Today's Topics:
Adam Werbach vs. John Tierney on Politically Incorrect
reducing consumption/fiber usage
Thanks for ideas and sources for non-PVC plumbing pipe
Your support needed NOW!
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Date: Tue, 21 Apr 1998 06:20:36 EDT
From: DavidOrr <DavidOrr@aol.com>
Subject: Adam Werbach vs. John Tierney on Politically Incorrect
Tonight, the Sierra Club's (soon to be ex-) President Adam Werbach faced off
against anti-recycling guru John Tierney (of NY Times Magazine infamy) on the
ABC-TV show "Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher."
Adam articulated some basic facts in defense of recycling, while Tierney came
off looking like a bufoon, siding with garbage and landfills over recycling
and conservation. Host Bill Maher ridiculed Tierney's bizarre arguments (e.g.
we'll have more oil in the future after use it all up, and we have more trees
now than we did 70 years ago, and on and on with the usual Wise Use bunk). It
was a good showing for our side's views!
Adam didn't fare so well in the latter part of the show when the subject
turned to regulation of secondhand tobacco-smoking. Oh well, can't win 'em
all. Not bad for a 25-yr old to hold his own on national TV!
[Adam plans to step down from the Club's Presidency upon the beginning of the
new Board's term on May 9.]
David Orr
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Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 15:01:34 EDT
From: DavidOrr <DavidOrr@aol.com>
Subject: reducing consumption/fiber usage
thought I'd post a piece from another list that may be of interest to GRRN
folks:
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 98 12:44:40 MST7MDT
From: Billy Stern <billysun@wildrockies.org>
Subject: More on "targeting consumption."
For those of you following the consumption and fiber debate, here's a few
resources and a well researched editorial.
Billy
My sense is that efficiency does mean "doing more with less" (i.e., using
less). I don't think its reasonable for any living thing not to use. It
is how we use and how much we use that is out of balance.
There is an organization called Use Less Stuff. PBS recently re-broadcast
a very insightful (and disheartening) program called "Affluenza". And ther
is the New Road Map Foundation based in Seattle also promoting simplicity
and consuming less (you may have seen their book, "Your Money or Your
Life").
Finally, below is a recent Op Ed piece I wrote for Eugene Weekly, our local
alternative newspaper's Earth Day issue:
Future Forests and Future Fiber: Recycling is not enough!
By Bill Snyder, Environmental Technologies International
bsnyder@rio.com (Bill Snyder)
In spite of tremendous strides by the paper industry over the past two
decades, paper and wood consumption continues to threaten forests,
watersheds, fish and wildlife, and the economy.
Forest products companies need fiber to make the products all of us buy.
But meeting increased wood and paper demand cannot be sustained due the
continuous loss in forest acreage to development, agriculture and poor
harvest practices.
Increased wood fiber costs in the U.S.- as well as the availability of
cheap fiber supplies from rapidly growing Brazilian and Southeast Asian
tropical tree plantations- has put pressure on U.S. companies to increase
wood and fiber production. Fast-growing tree plantations are a solution
that the forest products industry is pursuing. But these plantations are
not forests.
Increased recovery of paper waste and an aggressive waste reduction effort
is required of all of us, and enhanced reforestation and tree plantations
are also necessary if we are to meet tomorrow's paper and wood products
demand. But how much longer can we afford to have 25% of the lumber used
in the home building industry end up as waste? How much longer can we
afford to have half or more of all paper and paperboard products end up in
landfills?
Since 1975, U.S. consumers have recycled enough paper to satisfy about 50%
of the growth of our increased demand. Unfortunately, the U.S. paper
industry believes that current recovery rates for paper and paperboard have
about peaked. Even here in recycling-aware Oregon, paper continues to
account for nearly one-half of all landfilled waste. Nationally about 60%
of the paper we use ends up in landfills.
So isn't more recycling the solution? Yes, but... remember the three R's--
reduce, reuse and recycle. As world attention begins to focus on
sustainability-- a long-term, comprehensive economic and environmental
strategy that provides for the needs of today without limiting the
availability of resources for tomorrow-- scientists, economists, businesses
and governments are discovering that waste is a luxury we cannot afford.
Currently about 57% of the fiber used in paper production worldwide comes
from virgin wood; 37% comes from recovered paper; and the rest, about 6%,
comes from agricultural residuals such as straw and sugar cane waste.
Roughly 25% of the world's industrial wood harvest goes directly for
pulpwood. In the U.S. last year, 50 million trees were used for pulp,
paper and paperboard manufacturing. Industry reports project pulp and
paper demand to increase from 285 million metric tons in 1995, to 410
million metric tons in 2010, an increase of more than 40%. The United
Nations Food And Agriculture Organization predicts a faster rise with world
demand for paper doubling within 15 years. Are we prepared to convert our
remaining natural forests, watersheds and wild places to monoculture tree
plantations just to overindulge ourselves?
Consumers and producers must do more than recycle. Over the past twenty
years, per capita paper consumption has more than doubled in industrialized
countries and accounts for over 75% of total world demand. Per capita
consumption in the U.S. exceeds all other industrialized countries and is
nearly twice that of Japan with the second highest per capita consumption
rate in the world. While the consumption incrations are growing rapidly,
speeding us further along the path
to global deforestation and its rippling environmental effects.
Agricultural wastes, such as the straw burned or exported by Willamette
Valley grass seed growers and Northwest wheat farmers, provides us an
opportunity to avoid this impending future. As the world faces further
increases in paper demand coupled with diminishing forest resources,
nonwood fiber from rye grass, wheat straw and other agricultural residuals,
as well as special fiber crops such as kenaf and hemp, offer practical
solutions. Our current market system however, tilted by powerful corporate
and industrial interests, tends to preserve the status quo: extracting
ever more amounts of fiber from surviving forests and tree plantations.
Experts estimate that 200 million tons of agricultural cropping residues,
mostly cereal straws and corn stalks, are available in the U.S. as raw
material for paper and other wood-dependent products such as fiberboard and
particle board. These materials are commonly used throughout the world
today. More than six percent of the world's paper is produced from nonwood
plant fiber. Locally, Weyerhaeuser has been investigating and optimizing
producing straw pulp for cardborad box manufacturing for all of the 1990's.
It is environmentally desirable and economically possible that tomorrow's
paper and packaging manufacturers will go back to the future and again
make straw, corn stalks, hemp and other annual crops a common source of
fiber for paper and packaging in the U.S. as they were until World War II.
In fact, staw fiber was used by some U.S. paper manufacturers as recently
as the late 1970's.
We are consuming wood products, especially paper, and the forests that
supply the fiber, at an unsustainable and increasing rate. The good news
is that these negative trends can be slowed and even reversed. By
practicing the three R's, with increased consumer demand for more
environmentally-friendly (nonwood fiber) products, and by citizen demand
for public policies and tax codes that do not preserve the status quo at
the expense of economically viable nonwood solutions, we can save our
natural forests and the many resources they provide in addition to fiber.
Hope this helps.
Bill
Billy Stern
PO Box 8251
Native Forest Network
Missoula, MT 59807
PH (406) 542-7343
FX (406) 542-7347
Billysun@wildrockies.org
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Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 09:42:28 -0400
From: mappelho@madison.tdsnet.com (Mary Appelhof)
Subject: Thanks for ideas and sources for non-PVC plumbing pipe
Thank all who gave me ideas and potential sources for non-PVC plumbing pipe!
Makes me realize what an amazing resource GreenYes digest is. Thanks to
all who contribute and administer it.
Mary Appelhof
Mary Appelhof
Flowerfield Enterprises
10332 Shaver Road
Kalamazoo, Michigan 49024USA
Phone: 616-327-0108 FAX 616-327-7009
Email: mappelho@madison.tdsnet.com
See a baby worm hatch from its cocoon at
http://www.wormwoman.com
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Date: Tue, 21 Apr 1998 11:19:08 +0200
From: muna@iafrica.com
Subject: Your support needed NOW!
We wish to bring to your attention the impending arrival of a nuclear waste
ship in Durban Harbour.
This is a Public Relations attempt to show people of South Africa that the
transport of nuclear waste along our coastline is safe - we reject this
notion as patently absurd. We have much documentation available in this
regard. Opposition to the visit is mounting - a coalition Coalition Against
Nuclear Transport - CANT) has been formed, made up of major environmental
groupings in the province, and others. Many more organisations are expected
to join the coalition shortly.
CANT rejects the notion that the transport of nuclear waste is safe. Nor do
we believe that a tour of the ship and a display of its technical merits can
guarantee that it is safe. We note that the waste is part of a broader
nuclear industry. The Japanese nuclear plants where it is produced have
recently suffered a series of nuclear accidents resulting in workers and the
environment being contaminated.
Plutonium - 239, with a half-life of 25 000 years, will remain radioactive
for some 250 000 years, and, should a transport ship sink, will result in a
100% probability of cellular damage to any organism exposed to such
radiation. Deaths of newborn babies, babies born with disabilities,
experimentation on human beings, miscarriages, allergies, startling
increases in cancer deaths, leukemia, decrease in mental abilities, and
mutant life forms are only some of the negative impacts of the nuclear industry.
It was through environmental activism that the Panama route is being denied
those wishing to trade in, and transport, nuclear waste - the same should
apply here, as South African lives are worth it!
The waste from some of Japan's approximately 50 nuclear reactors is being
transported to Europe for processing, and will be returned as weapons grade
nuclear material. This has major implications, not the least of which will
involve workers and ciizens at large - one disaster involving a ship
carrying nuclear waste will impact on the entire planet, and no means exist
with which to clean up such a major environmental problem. The impact will
last for thousands of years - this is no exaggeration! Both the
"precautionary principle" and the
rights of present and future generations have particular application here.
The ship will dock on the 26th of April, and stay for two days.
We call on all our colleagues and their respective organisations to join us,
and support the newly founded Coalition Against Nuclear Transport (CANT).
Please be so kind as to indicate your written support (fax or email - see
form below) for this cause and coalition, before 12 noon, Friday, 24 April.
Please treat this as a matter of urgency.
Please contact the Campaign Co-ordinator, Bryan Ashe, at the following number:
Cell: 082-6521533
Fax: 082-131-652-1533
Email: bryan@cis.co.za
Your support will be greatly appreciated. We will keep you informed of
actions that we will be
involved in around this issue closer to the time.
Members: Coalition Against Nuclear Transport
Earthlife Africa
Earth Action
Environmental Justice Networking Forum
Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa
Thekwini EcoParty
Land & Liberty
WE WISH TO REGISTER OUR SUPPORT FOR THE COALITION AGAINST NUCLEAR
TRANSPORT, AND WISH TO REGISTER OUR PROTEST AT THE ARRIVAL OF A
NUCLEAR WASTE SHIP IN OUR WATERS.
ORGANISATION:
NAME:
DESIGNATION:
CONTACT DETAILS:
Please forward where appropriate. Many thanks, & Kind Regards
Muna Lakhani
Earthlife Africa Durban - South Africa
Muna....
Mr. Muna Lakhani
CATALYST
Cellphone:082-416-9160
Cellfax: 082-131-416-9160
e-mail: muna@iafrica.com
28 Currie Road - Durban - 4001 - South Africa
Studio: 031-2028291
Phone: +27-31-20-28-291
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End of GreenYes Digest V98 #101
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