You missed my point.
I agree with you that the quality of discourse on GreenYes should be of the
highest caliber. I believe that name-calling and personal diatribes only
reflect poorly on the writer and are not helpful to our cause.
However, my point is that those of us who are on GreenYes are also the
leaders of the recycling movement in America. It is up to us to respond
individually and collectively in a quality or expeditious manner to attacks
like those of Betsy Hart.
I am challenging each and every one of us to work through the organizations
with which we are associated to develop quick, clear responses to Betsy
Hart and to share those responses with this listserve.
In this way, we are harnessing the power of the internet to leverage each
of our energies to have a clearer and more effective response to Betsy Hart
and similar attacks in the future.
Gary Liss
At 01:34 PM 11/09/1999 -0500, Roger M. Guttentag wrote:
>At 09:44 AM 11/09/1999, Gary Liss wrote:
>>Roger,
>>
>>I think all those on the GreenYes listserve have an obligation to respond
to Betsy Hart's essay, not just DISCUSS it among ourselves. I am concerned
that this essay may get picked up by other news organizations and repeated
around the country like the John Tierney article was.
>=================================================================
>Dear Gary:
>
>It is my hope that a good quality discussion among ourselves will help us
to craft better responses to the Hart essay. Otherwise Greenyes devolves
into a glorified digital intercom. My concern is that we don't send either
a "how dare you write this crap" response or long winded snoozers that no
news service will bother picking up. We need to look at the style as well
as the substance of Hart's essa for guidance. It is appealing because it
has a short, conversational tone with lots of easy to follow and very
quotable (though misleading) statements like:
>
>"there are more trees in the United States today than at any other time in
this century"
>
>"if Americans continue generating garbage at current rates, it would take
1,000 years before the total refuse pile would fill an area 35 miles square
and 100 yards deep."
>
>"Picking up a ton of recyclables (forget the expense of processing it)can
cost three times as much as picking up the same amount of garbage."
>
>and the creme de la creme:
>
>"aggressive curbside recycling programs are almost always significant
revenue losers. And that has real consequences now: less money available
for better schools, safer roads, more police or improved social services."
>
>Frankly, I think the other side writes better on many occasions than we do
on this topic so I think we do need to discuss how we can do better in
responding.
>
>Roger M. Guttentag
>610-584-8836
>
Gary Liss
916-652-7850
Fax: 916-652-0485