Author Archives: peterbp

How to be environmentally minded

…without going to join the nutjob fringe (more on that later).

* reduce your consumption of “consumer goods”

More “goods” arent necessarily good. Do they make you happy, for more than 3 days after you bought it? Think carefully about this for yourself.

I hold that it’s worse with more “goods” (I’ll call it “stuff” from now on) beyond a certain point. More stuff takes more space to keep it in. There’s a lot of packaging it comes in you have to get rid of, and a lot of packaging itself is usually wastefully ample. Then there is the trouble you have to go through if the item breaks or becomes defective during the time you own it (computer parts especially). If its an expensive item, you’ll have to deal with the bother of turning it in for repairs, waiting for it to be fixed (with the added possibility of having to have a replacement during that period), then fetching it from the store or post office etc. At some point, the item will be obsolete or simply not used; then it’ll take up space in your basement, in the back of the house, or such, until you are eventually forced to deal with it throwing it away, probably together with a lot of other crap that accumulated somewhere in your storage unit, er, house.

* What stuff you need, get it from friends, family or co-workers.

Else, buy it second hand, lots of websites from that – Ebay, Craigslist, Marktplaats.nl, DBA.dk etc.

* Bicycle rather than drive by car, where feasible.

If not seemingly feasible, make it feasible. Do the homework in regards to gettign around with bikes and public transport. If your city isn’t bike friendly, help make it so by pushing for appropirate initiatives and legislation to make it so.

It’s healthy, faster and more comfortable than walking, and you have a bare fraction of the trouble with finding parking spaces for bikes (“Velo” as the Swiss call it, with good reason). A bike is cheaper than a car. Theres little or no insurance hassle. Buy a good, sturdy lock for it for a much reduced risk of having it stolen, as well. Get saddle bags to make your bike a propre foodstuffs shopping workhorse as well.

* Sort your trash

Seperate waste in separate categories, say… organic waste (foodstuff leftovers, really), paper/cardboard, bottles, return bottles (plastics, cans etc). Having them in large or faily large bags or compartments, fx. outside your kitchen or whever practical, saves you having to dead with turning it in very often.

Use organic waste in your garden pile. Free compost!

… will be updated incrementally …

2013January news snippets

(from 5th of January, 2013:)

They call it recovery: “During fiscal year 2012, the U.S. government spent a record $80.4 billion on food stamps, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a $2.7 billion increase from FY 2011.”

Revolving door policy: “In July 2012, an FBI probe found that Bank of America had allowed a Mexican drug cartel to launder money through the bank. While BofA has yet to face any fines for the episode, the head of the FBI in Charlotte, N.C., BofA’s headquarters, recently left the law enforcement agency for a job at Bank of America.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/05/fbi-occupy-wall-street_n_2410783.html

US Government backed a False Flag atack on Syria to blame Assad: “Leaked emails have allegedly proved that the White House gave the green light to a chemical weapons attack in Syria that could be blamed on Assad’s regime and in turn, spur international military action in the devastated country. A report released on Monday contains an email exchange between two senior officials at British-based contractor Britam Defence where a scheme ‘approved by Washington’ is outlined explaining that Qatar would fund rebel forces in Syria to use chemical weapons.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2270219/U-S-planned-launch-chemical-weapon-attack-Syria-blame-Assad.html

 

The environmental cost – and cost to the health of the populace – from severe pollution in a China undergoing heavy industrialization is becoming evident:

No country in history has become a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage. China is clearly not an exception. The speed and scale of China’s rise has brought an unprecedented pollution problem. Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death according to the Ministry of Health. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. The factories and spewing automobile engines recently caused hundreds of flights to be cancelled in and around Beijing. Stores are selling out of face masks and the government struggles to figure out this political challenge and provide relief of the long-term burden on its people. — Paula Nelson ( 47 photos total)

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2013/01/chinas_skies_toxic_levels_of_p.html

 

Discussions and asides:

Cynicism Redefined: Why The Copyright Lobby Loves Child Porn

“Child pornography is great,” the man said enthusiastically. “Politicians do not understand file sharing, but they understand child pornography, and they want to filter that to score points with the public. Once we get them to filter child pornography, we can get them to extend the block to file sharing.”