Zinn on Vonnegut

In this month's copy of The Progressive, Howard Zinn pays tribute to Kurt Vonnegut. Zinn recounts a memory from of Vonnegut that seems especially pertinent as tens of thousands of Iraqis die in the name of our "War on Terror":

"When the newspapers were full of alarms about Iran possibly developing a nuclear bomb, Kurt sent me a copy of a very short letter he wrote to The New York Times: 'I only know of one nation that has dropped nuclear bombs on innocent people.'

The Times did not print the letter."

Letter to John Mayer

I just emailed this to John Mayer (john@johnmayer.com) in response to the Waiting on the World to Change blog entry on his website.

Dear John,

I couldn't believe your blog entry on Light Green. Not only is it just plain wrong that we only have to get the lines on the charts to stop escalating (remember back in the 1980s when those lines were considerably lower and yet global warming was still a real threat?), it's completely irresponsible to spread that wrong information as though it's fact. And no, the lines don't literally have to drop by next Tuesday, but figuratively, yeah, they do. The window of time we have left before the damage done is truly irreversible is closing fast.

Also, I looked up the energy it takes to make a plastic bag, and it's about 600 kilojoules per bag. The average household uses 10 bags per week, or a little under 1000 per year, or 600,000 kJ of energy. Know what else uses about 600,000 kJ of energy? Just 4.5 gallons of gas (listed in calories here, converted to kJ here). So, by switching to reusable shopping bags, you're saving about the same amount of energy it would take to drive for a couple of hours in your Porsche, or in other words, not much. Or, put another way, one round-trip private chartered flight from LA to DC takes around 4500 gallons of jet fuel, or about 1000 times as much energy as you're saving by not using plastic grocery bags in a year.

So, while I think it's great you want to take a laidback approach to environmentalism, and using reusable grocery bags is a great start, I think encouraging people to be complacent on environmental issues could do more harm than good. I encourage you not to make real changes in your lifestyle, which is up to you, but to stop spreading misinformation and complacency.

Best,
j

Plantkos to dump iron around the Galapagos

A company called Planktos is planning to dump loads of iron into the sea near the Galapagos in order to absorb carbon dioxide (see article for details). Great. Haven't we learned that nature isn't a simple equation in which you can just substitute a couple of variables and end up with the same equation?

And we're going to test an experiement which is likely to be environmentally disastrous in one of the most pristine areas in the world? Even better.

Of course, as the Grist article notes, Planktos won't bear any responsibility if the experiment harms the environment.

Click here to give Planktos a piece of your mind.