P.S. About divestiture: if any of you have savings stocks or mutual funds (which put your money into stocks), remove any holdings in fossil fuel companies or banks (like Chase) that loan to fossil fuel companies. Parnassus is one of the best social responsible mutual funds in terms of size and success. They have had above average market success because socially irresponsible companies don't tend to do as well these days. If your savings are tied up in a 401K that is run by your employer, find out who they are investing in and ask them to stop buying fossil fuel company stocks. If you have money in Chase Bank, find a socially responsible bank, one that doesn't loan money to fossil fuel drilling or equipment projects.
Although I haven't responded to allthe tips and tricks yet, I want to thank you all for participating. I've read them all. It's amazing the things we can do. I am sooooooooo far behind in this. But I intend to pursue this, it is too important. Slowly but surely, I will add on to my list of tasks to help in this climate crisis recovery. I will pas on the knowledge to omy close ones in the hopes they will join me in this endeavor. Please keep on sharing!
My daughter is a music teacher and was trying to teach a lesson about sound with plastic straws today to 4th grade. It didn't go as planned because the kids started freaking out when it was their turn to get a straw. They didn't want to kill sea turtles.
So yeah, it would appear that our youth have mastered the "plastic straws are bad for the environment lesson". Now if only we can teach them to plant trees...
This report on recent action by Extinction Rebellion gives me hope, even as it outlines the scope of the catastrophe we are in and ways people will be affected. Watch to the end if you can, when she talks of her recent conversation with Boris Johnson--it reminded me of something Jeanne said somewhere in this forum about how we need to lead with love in response to this crisis. https://www.democracynow.org/2019/10/8/extinction_rebellion_global_actions_climate_crisis?fbclid=IwAR1RI5InYUvK7kaL73-W5hp8rcYBIRXqxUrBdM8u2pMYStBXmYICskP6dic
-
- A message from God: Love one another now more than ever, do not judge your neighbor, you are at fault too. Only together can we do what needs to be done to save the world. (Bright Opal)
- Every country will need to make their own Amazonian forests. It's urgent! (Bright Opal)
- Trees in trouble. People see this and work save them. (Jeanne Mayell)
There is an extinction emergency for animals. (Baba)
i copied these points from the October 9 2019 Predictions that Jeanne posted upstairs. These really popped out to me, because they are already here, and active, and also extremely urgent.
Every country, and every single house, needs to make it's own ''Amazon" forest'. Whatever piece of land you live on, please make sure to forest it. It all adds up in the end, it is cumulative. And the more trees that become established, the easier it becomes for the next round of trees to live and grow. This will in turn, help some of the animals to also survive.
But the most important thing, is for us all to really love each other now- we can save the world.
thank you for listening
Chuck Shumer wrote an opinion piece in today's NYT:
Chuck Schumer: A Bold Plan for Clean Cars:
"I have a proposal that is supported not just by environmentalists but also by labor and large automakers." He wants to eliminate ALL gas powered vehicles by 2040.
I planted a few trees on our property here in SoCal, however I have stopped adding any because water use (and cost) is a big issue here. I feel guilty every time I put the sprinkler on my avocado tree. So I'm not too helpful on that front. I continue to plant as much native and drought resistant stuff as I can - sage, cacti and other succulents, aloe. And then I maintain the stuff that sprouts up on its own: wild fennel, plumbago, geraniums, nopales/tunas...
This is an awesome thread. You all have some great ideas. I’m going to use plates to cover leftovers from now on.
For two years I stopped using my clothes dryer. I found some baby crib enclosures at the town dump and turned them sideways and leaned them against the laundry room wall to hang the clothes in winter. They make great drying racks. In summer I hung everything in the sun. The clothes smell so fresh when dried that way. If I timed it to hang clothes at the height of the day the clothes would dry more quickly than the drier ever did!
Our town offers a wind energy option for electricity. I think many public utility companies offer this option. So now I have all but abandoned our gas stove and cook with electric powered appliances which are all powered with wind energy.
My car, a 2008 Prius, is a hybrid but it only now barely gets 45 mpg because it’s so old. I need to upgrade but that means a newer car. When this car finally dies—it Has 250k miles but it’s a Prius and they can go to 400k, my next car will be electric and run on 100% wind!
The biggest problem i have is heating in winter. I also need to cut back in other ways that I have yet to explore. I hope to get more ideas here.
I am considering buying electric heat pump for largest rooms in the house so we can heat more with electricity which as I said is wind energy. Heat pumps are very efficient and also provide cooling in summer.
Due to GI tract issues I also have trouble with all vegan diet so we joined a consortium of local farms for humanely raised and local chickens and eggs.
i started organic veggie gardening five years ago after reading Barbara Kingsolver’s amazing book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. We don’t use fertilizer just compost from leaves and grass clippings. The plants love it. We freeze the extra tomatoes and squash and dry all the herbs and eat the butternut squash all winter long.
if you don’t have land most towns and cities have community gardens which you can sign up for and have your own sunny plot. Our land is too shady so I use a community plot. It is so fun. You meet others there and learn from them. There’s a Chinese guy there who grew up on a farm in China. He’s a farmer rock star to some of us. I’ve learned so much from him that now I’m teaching others. I love growing from seed then using the seeds from this year’s harvest for next year.
Air travel is a big problem. I don’t travel a lot but when I do I am aware it is a big pollutant.
I pray the government never starts trying to shield the earth from the sun. The earth is too big for stupid arrogant humans to think they can mess with it that way. Discussions about it in scientific circles are terrifying. There is an idiot group of men at Harvard who got a grant and think they can pull this off. Most likely outcome will be death to billions. They could end out causing the monsoons to stop which would starve a
billion people in one summer. If it worked for a while but then was stopped, we could heat up ten degrees world wide in a few weeks time and everyone would fry. But men such as they are, are pursuing this option. Please do all you can to prevent humans from playing god this way. If anyone wants to discuss the dangerousness of this option then open a thread and we will show you why it is the worst idea.
Last month as I was thinking about how to save the Earth. I decided one thing I could do would be to reach out to someone big and urge that someone to make big changes. (And I mean big.) I decided to start with Costco. I sent the letter #1 pasted below to the CEO. I didn’t tell anyone because I was waiting to see if I got a response. And then, a friend who lives on a different island posted on her FaceBook page that she had written a letter to both her local Costco manager and corporate headquarters concerning her objection to plastic waste. See letter #2 below. My friend posted an update a few days later: “UPDATE: I got a terrific call back from our Costco manager here in Kona— who is forwarding my letter of concern to their management headquarters. She let me know they are listening and to expect being contacted. Great customer service, let the dialogue begin.”
I am sharing in all this in the hope that some of the readers of this site will also contact Costco, as well as other establishments. The Costco website lists their corporate headquarter phone number as 425-313-8100 and their mailing address as
@47.5475907,-122.0527994,15.25z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x54906f98ab476b5d:0xe74d9eaff52a16ec!8m2!3d47.548675!4d-122.050648">999 Lake Drive
Issaquah, WA 98027
One last note: In the interest of brevity one of the points I made in my letter was a story about the daughter of an “acquaintance”. That story actually came from someone on this site. (I’m sorry, I don’t remember who now.) Everything else in my letter is 100% true.
LETTER #1
To: Costco CEO Craig Jelinek
From: A loyal customer (member #805419194001)
Date: 27-Sep-19
Subject: Taking a Lead
Hello,
I have been a Costco customer for a number of years now. I do most of my shopping at Costco, with some additional shopping at local health food stores and online establishments. I do not shop at Walmart because I know how poorly they treat their employees, among other concerns. On numerous occasions I have mentioned to friends, coworkers, and even strangers, that I don’t shop at Walmart because I don’t want to support their business practices. I tell these same people that I am happy to support Costco because of how well they treat their employees. I know I am not alone in this; my husband, sister, grown children, and many others, follow similar shopping patterns for the same reasons.
The purpose of this letter is to very strongly urge you to take a lead role in saving our Earth, by going completely green now. There is no time to waste. I shop at the Kahului, Hawai`i Costco. That store recently covered a portion of its parking lot with carport-type structures to support photovoltaic panels. Good! That is good for the environment. But there is so much more that you can do, and so very much more that needs to be done immediately. Not in ten years, or five years, but now. When I am walking up and down the isles at Costco I look for the green signs, indicating organic items. But why not only sell organic food items? Costco is one of the biggest companies in the world; you could work with your suppliers to make this so. I like the Jose’s organic coffee you sell, but I wish you sold shade-grown coffee. I also wish you worked with local farmers and consortiums to sell more local produce (non-GMO/organic, of course). These are a few suggestions, but there are many more things you could do. Minimize packaging as much as possible, don’t sell items that use petroleum-based plastics, encourage the use of electric cars, sell electric cars. The world is changing very quickly because people are very, very concerned about the planet, and rightly so. My daughter and I were recently on the mainland for a funeral. I wanted to stop at Starbucks for breakfast, but my daughter said “no”. Why? Her one word answer: “plastic”. The daughter of an acquaintance is a fourth-grade teacher. She recently gave the students some plastic straws to use in an experiment.The students were upset. They didn’t want to use the straws because they didn’t want to “hurt turtles”.
Trump will be gone soon, along with those of his ilk. The petroleum-based economy will, and must, end soon. The younger generations will be (are) demanding new, environmentally responsible practices. They will not shop at Costco if there is little or nothing there they want to buy. For the sake of your business and the sake of our planet, I urge you to go green in a big way, and to do it soon.
Big change can happen very quickly. The Empire State Building was built in one year and 45 days. Greta Thunberg became a climate activist just 13 months ago. What can you do right now, in these changing times, to help save our planet?
LETTER #2
Manager, Kailua-Kona Costco
Maiau Street
Kailua-Kona, Hawaii 96750
October 19, 2019
Dear Manager,
We have been loyal customers since you opened over 25 years ago. However, this morning we are debating how we can continue to patronize Costco in light of the plastic recycling crisis on Hawaii island.
Costco is likely the most significant contributor to plastic waste on this island. The time has come for Costco to respond.
We have watched, and complained in the comments box about Costco’s increasing reliance on clamshells in its bakery—with no response. We see produce increasingly packed in unnecessary plastic clamshells, paper/wax milk cartons with unnecessary plastic pour openings, eggs in plastic cartons, and huge plastic security packaging on tiny electronic items. Thousands of water bottles of single use plastic, and a water vending machine that further promotes these items that will now sit, for generations, in our landfill. It goes on and on and on. We haven’t purchased any bakery items since the plastic shift. And we used to buy many!
The time has come for Costco to respond and innovate. You could signal concern today by:
· Going back to the cardboard bakery items boxes
· Requiring non-plastic packaging from all vendors, especially the Kirkland Brand
· Ending the sale of single-use water bottles
Today, I will be in your store for my regular monthly run. But last night, I doubled my order from my local CSA produce vendor, and made a shopping list that excludes many of the items I might otherwise have purchased from the Costco Warehouse. That will translate to a 50% reduction in my spending in your store today. People in Kona are concerned, please be part of the solution. The more plastic, the less we buy. The more compostable/alternatives, the more we sustain our usual level of spending.
There is a company that has already created a biodegradable plastic water bottle too ?
I'm betting that if one or two can create this more can follow!