[THS] Putting the I in the Environment

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://www.truth-out.org/david-sirota-putting-i-environment60446

"We can stop using disposable plastic bags and stop buying plastic-
bottled water. Though no big sacrifice, doing this is a huge way to reduce oil use.
The Sierra Club estimates that Americans "use 100 billion plastic shopping bags each
year, which are made from an estimated 12 million barrels of oil." Likewise, the
Pacific Institute reports that the equivalent of 17 million barrels of oil are used to
produce plastic water bottles -- incredibly wasteful considering that clean tap water is
ubiquitously available in America." [and Europe too]

Putting the "I" in the Environment

Tuesday 15 June 2010

by: David Sirota, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

For those who are not (yet) heartless cynics or emotionless Ayn Rand acolytes, the
now-famous photographs of sludge-soaked pelicans on the Gulf Coast are painful to
behold. It's those hollow pupils peeking out of the brown death, screaming in silence.
They are an avian version of the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg that F. Scott Fitzgerald once
wrote about -- and they implicate us all.

As President Obama correctly stated: "Easily accessible oil has already been sucked
up out of the ground" -- and drilling companies must now use ever-riskier techniques
to find the oil we demand. While British Petroleum and federal regulators are
certainly at fault for their reckless behavior, every American who uses oil -- which is
to say, every American -- is incriminated in this ecological holocaust.

If we accept that culpability -- a big "if" in this accountability-shirking society -- we
can start considering how to reduce our oil addiction so as to prevent such holocausts
in the future. And when pondering that challenge, we must avoid focusing
exclusively on legislation. As Colin Beavan argues in his tome "No Impact Man," green
statutes are important, but not enough. Those oil-poisoned birds, choking to death
on our energy gluttony, implore us to also take individual action.

This does not necessarily mean radical lifestyle changes -- good news for those who
remain locked into various forms of oil use. Millions, for instance, must drive or fly to
workplaces where no alternative transportation exists. And most of us don't have the
cash to trade in our cars for Priuses, and don't have the option of telecommuting.

However, almost everyone regardless of income or employment can take steps that
are so absurdly simple and cost-effective that there's simply no excuse not to.

Here are two: We can stop using disposable plastic bags and stop buying plastic-
bottled water. Though no big sacrifice, doing this is a huge way to reduce oil use.
The Sierra Club estimates that Americans "use 100 billion plastic shopping bags each
year, which are made from an estimated 12 million barrels of oil." Likewise, the
Pacific Institute reports that the equivalent of 17 million barrels of oil are used to
produce plastic water bottles -- incredibly wasteful considering that clean tap water is
ubiquitously available in America.

Here's another: In a country that puts one-fifth of its fossil fuel use into agriculture,
we can make a difference by slightly reducing our consumption of animal flesh, the
culinary gas-guzzler.

Today, the average American eats 200 pounds of meat annually, "an increase of 50
pounds per person from 50 years ago," according to The New York Times. Setting
aside morality questions about executing 10 billion living beings a year simply to
satiate an epicurean fancy, the sheer energy costs of this dietary choice are
monstrous.

Quoting Cornell University researchers, Time magazine reports that producing animal
protein requires eight times as much fossil fuel as producing a comparable amount of
plant protein. Carbon-emissions-wise (which roughly reflects energy use),
geophysicists Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin find that cutting meat consumption by
just 20 percent -- say, going meatless two days a week -- is equal to switching from a
standard sedan to a hybrid.

Using knapsacks at supermarkets, drinking free tap water and replacing meat with
comparatively inexpensive vegetable protein -- these are easy steps. Sure, they will
not singularly end our oil dependence, but they will decrease it. As importantly, they
will begin building a national culture that takes personal responsibility for combating
the ecological crisis we've all created.

Are we willing to make minimal behavioral reforms? Are we willing to assume such
responsibility? Those, of course, are the crucial questions -- the ones nobody wants
to ask, but the ones those crude-drenched birds beg us to answer.

David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books "Hostile Takeover" and "The
Uprising." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at
OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds at davidsirota.com or follow him on Twitter
@davidsirota.

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