intellectual properties

AB1998: ban plastic bags, save the world!

if you are reading this, please do me a favor and sign this petition supporting California Assembly Bill AB1998.

http://action.savesfbay.org/savesfbay/issues/alert/?alertid=16092916

The average Californian uses an estimated 400 plastic bags per year for a total of 19 billion plastic bags per year statewide. The production of these single-use petroleum-based bags consumes millions of barrels of oil and the average use time of a plastic bag is a mere 12 minutes. After which, most are sent to the landfill. However, thousands of plastic bags find their way to our creeks, Bay and ocean where they entangle, suffocate and kill seals, birds, sea turtles and other marine life.

please click here to urge your rep to vote YES on AB1998 to protect our creeks, waterways, the beautiful California Coast and the world’s oceans. (yes, if you put in your real email, this may result in other emails in your inbox from Save the Bay. but don’t you want to save the bay??)

click here to do even more!

do you know what oil tastes like?

this pelican does.

this just breaks my heart.

QOTD: Earth Day, 2010

“Mother Nature bats last.”

help save 300 acres of rainforest @300acres.com

My friend Natalia is spearheading the 300 Acres project, an effort to raise funds for an Ecuadorian community to buy back their ancestral rainforest lands, which will otherwise be sold to developers.  If you have an extra $5+ dollars, this is a specific project with a direct impact you can donate toward (tax deductible!). Time is running out - they only have a week left to raise funds. Thanks!

Not only will your tax deductible donation help save the endangered rainforest where the Amazanga people reside, but it will also aid in the on-going construction of their school of natural medicine – The School of Guayusa.

The Amazanga are now working toward recuperating 300+ acres of pristine jungle that is under severe threat of destruction. Blessed with waterfalls and dense jungle growth, this forest will serve as a base for the Amazanga’s international natural medicine school, the School of Guayusa.

This sacred, ancestral land was seized by the Ecuadorian government and military in 1940. The indigenous people that inhabited this area were forced to leave their home, the source of so much abundance. Now, however, we have the opportunity to reclaim this land for its rightful protectors.

The Amazanga are a group of indigenous healers and conservationists of Quichua and Shuar descent who are dedicated to the protection of nature and the preservation of natural wisdom and indigenous traditions. They are true forest protectors who have resisted the destruction of the Amazon jungle by oil and mining threats since the inception of those influences.

For almost a century the Amazanga have organized grassroots campaigns to protect the forest from oil companies such as Shell, Arco and Tripetrol, mining companies such as Nambija, and logging companies such as Plevol.

With the help of U.S. based foundations such as Tropical Rainforest Coalition, the Amazanga have helped to recuperate over 5,000 acres of ancestral land that is now protected as a natural reserve and being guided toward becoming a World Heritage Site. Read more about the Llushin Rainforest Reserve.

Donate now to help them save the next 300 acres.

all for nothing.

the yes men: how to fix the world

if you haven’t yet seen the footage of the Yes Men’s (who?) most recent stunt with the Chamber of Commerce, it’s here and worth 10 minutes of your time.

some articles and a little about the context:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2009/10/19/091019ta_talk_surowiecki

Resigning in protest is not in the American grain. Robert McNamara stuck around as Secretary of Defense even after he decided that the Vietnam War was a disaster; Colin Powell did the same during the Bush Administration’s push for war with Iraq; and in the lead-up to the financial crisis, few high-profile executives stepped down over disagreements in philosophy or tactics. But resigning in protest has gained popularity of late among an unlikely group: big corporations. Last Monday, Apple announced that it would be quitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of the Chamber’s opposition to global-warming legislation. And that was just the latest in a series of defections: in the past few weeks, the public-utility companies Pacific Gas & Electric, PNM Resources, and Exelon all announced that they’d be leaving the Chamber, while Nike quit the organization’s board of directors…

…But it may reflect a calculation that global warming is simply too big an issue to get wrong, both economically—few companies are really going to benefit from the melting of the polar ice caps—and from a public-relations point of view. It’s also probably no coincidence that these resignations have come at a time when the Chamber’s anti-regulatory zeal looks not just outmoded but self-defeating. Had the Chamber supported tougher regulation of financial and housing markets, after all, the myriad small businesses it represents would undoubtedly be better off today. And it’s far from clear that across-the-board hostility to regulation is really in the best interests of the free-enterprise system. We assume that lobbies always recognize what’s best for their members. But they don’t, and, in the case of climate change, they may very well be missing what the companies that have resigned in protest have seen: global warming isn’t just bad for the planet; it’s bad for business.

follow-up

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/jamessurowiecki/2009/10/the-us-chamber-of-commerce-now-90-smaller.html

for privacy reasons, i can’t say too much about my professional experience working with the Chamber of Commerce on environmental issues, but i can say that this made me very happy.

their current movie “The Yes Men Fix The World” is out now.

fashion designers, istas, consumers and fans: watch this

“we are not “eco” brand, and i don’t think any “eco” brand exists…how can it possibly be good for the environment? you produce things. you make them.”

~via

lika volkova is my new hero.

AB 68: The Bag vs. The Bay

my favorite environmental pet peeve, plastic, is soon to be up for vote in the CA Assembly.

i’ve written before about the plastic island floating out the pacific, because plastic never degrades and the ocean currents sort of wrangle it all into one place.  it’s horrific.  while i know that not everyone is in the habit of carrying a resusable bag with them (YET), i also find it horrifying that people in stores use plastic bags to carry out items that could easily be carried out by hand - like a single bottle of soda. i see it all the time.  or that baggers automatically DOUBLE plastic bags and so you wind up with 8 of them, not 4. public service announcements about plastic being bad for the environment haven’t changed consumer or corporate behavior because there hasn’t been any 1st-person impact to most consumers that they are aware of.

not long ago a bill was passed that set up all kinds of rules about plastic bags (see “Existing Law” summary below), mostly that stores have to provide a way to recycle them, but that really hasn’t done enough.  every time i go into a store, the bag recycling bin is completely overflowing. so most consumers take the bag, they use it, they throw it away. there really was no consumer impact, only impact on companies who now have to deal with overflowing bins of plastic in their stores.

so the next step is to create that 1st person impact by instituting a fee.  you want a plastic bag for your pack of gum?  ok.  that’ll be $.25. it’s unfortunately true that sometimes the only way to change human behavior is to make them pay for it.  Assembly Bill 68 establishes a $.25 fee for all plastic bags.

this isn’t that groundbreaking, and not some crazy scheme that California has come up with because of the budget crisis - although the revenue will help keep some agencies, like the Integrated Waste Management Board - afloat. Washington, DC placed a fee on them last month, and LA’s ban will go into effect next year if this bill fails.  China and Bangladesh have already banned them (saving China an estimated 37 million barrels of oil per year!), and Ireland’s fee reduced use by 90%.  For California - one of the most populated states in the US - to establish such a fee would only be logical.

Fellow Californians: Please send a message to our State Representatives asking them to support this legislation!

AB 68, the Single-Use Bag Reduction Act, is an important step to reduce plastic bag pollution in California and the Bay. It will help people make the switch to reusable bags and dramatically decrease consumption of plastic and paper single-use bags by charging a statewide fee for them, beginning in 2010. Revenue generated from the fee will be used for other trash reduction and litter prevention programs. Please support AB 68, a bill critical to achieving California’s goal of eliminating plastic marine debris.

introductory text of the bill below. note that people on public assistance are excused from paying the bag fee, so for those who fight this kind of use-tax because it “punishes the poor” have no ground. also, this bill sunsets in 2013, so it’s a trial.  i’d prefer just an all out BAN on the damn things, like China has, but this is a step in the right direction.

(YES I AM A TOTAL ECO-WORRIER. this isn’t about “holier than thou”. this is about “holy shit, we’re screwed.”)

see The Bag vs. The Bay for lots of info on how plastic bags directly affect SF Bay.

btw: the 2nd most abundant ocean pollutant?  cigarette butts. those aren’t biodegradable either, and fish and other sea animals eat them and die. :/

AB 68:
Continue reading »

my story with stuff

a friend just sent this SFGate article about a small urban farmer in oakland, which is interesting if you’re into this little subculture movement. how is it different than being a small rural farmer? not much, it turns out.

but the one sentence that really caught my eye was this:

I never learned how to take care of things because I’m used to them disappearing. The material world escapes me.

i’m going to ramble here for a minute.

Continue reading »

we add up

my (new awesome) friend marty was wearing this supercool t-shirt last night from weaddup.com that reflects the quote i’ve had as the tag to this blog for a while: “a movement is only people moving”. the idea is that not everyone can do everything possible to save the planet/humanity, so pick one thing, and represent!  each shirt is individually numbered when you order it, so you’re uniquely identified as person #00012148 who has made a lifestyle change to help save the planet.

The climate crisis is real and happening right now. It’s easy to feel helpless and overwhelmed. People are asking, “What difference will changing my light bulbs really make? The problem is so huge, and I’m just one person.”

WE ADD UP is a global campaign using organic cotton t-shirts that literally “counts you in” in the fight against global warming. Every shirt is printed by hand with a unique number. YOUR number represents your place in the sequential global count of all the people who are taking steps to help stop climate change. As the count grows, we demonstrate to the world that “WE ADD UP.” On the back of each shirt is a word or phrase that describes an action almost anyone can take to reduce their carbon footprint - the contribution their lifestyle makes to greenhouse gases - such as, Unplug, Lights Off, Carpool, Hybrid, Bike, Buy Local, and 18 others. You choose which action you are committed to doing and get counted in. No one can do everything. Everyone can do something. And, WE ADD UP.

100% organic cotton, USA made, sweatshop-free, and printed with YOUR number.

i do more than one of these things (recycle, vegan, unplug, organic, buy local, drink tap water, shower together), but i’m choosing BIKE because as of the end of this month, i will no longer have a car and will become a full time bike/mass transit commuter. jay is losing his company car privileges, and he needs a car to commute. for the last couple of months i have been biking to work half the time anyway, so he’s just going to use our car. i just can’t imagine buying another car for so many reasons, when i can reasonably bike and/or take the bus. it will make some aspects of my life more difficult (no more stopping at the grocery or running errands on the way home from work, and getting to the gym from the office in time for the classes i like to take will be a challenge), but at the same time, i really enjoy riding my bike around the city, especially to work in the morning, so i’m sort of looking forward to the shift. at least until it starts getting dark and cold and rainy.

i might also get a ‘DRINK TAP‘ shirt because of how completely wasteful buying bottled water is, and i’d certainly like to promote more drinking of tap water.