National Geographic has produced a three-minute video summarizing the extent to which Americans throw things into the trash, much of it consisting of recyclable materials, and all of it in staggering amounts. National Geographic offers an extensive menu of extraordinary videos.
A few months ago one of my neighbors, a proudly conservative man, saw me carrying a package of high-efficiency light bulbs into my house. He gave me a disappointed look loudly said: “Buy some real light bulbs, Erich.” This neighbor has repeatedly made it known that that liberal concerns and proposals regarding energy are unnecessary because there is plenty of oil and coal, and we should make it our national priority to keep digging and burning these resources. I know that my Republican neighbor is not the only “conservative” in the U.S. willing to scoff at conservation. I previously argued that this anti-energy-efficiency climate–science-denial attitude like my neighbor’s outlook has become a badge of group membership among conservatives. It has become a salient display that one believes, above all, in the alleged power and wisdom of the “Free Market,” an unsubstantiated leap of faith so incredibly bold that I once termed it the Fourth Person of the Holy Trinity (and see here and here). These free-market fundamentalists are contemptuous at well-informed suggestions for using energy resources more efficiently and for reducing our reliance on dirty and dangerous fossil fuels. Many of them consider national policy aimed at energy conservation to be totally unnecessary and ridiculously expensive. Proposals that we should be smarter consumers of energy annoy and anger them and they offer no evidence-based alternatives for peak oil (and see here and here and here ). They refuse to consider the damage being done to our environment, our health and our budget (especially our military budget) as a result of our reliance on fossil fuels . My neighbor displays a startling lack of curiosity regarding the ramifications for continuing to attempt to drill and dig our way to energy independence. This same attitude is found in many conservative politicians, the most prominent being Sarah Palin. Based on an extraordinary video of a recent debate at Washington University in Saint Louis, this same attitude is also embraced by of the executives at the largest private coal company in the United States, Peabody Coal Company.
I haven't had much time to share my thoughts at this website lately--too much legal work to do. I've never written so much as I have in the past few weeks, including co-authoring a long book chapter on the topic of "Arbitration," another article on products liability, two appellate briefs and probably a dozen legal memoranda. Yes, I'm looking for a bit of sympathy! Now, if you want proof that I've been working maniacally at the keyboard, take at look at my keyboard: the letters are wearing off.
What you're seeing is part of my actual computer keyboard at the law office. Ignore all the dust between the keys, please (it doesn't look quite this dusty in person). The "M" key is almost gone, as is part of "L." I completely lost my comma and period keys. Losing the label of one key is not too bad, but losing several in a row is annoying--I was finding myself often pausing to figure out which key is the period and which was the comma when I was in editing mode (when typing a rough draft, none of this much of a problem, because my fingers usually know where to go and I don't need to look down).
I like fixing things rather than throwing things away, so I "invented" the above-illustrated method of putting pieces of customized label on top of the distressed keys. I'm thinking that I ought to coat the labels with something clear to keep the image readable--maybe clear nail polish?? Perhaps someone out there has a ideas for coating the label or for otherwise repairing a keyboard that is losing its letters . . . here's your chance to be an environmental hero, because I would bet that there are many people out there with this same problem, and a good idea could save thousands of keyboards.
BTW, I think I lost the comma and period because I type so intensely fast that I need to pound those pause/stop keys repeatedly in order to slow myself down. That's my theory.
I spotted a big coal train moving through town a few nights ago. As that huge load slipped quietly by, I wondered what people would think if they knew the truth about coal. What if they really knew how good conservation is and how bad coal and oil are? What if they knew that in the United States, we burn a railroad car worth of coal every 3 seconds. This year, your family will burn 1,000 pounds of coal just to run your clothes dryer (yet many communities make it illegal to dry your clothes on a line outside). The Average American family burns 30 pounds of coal every day. That's an awful lot of damage to the environment. For all of this and more, see this recent post.
At least when you have oil spilling, you know what you need to do: stop the oil from spilling. When the topic is dying honey bees, there's no known solution, and the problem is getting terribly serious, according to Alternet:
The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS). The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops.If only the deaths of bees were our only big problem . . . The mass deaths of our bees is just one example of what Arianna Huffington Perhaps we should start calling this the Age of "Much Worse Than We Thought It Would Be." Her emphasis was on economic and political disasters. She attributes many of these non-stop surprisingly big disasters to shortsighted thinking. Regarding what she considers to be an oncoming economic coronary brought on by national (and worldwide) debt, she suggests that we start thinking in long-term ways. For instance, "So instead of limiting the deficit debate to talk of cutting entitlements, how about also having a discussion about moving to an economy that focuses on investing in small businesses and communities, and puts a premium on education and technology rather than on exotic financial instruments."