Archive for November, 2009

Don’t do it for just one day

Monday, November 30th, 2009

I have a calendar that shows me all sorts of “special days” popping up throughout the year, some are funny (World Toilet Day) while others are more meaningful (Buy Nothing Day) and it got me thinking, if these meaningful “special days” are meant to get us to think about specific issues, why keep it to one day? Make it an entire week!

Okay so perhaps “Buy nothing week” would be hard for most people but why not? If nothing else it would get us to think more clearly about what we spend out money on and how we can save up on things which aren’t really needed. Last week was a real set of extremes as far as spending goes. On the one hand you have “buy nothing day”, which is easy enough to follow but then on the other there’s “Black Friday”, which apparently was a huge day of sale followed by many stores slashing down prices for one day only. Is it not a little paradoxical?

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Don’t Demonise Carbon

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

One of the things that keep coming out of the multitude of environmental related blog posts or news articles is a sort of emphasis of how Carbon is a Bad Thing™. You see a lot of “carbon is to blame”, “carbon is evil”, “carbon is the culprit”, “zero carbon” and so on. Now those people know exactly what they mean by speaking harshly about Carbon, but I wonder if the message comes across as intended.

We need to remember that life on earth is first and foremost, carbon-based. From tiny algae to sequoias, from plancton to humans, carbon is our main building block, it’s within ourselves, in the food we eat and in the air we breathe. Carbon is the 4th most common element in the entire universe.

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