Am running out, but have been getting bunches of info on the Tokyo Two and thought I’d pass some on quick like. Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki were arrested in late June for their role in exposing corruption in a government-sponsored whaling program.

Full story here.

Like many folks, I probably subscribe to too many newsletters. But one I thought I’d mention is Rex Weyler’s Deep Green. The way issue facets are fitted together is pretty cool. Here’s an excerpt from the most recent issue:

Since the late Pleistocene, 100,000 years ago, when a few thousand Homo sapiens poked around Africa, Asia, and the Mediterranean, human population has doubled 22 times. We have one more such doubling left, and that’s it. Human population will likely level off at 10 to 14 billion sometime around 2100, exceeding the Earth’s carrying capacity. Mass human starvations are already underway in degraded environments.

Economists imagine that average consumption is going to increase, so we must also consider a projected annual world economic growth of approximately 1.5% in wealthy nations and 10% in China and other developing nations. Economists consider anything below 3% world economic growth to signal a global “recession.”

Humanity is trapped in a dilemma. Our economic theories suggest we can’t stop growing without economic collapse, but unfettered growth also leads to collapse. We cannot rewrite the laws of nature and calculus for our own convenience.

more…

This morning while strolling about, the title of this post popped into my mind. Not as a title, but as a question.

I’m so used to so much being made of plastic (textiles, shower curtains, shoes, backpacks, furniture, dishes, storage media, toothbrushes, cable insulation, plant pots, cases, bags, laminants, desktop organizers, pens, bottles, office equipment, toys, switches, CASIO keyboards, piping, dog collars, chew toys, recycling bins, garbage cans, hamster cages, tires, car insides, bus insides, restaurant insides, bed foam, styrofoam, oh yeah, and sun glasses). Costume designer and fashion historian that I am not, it was hard to imagine sun glasses being made of anything but plastic.

So I ducked into an antique shop in hopes of an answer. Was pretty much hardcore delighted to find a pair of pre-super-widespread-use-of-plastic glasses:

Tinted glass. Wire.

Truly a pair of sun glasses.

In an effort to put the second R back into “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” I’ve been using the below bag to carry bulk items home in for the past year. It gets washed with each use. And while it has become progressively more tacky–as in, a bit sticky–over time, it wasn’t until I was at the checkout line at the co-op today that I noticed just how filmy the bag had become, and then only because the person who rang me up was balls out enough to tease me about it .

So I think I’m gonna bring it to the recycled gates of bag heaven next time I’m at the IGA. But I won’t be replacing it with another plastic bag. (I’ve actually been waiting for this day!) Jen and I are going to make cotton bulk bags out of an old table cloth or something.

As for other bags, we noticed that we were going through bulk coffee bags quicker than we ought because the wire in the fastener at the top consistently gave out after about a month. Of course, that’s only to be expected when the bag is being opened and closed at least once a day.

But one day Jen came up with a way to Dramatically Increase™ the lifespan of a bulk coffee bag. It involves a Revolutionary! New! Technology!™ called… *drum roll* Opening and Closing the Bag Less Often™ ^{x 3,702}!!!!, !.

Like: !.

It’s still more convenient to bring the bag to the store, but transferring the coffee into a jar when we get home makes the bag last longer because we use it less. Though, as with the plastic bag that’s biting the dust, it would probably behoove us to come up with a more permanent replacement when it too goes to bag heaven.

Challenge to self: See if you can reduce the amount of wear and tear you place on stuff and consume fewer resources.

Note to the reader: If you’re doing anything that reduces wear and tear on something you use lots, please feel free to share. All ideas are welcome .

If you live in BC, you’ve probably heard about how the provincial government is issuing “Climate Action Dividend” cheques. Whether or not you like the idea, THE MONEY IS COMING.

Just got an email from The Tyee about a website they’ve launched (with the help of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, Voters Taking Action on Climate Change, the David Suzuki Foundation, and the Pembina Institute) called Green Your Campbell Cash. According to the email, “the site is designed to showcase collective climate action projects occurring throughout [BC] to which you can pledge your support — and your climate action dividend.”

And if you, or the BC-based organization you’re with, has a climate-related initiative that could use some attention, Green Your Campbell Cash is accepting project submissions until July 15th.

While having dinner with some friends a while back my buddy Wanli started telling this story about how her mom used to do the laundry twice. It was like this: Wanli’s grandmother had convinced Wanli’s mom that no machine did laundry better than a person could by hand. But Wanli’s mom wasn’t convinced that washing machines weren’t better. Nor was she convinced that doing the laundry by hand was without merit. So instead of choosing one over the other, she did laundry both ways.

I love this example of someone being caught between two ways of doing things in a period of techno-cultural transition. In this story, Wanli’s mom seems to loose out because she’s doing twice what could easily be done once. Though she may find it more satisfying to do the laundry twice…

So it occurs to me that we might all be a bit like Wanli’s mother these days. Seeing the merit in doing things in new, often more efficient ways, but also struggling to wring our hands free from previous ways, and ending up doing things twice (i.e. expanding highways AND transit, taking the train AND stressing about how it takes longer, setting CO2 emissions limits AND pursuing new coal mining opportunities).

We peeps!