Never say never
As Earth Day approaches, environmental and student groups plan to clean up cigarette butts, soda cans and other detritus from local beaches. Areas with no coastline focus their efforts on parks and other public spaces.
Since its founding in the early ’70s, Earth Day has raised awareness of waste, storm run-off, water and air pollution. In doing so it has also engendered a consciousness of the way we live, the things we treasure and those we toss, all in the name of our planet’s health.
Global warming and climate change have entered the public discourse even as a few hold-outs continue to write letters to local papers pointing out that weather cycles, as evidenced by tree rings and ice cores, affected Earth long before humans were here. Fine. What they always fail to mention is that the speed of warming, of melting polar ice, is unprecedented. The effects of rapid climate change on agriculture and sea levels come with a burgeoning population, a large percentage of which faces starvation now, and imminent loss of low lying habitat.
I see people making more responsible choices. Despite our elected leaders proclaiming that personal sacrifice is of little benefit, people are recycling their waste, choosing products with less packaging, carrying their own canvas shopping bags. Some cities have even banned free plastic bags. Almost all supermarkets now deduct five cents per bag from grocery bills. Shoppers ask department store clerks not to wrap their garments in tissue paper, they demand recycled coffee cups, plates, paper towels.
One effort that started small and has quickly spread across the country is the grassroots Freecycle Network. A collection of Internet groups (California has 225 listed cities), the non-profit organization follows a basic concept: everything, including membership, has to be free. Unlike eBay, where prices are bid and purchases often involve long distance shipments, wasting gallons of fuel and packaging, Freecycle transactions are mostly local and keep tons of useful items out of landfills.
Members can post a free “offer” or an e-mail for a “wanted” item. Members interested reply directly. The rules are simple: everything offered must be free, legal and appropriate for all ages. No porn, firearms, alcohol, tobacco or drugs allowed. Trades, personal services, housing and any payment are verboten.
The network was founded in Arizona in 2003, and has 4,320 groups with 4,787,000 members in 75 countries, according to its Web site, Freecycle.org.
I think I’m learning to make better personal choices. But if we could engage politicians, from city councils to Congress, from local zoning boards to corporate lobbyists, progress would be faster, surer and more effective.
To further that effort, Peter Barnes’ new book, “Climate Solutions: A Citizen’s Guide,” tells us what works, what doesn’t and why. In his forward, Bill McKibben says people are already exploring climate solutions and pushing politicians to act. “As a result, more than 30 states and 600 cities have adopted policies aimed at cutting carbon emissions.” But the big problem is there’s no consensus on what solutions will actually work. “Hundreds of proposals are floating about and many of them aren’t very good.”
Barnes writes that global warming appears to be an environmental problem. But deeper down, it’s the result of economic and political failures. One is market failure. Economists say that’s when people don’t pay the full cost of what they’re doing, but instead transfer the costs to others.
The second cause is misplaced government priorities, Barnes writes. “Because polluting corporations are powerful and future generations don’t vote, our government not only allows carbon emissions to grow but subsidizes them in numerous ways. It gives tax breaks to oil companies, spends billions on highways and devotes a large part of its military budget to defending overseas oil supplies.”
I think we can all relate to that. But what can we do change it?
“Fairness must be built in from the outset or it won’t happen,” writes Barnes, an entrepreneur and writer, who has founded and led several successful businesses.
He describes three varieties of carbon-capping policies: cap-and-giveaway permits are given free to historic polluters (think grandfathering); cap-and-auction permits are sold to polluters but the revenue is collected by government with no guarantee how it will be spent; cap-and-dividend permits are sold but the revenue doesn’t go to the government, it comes back in the form of equal dividends to all of us who pay it.
“This revenue recycling system is sometimes referred to as a sky trust,” Barnes writes.
The book is small (there are only a few graphs and percentages to plague us non-wonks), but it’s easily digested and well worth the effort. From Chelsea Green Publishing, it’s dedicated to “fellow owners of our one sky.”
I appreciate the lack of inflamed rhetoric common to many environmental screeds, as well as real, up-to-date information about economics and the resulting unfairness of many trade policies.
Check it out and get a grip on what we might do to improve the planet before the next Earth Day.