Category: Solutions

Ways we can help Mother Earth

Opinion: Choose To Re-Use and Re-Purpose

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Opinion: Choose To Re-Use

REFUSE THE REFUSE….. CHOOSE TO RE-USE

By Jennifer Troy

Organic and Natural

The amount of “wasteful waste” accumulated everyday, world-wide is staggering. Here in my corner of the world, Portland, Oregon, waste is everywhere. We have careless waste, we have intentional waste, we have good intentioned waste, we have plastic waste and we have paper waste, just to mention a few.  It is my wish to draw attention to waste that need not be wasted. Sometimes we accept a premise just because everyone else seems to accept it. Human beings are sheep.  I hope to convince you that often the things we do because we think it is the “right” thing for the environment may in fact be short-sighted and wrong. Shockingly, “organic” and “natural” may not always be the best answer.  I believe with all of my heart re-use and re-purpose in the end will be the best way forward.

Paper or Plastic?

Take as an example, the recent “Paper or Plastic” epidemic sweeping through the nation. We did it!  We finally got the public involved in saving the environment by ousting plastic and replacing it with the greener choice of paper. We’ve been so successful that half the rain forests of the Pacific NW and elsewhere are being systematically destroyed, not to mention the massive amount of paper in its many forms is now rotting in our landfills. Repeat after me, “re-use and re-purpose”.

Re-Use and Re-Purpose

Plastic or Progress?

Paper or Progress?

Natural means natural…. not sustainable, durable or reusable as it’s synthetic counterparts. “Synthetic”? “Synthetic”? That means man-made. Yes, man-made. These textiles were designed to be reused. Designed to be washed and NOT discarded. Why on earth have we put so much energy into creating, recycling and re-purposing plastic if we’re now simply going to ban it? Wake up, America there is a better way, there is progress.

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EV: The Obvious Future

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EV: Electric Vehicles The Obvious Future

By D. S. Mitchell

*”Adoption of a new technology like EV’s (electric vehicles) may seem slow or look like it’s never going to happen, until it passes a threshold… and then it just takes off.” Reda Cherif for the International Monetary Fund

Slashing EPA Annual Budget by Over 30%

When Trump won the 2016 presidential election I knew the attack on the environment would move forward like a bulldozer in a butterfly garden. In Trump’s first year in office he pulled the United States out of the landmark Paris climate deal, paving the way for the continued reckless burning of fossil fuels. The Paris Climate Accord is non-binding on signers, but focuses on a global effort to hold the Earth’s temperature rise to fewer than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. The consequences of failing to limit greenhouses gases and thereby their destructive effects is a future most of us do not want to imagine.

High Jacking the Mission of the EPA

In March of 2018, Trump proposed slashing the EPA annual budget by over 30%.  Since 2017 the EPA has lost more than 700 employees, including 200 scientists. Meanwhile the disgraced and the now thank God departed, Scott Pruitt, wasted Agency money on a 24 hour security detail, expensive air travel, and sound proof booths for his office. Rather than protect the environment and work with the world to limit green house gas production this administration wants to subsidize coal, and ramp up oil exploration in previously protected wilderness areas and vulnerable off-shore sites.

EV Promises Reduced Air Pollution

Despite the bad news on so many U.S. environmental fronts there is good news in the automobile industry. Automobile manufacturer’s world-wide are committing to the EV.  They see the handwriting on the wall.  The governments of Europe, China, and India are committed to reducing air pollution. Part of that vision will be enabled by electric vehicles. The mass acceptance of the EV will consequently cut the production of fossil fuels and their consumption. Perhaps that is the reason coal, and gas producers are in such a hurry to mine and pump fuel reserves while they still have an opportunity. Because they, more than any other industry, recognizes the world is changing.

Horse and Buggy Days

There is a growing understanding that gas and diesel-powered vehicles will soon join the horse and buggy, and the dial telephone. New studies support a rapid acceleration process and a gathering  momentum of  the coming EV tsunami. Surprising as it may seem The International Monetary Fund and Georgetown University predicts that more than 90% of all passenger vehicles in the U.S., Canada, Europe and other wealthy industrialized countries will be EV by 2040. Some studies are even more bullish than the IMF projections. In fact, there are predictions that by 2030, ninety percent of all U.S. vehicles will be EV. That is a mere 12 years away.

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