Organic cotton shopping bags have to be used 20,000 times before they're better for the Earth than plastic disposables

#80

We can do more than one thing.

If someone poops in your swimming pool, you don’t stay quiet just because it’s not going to reverse climate change all by itself to complain.

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#81

Old sheets and other linens can be salvaged as tote materials. Natural fibers are seen less and less in manufactured goods and are worth reusing!

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#82

One of the most effective way to reduce birth rates is to reduce infant mortality and improve eduation in the poor, both in the developed and developing world. I rarely see people arguing for that online though, instead I see lots of lifestylist wankers saying the poor should just stop reproducing, sounding just like some tory arsehole.

And eco-fascism isn’t hyperbole, as much as I wish it was.

The deep-greens are being co-opted by the far-right. This is a warning, not an attack.

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#83

Of people who didn’t drive to the market I’m still surprised so few people bring a backpack for grocery shopping. So much easier to carry. Or, at the very least, reusable bags with straps long enough to go on your shoulders. The reusable bags I bought in grocery stores in Austria had dual strap handles - short ones for hands and long ones for shoulders - but I’ve not seen that really handy design in the US.

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#84

In addition to Bookchin, I also give my students Todes’ critique on the historic use of Malthus to justify anti-poverty/and xenophobia:

Todes, D. P. (1987). Darwin’s Malthusian Metaphor and Russian Evolutionary Thought, 1859–1917. ISIS , 78 (4), 537–551.

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#85

A factor of 1000 is actually quite rational. The world is full of these kinds of dissonant results. For example, it makes sense to cover your fridge leftovers with plastic wrap instead of a plastic or metal lid. Why? The plastic weighs only a gram or two, but the energy it takes to heat the sink water to wash off the dirty lid far exceeds the embedded energy in plastic wrap. And, if you live in a country that burns trash to energy efficiently and cleanly, much of the plastic energy is recovered.

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#86

I take your point. I just don’t see the connection between my encouraging my peers to dial it back on reproduction on the one hand and unleashing genocide on the world’s poor on the other.

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#87

It only sounds stupid to the stupid. The rest of us are capable of understanding that the water cycle and the atmosphere carries all our pollutants to the ocean eventually.

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#88

I think you might not understand how rivers work. The water near you flows down into the ocean, transporting whatever’s in it, without “barges”. In Ohio, that’s a lot more than “an occasional plastic bag”.

Plastic breaks down into small pieces that are still harmful. If you eat fish, there’s a not-insignificant chance it has tiny bits of plastic in it. If you don’t eat fish, you probably know someone that drinks beer or tap water.

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#89

That looks cool, and also like it would attach to the rack on the back of my bike! What is it called and where can I get a pair?

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#90

We just need Thanos to snap his fingers then we’ll be good :joy::joy::joy:

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#91

Looks like it’s from these people: https://www.basil.com/en/bicycle-baskets/

and probably this one: https://www.basil.com/en/memories-bicycle-bag-black.html

That does look handy.

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#92

As noted by @someguy, no, “burying the lede” has a specific meaning. It was used to distinguish the “lede” from the “lead”:

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#93

You want to spell it that way, have fun. A lot of people do. It’s not illegal and a lot of people prefer your spelling.

The original spelling was “bury the lead” and journalists called the lead “the lead” during the time of Linotype machines. The intentional misspelling happened after the age of Linotype machines.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bury_the_lead

It’s a cutesy way to sound like a “real reporter” and it caught on, and it’s more popular as a phrase right now then it was ever used in the past. But it’s false nostalgia. All journalism handbooks and textbooks before the 70s called it “the lead”. And a lot still do.

You shouldn’t correct people who are using it the traditional way, because they’re not wrong.

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#94

It’s the Basil Bottle Basket.

https://www.basil.com/en/bicycle-baskets/?filter[]=277298&filter[]=248801&max=100&min=0

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#95

Take a deep breath and re read my comment in the context of the op’s comment. That list was in no way exaustive of what I do and do not do. It was meant to contrast the whole “eliminate the human” race bit. I’m sure I pale in comparison to you who bathes with sand, rides a bicycle with repurposed wood tires and a bamboo frame while draped in pelts fashioned from animals you found dead from natural caused. I am a bit puzzled though on what sustainable method was used to extract, process, and eventually dispose of the rare earth components your commenting device uses. Unless that is you, proffesor, and you are using a coconut radio with the assistance of Gilligan.

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#96

Thanks! :+1:

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#97

Of course we can. However, your analogy is poor. A better analogy would be worrying about the leaf in your swimming pool while someone is taking a dump in it.

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#98

A couple of people reacted very negatively to this statement and I can see why. I clarified, but I want to go a little further than that. It is very hurtful to have other people tell you that your decision to have or not to have children is/was wrong. Whatever I meant to say I said that above. I’m sorry. I’ve added a note to my original post to clarify that I don’t mean that, and I’ll be more careful in the future to distinguish anti-natalism (which I oppose) from people choosing not to have children of their own, which are utterly unrelated.

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#99

But you’re Slippery Sloping the hell out of that comment. The absolute tippy-top best thing we humans could do to retard or even reverse climate change is to reduce human population. We’re at 7.7 billion (per the world clock) right now and at current reproduction rates we’re chugging merrily along towards 8. Suggesting that everybody have none or one offspring is still going to leave us a heck of a lot of people. And for enough generations that those people might get to breathe much nicer air. Which seems like a nice thing to do if you like humans. It certainly in no way is equivalent to being “against humans existing.”

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