Is This Earth Day or. . .

[AuntShecky]

. . ."Dearth" Day? By that I mean, a dearth of interest in
protecting our environment. The way folks let their engines idle, one would think that gas is fifty cents a gallon instead of nearly four dollars. Not only that, there arejust as many cars on the road as ever, if not more so! Every time I see the stream of traffic on U.S. 20, every single car has ONE driver only. This is in
rush hour, when everybody's on his way to work, mostly, in this corner of the world, to the very same spot.

Why isn't public transportation more popular? It's a vicious circle. The bus company says that the "ridership" isn't large enough to have routes out to suburban and rural areas, yet drivers say they can't deal with the bus because they don't run often enough. And there's such a large time-gap between runs. For instance, when I take my daughter to the doctor's (ten miles each way) -- it takes 4 hours for a 15-minute appointment.

Recycling is a joke. In this apartment complex there is one container for newspapers and two containers for plastic bottles and cans; three containers to serve 8 families. (The volume of the containers is the same as we
(one family) had when we lived in a single-family house.)
The recycling company empties the containers "whenever." As a result the newspaper containers fills up in a day or two -- and people have to through their papers in the regular trash!

Earth Day. Lots o' lip service. Little or no action!

[Virgil]

Nice to see you back Aunty. I hadn't seen you around.

I've been a critic of some of these environmental efforts, but let me say I've recently been persuaded on one alternate type of energy source, and that's wind power. Apparently it is a net plus in energy conversion. So I guess as long as you don't mind their ugliness and the fact that they may kill a few birds, it's probably a good idea. So see. I make news on Earth Day. (God it hurts me to write that. ;) ) All you greens can say I changed an iota. :D

[Niamh]

Each house in Dublin is equipt with One general waste bin, One Green bin for recyclables and one brown bin for compostables.

[1n50mn14]

Here in Guelph, we've got a Green bag for compostables, blue for recyclable and clear for that crap that doesn't fit into either of these categories. Of course, the bags themselves kind of defeat the purpose, as there are now 3 plastic bags to every 1 there was before, and it takes 1,000 years+ for one to biodegrade. At the mall, they have the holes in the bin for the three different types of trash, and it just goes into one big bag in the end. Wtf.

[dramasnot6]

Happy Earth Day!
This weekend I shall be planting trees at the Non-Violence Activist retreat I am attending.

[AimusSage]

I spend much of earth day outside on my roof terrace, absorbing the rays of the sun. I thought that was a good way to spend the day. Other than that, it was a day like any other. I did notice the google graphic though, which was nice and green.

Earlier this week, I destroyed a unique biotope that had emerged on the table that spend the winter outside. It was rather green, but is now once again a proper plastic white colour. It was a shame that this unique environment had to go, especially so close to earth day, but in light of earth day, one chair biotope still remains on the roof, as a testament to my desire to let mutated lifeforms and humans coexist on the terrace. One day they might even develop sentience, and I can play chess with the hive mind that controls the lifeforms on the chair.

[SleepyWitch]

Nice to see you back Aunty. I hadn't seen you around.

I've been a critic of some of these environmental efforts, but let me say I've recently been persuaded on one alternate type of energy source, and that's wind power. Apparently it is a net plus in energy conversion. So I guess as long as you don't mind their ugliness and the fact that they may kill a few birds, it's probably a good idea. So see. I make news on Earth Day. (God it hurts me to write that. ;) ) All you greens can say I changed an iota. :D

hey if it's any help, I changed a iota in the opposite direction (well, not really) after reading a TIMES article about the absurdities of biofuels: US corn farmers sell a fifth of their crop to be used in biofuels, because it pays more. So US soy bean farmers are giving up some of their soy-cropland in favour of corn. So Brazilian soy farmers can't get rid of their soy beans because the market is saturated, so they have to become cattlemen and do slash-and-burn clearing in the Amazon rain forest because their aren't enough pastures for all their cattle. So the Amazon (which stores loads of carbon) is being razed because US farmers are producing more biofuels than they used to. The good news is, this is only true for corn-based biofuels. Fuels from sugar are much more efficient (1% of Brazil's arable land provides 45% of their fuel). Anyway, this goes to show that blind extremism (in either direction) won't take us anywhere. But all in all, I still believe that the best mode of transportation for big-city dwellers are their own feet, bicycles and public transport.

[AuntShecky]

Thank you very much, SleepyWitch for posting this important info about biofuels. A Public Relations gimmick at best, the push to grow corn and other grains for ethanol
is a misconceived idea. Just last night on the news I heard that the high price of food is putting 800 million --
800 million!-- people at risk of starving to death. And as you most cogently put it, ethanol contributes to rather than helps eliminate global warming.