: Outlaw all retail water sales, except the two and one-half gallon size and up the deposit(RV)from five cents to fifteen cents. Sell reusable plastic bottles of a good quality for a relatively high price for personal use, which can last a life time if taken care of.
But, if we ever get really serious about conservation, we need to outlaw the internal combustion engine. We could do it now, but do not have the will. So, business as usual
How about outlawing soft drinks, which account for 10-20 times more sales than bottled water?
Dan Nissenbaum
I'm absolutely disgusted by the relentless unwillingness shown here to do anything to begin to divest ourselves from the corporate products, isolating habits and destructive lives we engage in. Wealthy people, (and I include everyone who's posted on this site, because anyone who can read and has the leisure and money to engage in political discourse on this level and has access to a computer IS wealthier than about 90% of the people on the planet)---wealthy people have the luxury to do nothing and simultaneously whine about the results of inaction on the part of others, blame someone else for our troubles, hyperintellectualize about abstract causes and then go on with their comfortable lives secure in the knowledge that there was nothing THEY could have done...
I’m absolutely disgusted with everyone who piled on with excuses not to become too uncomfortable or disturb your shallow lives or feel compelled to go to any trouble for something you seem to think so trivial. Stop your pitiful, reprehensible autopilot excuse generating and do something real.