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PEAK EVERYTHING
7/19/08
Richard Heinberg is the author of 8 books including his latest, "Peak Everything"
He's also senior fellow at Post Carbon Institute.
This article originally appeared in The Ecologist, July
2008
"Going to Extremes"
As the urgent necessity of our transition away from fossil fuels becomes plain, it's inevitable that some of us will take that necessity seriously enough to explore the edges of normal behavior. On the post-carbon frontier, the hardiest pioneers are those willing not only to apply ingenuity and make personal sacrifices, but also to look downright silly to the mainstream.
These trailblazers of sustainability tend to come in two
shades: Techno-Green or Gandhi-Green. The former hue belongs to the individual who hopes to save the world with eco-gadgets; the latter to the saintly soul passionate about ceasing to do fuelish harm.
I know a brilliant Techno-Green engineer who has every imaginable energy-saving, non-hydrocarbon-based home
accoutrement: solar PV and hot water panels, a ground-source heat pump, an electric car, solar cookers,plus power monitors everywhere that feed data into a laptop recording a second-by-second readout of energy expenditure.
Gandhi-Green is the tint of another pioneer who comes to mind...an earnest young woman who insists on walking everywhere she goes (No motored rides, thanks! How and where was that bicycle made?), refuses to heat her cabin in the winter (which is easier here in California than in many places), eats mostly food she's grown or foraged, buys nothing new, and eschews hot showers.
Find out more at www.richardheinberg.com
TAPPENING SET TO CONCLUDE “MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE” CAMPAIGN
No more disposable water bottles please!
NEW YORK (July 9, 2008) - Right about now Muhter Kent, the new CEO of Coca Cola (makers of Dasani bottled water), might be trying to figure out exactly where he’ll put the one million plastic water bottles, soon-to-be en route to the Coca Cola headquarters in Atlanta. But he, and the environment, can rest a bit easier now that Tappening -- the group responsible for collecting the million bottles and pledging to send them to the new Coca Cola CEO as a welcome note – has already sent them to a different location: the recycling center.
Founded by Eric Yaverbaum and Mark DiMassimo, longtime public relations and advertising agency owners, Tappening (www.tappening.com) has been making waves in the bottled water industry since its launch last November, as they lead the charge back to tap water. Intent on educating the public on the virtues of tap water, as well as the environmental effects and cost of bottled products, the group recently launched national advertising that has garnered even more widespread support and attention for “the campaign to make tap water cool.”
The group has also been hard at work with their “Message in a Bottle” campaign to send one million empty water bottles to Coca Cola’s CEO Muhter Kent, as a sign of the public’s dissatisfaction with the pollution, cost, and wastefulness of bottled water.
When the bottles started pouring in, Yaverbaum and DiMassimo began to realize there was a far better use for the tons of plastic they were receiving: “We asked the public to send us empty bottles along with a note to the bottled water industry, and they didn’t disappoint,” said Yaverbaum. “Once the bottles started to pile up we decided it would be a terrible waste to just send these to a company that would simply use them to promote their own recycling programs. While we applaud their efforts to recycle, it really distracts us all from the serious problems wrought by the bottled water industry.”
Instead of helping Coca Cola to promote themselves, Tappening has decided to sound an even louder and longer message with their new “message on a bag.” Tappening Co-founder DiMassimo added, “The bags will be on our well-trafficked Tappening.com site, along with pictures of the bottles and messages that we've received from committed members of the Tappening movement -- over a million as of June 19th!”
The founders recycled the bottles they’ve received; to do something better with these bottles that all too often end up in landfills (80% of the time). Yaverbaum explained, “Not only are we ensuring that these bottles don’t end up clogging the oceans for the next thousand years, but we’ve also avoided having to send a convoy of trucks to Coke in Atlanta – which would’ve obviously caused additional pollution.”
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