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TIMELINE
Timeline Email Edition
January/February 2003 - No. 67
A Publication of the Foundation for G lobal Community
http://www.globalcommunity.org
timeline@globalcommunity.org
Phone: (650) 328 7756 Fax: (650) 328 7785
In this Issue:
Searching for Answers
It's Time
From Roget's Thesaurus
War Will Not End Terrorism
Zero Waste Campaign: New Zealand
Shifting Gears: The Joy of (not always) Driving
If Jesus would drive a hybrid, who'd drive a hummer? The Car as an Expression of
Values
With SUVs, The Devils in the Details
Loren Eisley
Searching for Answers
Editorial by Mac Lawrence
2002 Foundation for Global Community
TIMELINE
Two recent TV programs I saw summed up the unkindly times we're in. The first
program was about the closing of more and more hospitals around the country because of
limited budgets. Many of the hospitals were funded to serve people who are without
health insurance and unable to pay for medical attention. Now these folks are forced to
use the emergency rooms of the remaining hospitals for ordinary medical problems,
overwhelming the hospital staffs. The program showed lines of sick people waiting for
hours to be admitted to the ER. Some never got in and had to come back to try again the
next day. City officials were heartbroken each time a hospital shut down, but what can
we do, they said; there's no money to keep them open.
The second program reported on the huge new increases in military spending the
administration pumped for and Congress approved--all in all, 13 percent more than the
military got last year. For 2003 we pay $2.5 billion to buy a new attack submarine, $3.3
billion for the Navy's "Super Hornet" fighter plane, $2 billion for Osprey aircraft, $8.6
billion for a missile defense system--hardly what you would think of to defeat Al Qaeda.
The disconnect between these two programs should make every American gag. Unlimited
money for killing, but not enough for health? What kind of people are we? How did we
get to this point? And how do we get our country back on track?
I experienced another disconnect when I saw Michael Moore's latest movie Bowling for
Columbine. If you have not seen the film, it's a combination of humor, irony, and in-
your-face interviews. Moore shows us an America with a murder rate hundreds of times
higher than that of similarly well-off countries. It is an America in which far too many of
its citizens live in a constant state of fear and keep pursuing, futilely, more and more
extreme ways to feel safe. The film asks: "Why so much violence in America?"
Moore, who also produced the film Roger and Me and is the author of the best-selling
book Stupid White Men, grew up with guns. An expert marksman and a long-time
member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), he is appalled that in one year 11,127
Americans killed one another with guns. This compares, Moore noted, with 381 gun
murders in Germany, 255 in France, 165 in Canada, 68 in the UK, 65 in Australia, and 39
in Japan.
The film has had mixed reviews. The New Yorker magazine reviewer called Moore "a
left-wing joker with a camera," but admitted "that some of his mocking sallies have a
way of hitting their target." The San Jose Mercury News gave it four stars. Oprah
Winfrey devoted an entire program to a conversation with Moore, plus showing segments
from the film. The audience in the theatre I attended was primarily college age; they
seemed to respond to Moore's approach, and they seemed to understand the message
Moore was trying to get across, which I found hopeful.
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In the film, Moore interviewed an intimate of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy
McVeigh who said it is an American responsibility to be armed. He also visited Charlton
Heston, president of the NRA, in his gate-guarded home in Hollywood. After a barrage of
provocative questions from Moore, Heston finally walked away from the interview.
Moore joked with a clerk in a bank which gave out a rifle with each new account: "Do
you think it's a little dangerous handing out guns in a bank?" He interviewed executives
at Lockheed-Martin, the world's largest weapons manufacturer. He knocked on doors in
Toronto to find out if it's true that Canadians don't bother to lock their front doors. (It's
true; they seem not to have the fear level that is part of the American culture.)
Bowling contains clips taken during the shooting at Columbine High School. We saw the
reactions of the students afterwards, learned about the backgrounds of the shooters (who
went bowling the very morning of the shooting), and heard observations about the town
of Littleton, Colorado, by residents. Moore ended up taking two of the young
victims--one paralyzed and in a wheel chair, the other with a bullet still lodged near his
heart--to the New York headquarters of K-Mart, whose Littleton store had sold bullets to
the shooters.
By the film's end, there were no clear-cut answers to why so many Americans kill each
other. Some people interviewed blamed it on the number of guns that Americans own;
turns out that Canadians have about the same number of guns per capita as Americans do.
Some said it was the movies U.S. kids watch, plus the violent video games they play;
turns out that Canadian kids watch the same bloody stuff American kids watch, and
vaporize the same video villains. One person thought it might be due to the number of
unemployed in America--but Moore was told that the unemployment rate in Canada is
higher than in the U.S. Another person pointed out the history of America has always
included violence--but Moore pointed out that violence has been part of every country's
history.
Nor is the answer the mix of races in the U.S.; turns out Canada, which one might think
of as pretty homogeneous, is quite racially diverse. And, if you can judge from Moore's
interview with a black visitor to Toronto who lives in Detroit, discrimination is nearly
nonexistent in Canada. (Moore included a long segment in his film on the irrational fear
whites have of blacks in the U.S.)
Though the film provided no outright answers for the violence in the U.S., it did offer
some insights. Several came when Moore compared aspects of society in Canada and the
U.S. When he asked to see a Toronto slum, Moore was shown an area with beautifully
kept buildings, clean streets, no homeless (there aren't any homeless, he was told). The
Canadian politicians Moore interviewed answered straightforwardly, were polite,
interested in what their constituents thought. Refreshing.
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Canadians handle health care differently. "How much did they charge you?" Moore
asked a man who had obviously had major medical attention. "Nothing," the man replied.
"We have free health care. We consider it a basic human right."
Moore's film also included segments on how much the U.S. spends on its military
compared to what other countries spend. On the screen were shown some of the
expensive weapons the U.S. is buying that seem useless in a post-Cold War world; the
audience groaned.
U.S. foreign policy was not spared: When one of the people he interviewed told Moore
that America was committed to using peaceful means to promote democracy throughout
the world, there appeared a litany of instances where the U.S. has supported dictators
(like Saddam Hussein) and military regimes (as in El Salvador), orchestrated the
overthrow of duly elected heads of state (as in Chile, Iran, and Guatemala), and invaded
countries whose rulers we no longer liked (Manuel Noriega). Again, the audience
groaned.
One thing the film does is raise questions: To what degree, if any, does the fast pace of
American life and the emphasis on more and bigger add to the violence in our culture?
We've always been a country of rugged individuals, enterprise, competition: Has that
helped sow seeds of violence? Is there a correlation between the emphasis a country
places on its military force and the amount of violence its citizens engage in?
Today America is the world's only superpower: Does that affect how we act as a people?
American military supremacy certainly seems to have affected this country's leaders,
who see the U.S. as the world's policeman. We brook no nonsense from anyone, no
disagreement from other nations. (Recall the administration's reaction when a German
politician opposed our policy on Iraq: Our two countries almost stopped speaking to each
other.) The American attitude seems more and more to be: We know best; if you don't
like it, lump it. Nukes are good for us, bad for everybody else. If you threaten our access
to the world's raw materials, watch out. If we see you as a potential problem, we reserve
the right to attack, and alone if needed.
This approach--trying to force the world to be the way we want it to be--is a loser. In
the words of Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, USN (Ret), the first naval officer to serve as
director of U.S. military operations for all U.S. forces in Europe and the Middle East:
"No nation in history, no matter how powerful, has ever secured a permanent place in the
world order through military supremacy.... Every nation or empire which would
subjugate others will ultimately fail if they attempt to base their domination on military
force." The continued success of the U.S. as a world power, he said, "depends on whether
we attempt to perpetuate an American global hegemony...or if we seek to exercise
constructive leadership as a cooperative member in a peaceful world community
governed under the rule of law."
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It's Time
by Richard Rathbun
for the It's Time team
One of the great benefits of being alive at this particular time is the knowledge that
continues to unfold, revealing more and more of the mystery which produced all life, and
in which we, as members of the human species, are so intimately embedded.
For the first time in history, we can step back, with awe, and observe the evolutionary
journey along which we are unfolding. And as we look back at the past, we discover that
each new emergence has produced a more elegant, more complex, and yes, a more
conscious stage.
It seems that we are now in another extraordinary moment in time.
One perspective on such moments is the theory that change unfolds gradually, but a time
arrives when all conditions converge to create a discontinuity, a stair-step moment--and
then a whole new set of conditions emerges.
Albert Einstein said that problems can't be solved in the context in which they were
created. That is certainly true now. While the old answers can still appear to be tried and
true, and the new seem weak and inadequate, what is emerging now cannot be addressed
by the consciousness of the prior era,
So, what do we do with this awareness? There are major challenges to be faced.
Unacceptable conditions surround us and urgency moves us to action. But knowing the
nature of the moment, we also now know that mere problem-solving based on an old
consciousness will be inadequate.
A new consciousness needs to be nurtured, cultivated, and given voice. Social scientists
such as Paul Ray tell us that there are many people who are beginning to awaken to this
reality, but the emergence of this energy is still ill-formed, and certainly not yet powerful
or well organized. And there are grave perils that confront us, not the least of which is the
extinction of all life.
Beginning with a series of conversations, a group at the Foundation for Global
Community decided to embark on a concerted process to discover a better way to meet
the challenges of this moment. The group formed a set of questions to take out to a larger
circle, to determine which issues attract attention and energy. After more than 300
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interactions, that process confirmed that the first course of action should be to raise
people's consciousness that this is a pivotal time.
To reach out to a still larger audience, the group designed a series of advertisements that
were placed in local newspapers. These ads stress the need to think beyond the
constraints of narrow self-interest--to include both the long term and the wider system as
essential elements of the emerging consciousness.
So far, the ads have attracted several hundred people who have attended one or more
meetings for further exploration. We are still experimenting, learning, and developing
formats, content, and process. The group is determined to nurture and empower this new
emergent consciousness. We welcome your help and participation. After all, It's Time!
WE BELIEVE THAT IT'S TIME . . .
· to shift from confrontation to cooperation · to build a future on renewable energy · to
exercise people power, not economic power · to ensure that everyone has the basic
necessities of life · to bring America back from the edge of moral bankruptcy · to re-
engage in democracy
ACTIONS YOU CAN TAKE TO ADD YOUR VOICE TO THIS EFFORT :
· Send a postcard to President Bush expressing your views on war with Iraq: The White
House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C. 20500, or call the White House
Comment Line at 202-456-1111
· Write your member of Congress, government officials, and/or your newspaper's editor.
· Visit our website at www.globalcommunity.org to see copies of the newspaper ads
mentioned in this article, and for more information, links to members of Congress,
articles, and editorials. You can also join our conversation about America's future, make
a donation, or contribute your energy and talent to this moment.
From Roget's Thesaurus
Consumer [n] -- person who buys merchandise, services
Buyer, customer, end user, enjoyer, purchaser, shopper, user.
Consume [v1] -- use up
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Absorb, avail oneself of, deplete, devour, dissipate, dominate, drain, eat up, employ,
engross, exhaust, expend, finish, finish up, fritter away, frivol away, go through, lavish,
lessen, monopolize, obsess, preoccupy, profit by, put away, put to use, run out of, run
through, spend, squander, throw away, trifle, utilize, vanish, wash up, waste, wear out.
Consume [v2] -- eat, drink
Absorb, bolt, chow down, devour, down, eat up, feed, gobble, gorge, gulp, guzzle,
hoover, ingest, ingurgitate, inhale, meal, mow, nibble, partake, polish off, punish, put
away, put down, scarf, shack, stuff one's face, swallow, swill, take, toss down, wolf.
Consume [v3] -- destroy
Annihilate, crush, decay, demolish, devastate, eat up, exhaust, expend, extinguish, lay
waste, overwhelm, ravage, raze, ruin, suppress, waste, wreck.
War Will Not End Terrorism
Editorial by Tamim Ansary
Whenever I read about destroying the infrastructure of terrorism, I am troubled by the
hard fact that terrorism doesn't need any infrastructure to succeed. Indeed, its lack of
infrastructure is its main advantage. Historically, terrorist tactics have been exploited by
groups without state power, without the capacity to field armies, and without permission
to operate in the open.
The same thing is true of criminals at every level, a parallel that ought to give us pause.
Our military might, money, and technology toppled the Soviet Empire, but it couldn't
stop one guy, or maybe two, from making a bomb out of fertilizer that destroyed a federal
building in Oklahoma and killed several hundred people.
Our military might wasn't what stopped the men in Maryland from shooting random
strangers with a high-powered rifle.
It couldn't prevent two high school students from slaughtering their classmates at
Columbine High School in Colorado. The Columbine shooters then killed themselves, so
we couldn't even bring them to justice.
None of these criminals needed their own infrastructure. They used the infrastructure of
the society they were attacking.
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The same is true of the men who destroyed the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
They didn't have their own flight schools; they used ours. They didn't have their own
airplanes; they used ours. They didn't even make those box-cutters; they bought the ones
we made. And they killed themselves in the process of committing their atrocities, so we
can't even bring them to justice. To me, they bear frightening similarities to the kids who
slaughtered their schoolmates at Columbine.
Why is it then that in our national conversation about terrorism, we use the language of
war and not that of crime-busting? I think the war metaphor is based on wishful thinking.
Crime is a subtle problem and hard to get a handle on. War, on the other hand, is
something we can just declare and wage and win--and we can do it virtually without
casualty to our own forces, as we proved in the Persian Gulf, again in the Balkans, and
most recently in Afghanistan.
Therefore, wishfully, hopefully, we talk about terrorism as if it were just another nation-
state, a monolithic entity. We call it by a single name--Al Qaeda--thereby reducing
terrorism to an organization that can be eliminated if only its headquarters and officers
can be found. In the first few months after Sept. 11, we even spoke of a single
Napoleonic mastermind, Osama bin Laden.
But what if we're operating with the wrong model? What if terrorism is more like crime?
The model we're using shapes our assumptions and our specific responses follow as the
night follows day.
Take the "War on Drugs," for example. Merely calling it "a war" suggests the sorts of
apparatus needed to solve the problem: infrared night goggles, heat seeking missiles,
camouflage outfits, jungle air drops. Has the military approach to the drug problem
worked? I'd say the jury is still out.
Repeating the same error with terrorism could be more costly. Again, calling it a war
locks us into assumptions about what steps to take. Real war consists of one state going
head-to-head with another. Each government tries to destroy the capacity of the other to
keep functioning. Whoever loses this capacity first is forced to say, "I give up."
Our proposals for stamping out terrorism come to us without scrutiny from this familiar
model. That's why the buzz phrases are "defeating terrorist states" and "destroying the
infrastructure of terrorism." In practice, these phrases turn out to simply mean "defeating
states" and "destroying infrastructure." The word "terrorism" is just slapped on them to
disguise the fact that these are the same old responses to a brand new problem.
After all, suppose we do conquer Iraq and then Iran and then North Korea, and then
Sudan and Libya and Syria, and whatever other countries are designated as "terrorist
states." Will terrorism end?
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The answer is surely no. Terrorism is born of grudge and grievance. Some say the
grudges are invalid and the grievances imagined. Those people should get over it, they
say. They might be right. And if wishes were horses, such opinions would be relevant.
But in the real world, we have to deal with the fact that terrorism does have sources. And
we have to confront the fact that terrorism is nourished by dislocation, chaos, impotence,
and secrecy.
Reducing functioning societies to anarchy by destroying their infrastructure and killing
great numbers of their citizens is likely to increase whatever legacy of grudge and
grievance is already in place. It is also likely to increase the number of dislocated
individuals living in furious impotence and stewing in secrecy. This may be a price worth
paying if the original threat is a foreign government that is out to conquer our country.
Go to war with Iraq? Certainly, if the Iraqi government and its ruler Saddam Hussein
think they have a shot at conquering the United States and intend to try.
But if terrorism is the problem to be solved, it's a whole different matter. In that case,
making war on Iraq and other nation-states may well be the worst possible policy,
because it is only likely to make the problem worse.
San Francisco writer Tamim Ansary, the son of a former Afghan politician, is the author
of West of Kabul, East of New York. Reprinted with permission.
Zero Waste Campaign: New Zealand
Interview with Warren Snow
Compelled by concern for the environment, 25 years ago New Zealander Warren Snow
left a successful company that he had started at age 19. "I decided to throw my hat in
and try to find out what sustainability meant, and work for that." A major interest Snow
has had is recycling. In 1997, he founded Zero Waste New Zealand Trust to promote and
facilitate the implementation of zero waste programs, the complete abolition of waste in
his country's organizations, businesses, and communities.
Snow recently gave a talk at the Foundation and a video interview. The following is
based on the interview:
I began working in the recycling movement, because I saw it as an environmental
initiative that would also create work. I felt that the market or the private sector was
unable to create the jobs we needed in our country. It seemed that many of the people in
the environmental movement were not seeing the social side of it, and I felt that if the two
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weren't brought together, you couldn't have sustainability. Recycling offered a way to
do that.
The same industrial system that created the waste problem has created two ways of
handling it--landfills and incineration. A landfill is a toxic dump that has to be looked
after for at least 1000 years. The second method is to burn waste, with all the consequent
toxic releases into the atmosphere and dangerous residues still going to landfill. Instead,
we've been working for the last ten years on the idea of creating jobs from reducing
waste-- a dividend--by helping communities to put their hands over the end of the pipe.
The benefits are quite surprising. When you recycle and reuse and remanufacture, you
create significantly more jobs than disposal does. And most are entry-level jobs, so we're
putting the rungs back on the ladder for those that have missed out in the modern, high-
tech knowledge economy.
Now we think it is ultimately possible to create a close-looped, materials-efficient
economy where there is no waste at all. When you're working in recycling, you are not
impacting the whole system; you are not affecting the way the materials are made that
you are trying to recycle.
Three years ago, we started the Zero Waste New Zealand Trust to help achieve
sustainability through changing the way materials flow through society, from the front
end of the pipe to the back end. Zero Waste means looking at the whole system and
supply chain and redesigning it from the beginning--working with business to promote
cleaner production, working with industrial designers to design the waste out in the first
place, working to help develop businesses that are based on reintegrating waste.
Zero Waste is just a "brand" for a vast set of design principles and activities and
behaviors and technologies all the way down the supply chain that everybody can be
involved in. Zero Waste means you go back up the chain and design things in a different
way so that they can be reintegrated into the economy, or back harmlessly into nature, as
you have here in Palo Alto, where green waste is being recycled and made into compost.
However, look at your landfill. (The video interview was conducted at the Palo Alto
landfill.) This landfill represents a failure of resource management. Those mattresses over
there, because of the way they are designed, they have to be made of synthetic materials.
The people that designed these mattresses didn't give one thought to this day, the day at
the end of their life that the mattresses arrived here.
All the materials that flow into a society-- the plus economy where things are made--
are monitored by huge technology called logistics management and supply chain
management. A similar technology is needed for the minus economy so that things that
leave society can be recycled back into the economy or reintegrated back into the
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environment. We're developing this concept of reverse logistics, of discard
management. On my way here I met a man from a very large American corporation, and
his job is logistics manager. He belongs to a society of logistics managers and they have
conferences. He admitted to me that not once had they discussed the issue of what
happens to all the stuff that they, with huge skill and ingenuity, bring into the society. We
need these guys to put the same focus on discard management as they do on supply
management.
We're the only species that doesn't have a Zero Waste policy. Nature perfected Zero
Waste over millions of years. It is only in the last hundred years that humanity has moved
away from recycling and creating benign products that don't harm the environment. So
we're really just getting back on the program.
To this end, the Zero Waste Trust works with government, municipalities, community
organizations, institutions, and businesses. Our largest university wants to set up the Zero
Waste Institute with us to train people in the disciplines that will enable New Zealand to
create a Zero Waste society. We have large international corporations contacting us and
coming to our conferences. I think the best thing for me, personally, is that after 25 years
of being vitally concerned about sustainability and trying many things, for the first time it
really feels like the friction is being removed. Zero Waste seems to be catching on, and I
have the feeling of really achieving something.
In three years, we have reached the point where over 40 percent of New Zealand
municipalities have signed on for the official target of Zero Waste by 2015. Now this is
really significant. It means that they are actually committed to having no waste by the
year 2015. Our campaign's goal is to have as a national policy in New Zealand: Zero
Waste by 2020.
It also makes me happy that, in communities that are suffering economically, we are
helping them to win contracts and to create jobs. One example is a fellow named Alex.
He and some of his associates were having brushes with the law and the usual problems
of people who don't have work. He now has a job in a recycling program. On one
occasion when I returned to that town, I asked how Alex was doing. It was his day off,
and he was down at the kindergarten teaching kids about recycling! He has bought a car,
he's looking after his family, and he is very proud of the work he is doing. That's the
kind of thing that makes me feel great. We have found that frequently, the often-
unemployed take to this work with a passion. They really do want a job and they are
excited about and believe in what they are doing.
But the most inspiring thing of all is how grassroots and community-driven Zero Waste
is. There is no way that we would have the resources to achieve what we have without the
many disparate groups and volunteers around the country who are actually creating this
movement in their communities.
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I get meaning from this. I love what I'm doing and I couldn't imagine anything more
enjoyable. I feel very passionate about it. I feel that we have a last chance in the next five
to ten years to turn things around so that we are going in the right direction. We may
never quite get to Zero; but if, in 20 years time, a community had a target of zero waste
and there was still three percent left, who would say they had failed?
Zero Waste New Zealand Trust, P.O. Box 33 1695, Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand.
E-mail: mailbox@zerowaste.co.nz. Website: www.zerowaste.co.nz
Who else is going for Zero Waste?
STATES/MUNICIPALITIES:
· Canberra adopted "No Waste by 2010" in 1996
· Western Australia is in the process of adopting "Towards Zero Waste by 2020"
· USA: Zero Waste targets have been adopted by Del Norte County, the city of Seattle,
Santa Cruz County, San Luis Obispo County, and Boulder, Colorado
· Toronto adopted "Zero Waste by 2010" in January, 2001
· Zero waste campaigns are also operating in South Australia, England, Wales, Ireland,
India, Egypt, Asia, and the Philippines
BUSINESSES:
· Ricoh Group
· Toyota
· Interface Carpets
· Bell Canada
· Kimberly Clark
· Dupont Inc
· Hewlett-Packard
· Honda Motor Corp.
· Xerox
Some Examples of Zero Waste Policies
With Zero Waste, discards are seen as valuable resources that generations to come will
need. Instead of protecting these resources by simply recovering them for recycling after
a product's useful life is over, Zero Waste goes beyond recycling and looks at the entire
life-cycle of a product, from design phase to recovery.
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NEW ZEALAND leads the way. There are now 26 communities in New Zealand that
are taking part in a national pilot project with the aim of achieving Zero Waste at the
local level. The Zero Waste initiatives include a commitment to dramatically reduce
waste sent to landfills and a strategy in which communities decide which Zero Waste
activities are most appropriate for their localities. Each community receives $25,000 from
the Zero Waste New Zealand Trust to jump-start its Zero Waste programs. The program
was originally designed to fund waste efforts in ten communities, but the popularity of
the program resulted in funding for an additional 16 communities.
EUROPE: A European Union law requires that all cars made in Europe must be taken
back free of charge by their makers (with 85% being reused or recycled), Mercedes is
leading the pack. The company has created a process where their cars can be dismantled
for recycling in just four hours. By reusing the recovered materials, Mercedes is saving
manufacturing costs and reducing their impact on the earth's natural resources.
FETZER WINE has the goal of zero waste by 2009 and is already close to achieving it.
Fetzer is converting to organic vineyards. By reducing, reusing and recycling, the
company has already slashed its garbage by 93%. A big chunk of their waste is
composted -- mostly grape seeds and cork. The company is also committed to buying
recycled ato help keep markets alive for the tons of paper, cans and glass they recycle
each year. Even the roof on their building is recycled.
In addition, solar energy provides power to Fetzer's buildings and supplies enough
energy to fill and cap 1.2 million bottles of wine each year. Finally, all Fetzer products
come in recyclable packaging.
SWEDEN first required manufacturers to take back products for reuse and recycling.
Now Sweden is getting tough on landfills. The environmental agency there is
recommending a $40 per ton tax on dumping in a landfill. The current $25 tax has been
so successful at cutting landfill waste that a higher tax is expected to cut waste even
more.
BERKELEY, CA: Although many Styrofoam containers are labeled "CFC free," they
still contain chlorofluorocarbons. Because Styrofoam production is still a hazard to the
earth's ozone layer and contributes to global warming, Berkeley is continuing to ban it in
restaurants, fast-food outlets, and city-sponsored events. But these users can't replace the
Styrofoam with just anything: 50% of the new eating ware has to be either recyclable or
biodegradable.
Producer Responsibility
One of the key components of the Zero Waste approach is called Producer Responsibility.
It puts the responsibility for materials entering the waste stream on the front end of a
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product's life, with the manufacturer--not on the back end, with the consumer. A few
examples of companies that have adopted this are:
KODAK has taken heat from environmentally-minded consumers for its disposable
cameras. In response, the company began a "Take-Back" program in 1990 to reuse and
recycle the cameras. Components are reused up to ten times in new cameras, except for
the acrylic lenses, which are ground up and recycled into new products. Kodak pays
photo-finishers for used cameras, providing a financial incentive for retailers to collect
them. (However, consumers should verify that their photo-finisher returns these cameras
to Kodak.) Kodak reports that it has saved 20,000 tons of waste by preventing the
disposal of 250 million of its single-use cameras.
XEROX takes back its office equipment for recycling at the end of its useful life. The
program has been profitable and prompted Xerox to design its products for recyclability.
THE BIOCORP COMPANY is challenging the notion that "single-use" has to mean
"disposable," by offering an alternative to plastic and Styrofoam food service items.
BioCorp cups, plates, and cutlery are made from fully biodegradable cornstarch and
natural polymers, and can be composted and returned to the earth within several weeks
after use. BioCorp also offers biodegradable leaf collection bags that can be composted
along with their contents. (These plastics biodegrade best in a municipal or industrial
facility instead of a home compost bin.)
INTERFACE, INC., 3M, DUPONT, MILLIKEN AND COLLINS & AIKMAN:
Interface, Inc., pioneered the concept and others have followed: Instead of selling carpet
to a customer who is then eventually responsible for that carpet's disposal, these
companies lease carpeting so that the company can recycle it back into new carpeting at
the end of its useful life.
Producer Responsibility: Legislation
"Producer Responsibility," or "Take Back" laws, where the manufacturer must take its
product or packaging back for remanufacture or reuse, are now on the books in a29
countries. In addition, 15 countries have PR laws for batteries, and nine countries have
PR laws for electronics. The concept is popular in Europe, and has spread to Asia and
Latin America.
MASSACHUSETTS AND CALIFORNIA have banned cathode ray tubes (CRTs) from
landfills. CRTs are commonly found in computer monitors and contain an average of 5-8
pounds of lead per unit. It is hoped that the Massachusetts ruling and others like it will
prompt computer companies to find alternatives to the heavy metals currently used in
computer manufacturing.
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CALIFORNIA'S Waste Management Board has adopted Zero Waste as one of its
seven goals. California will work with manufacturers to get companies involved in "take
back" programs for the reuse and recycling of their products.
MANY COUNTIES, CITIES, AND STATES across the country are banning the sale
of mercury thermometers and other consumer products that contain mercury. Mercury is
a neurotoxin, and can affect neurological functions like walking, talking, thinking, seeing.
Thermometers are the leading cause of mercury in the solid waste stream, and digital
thermometers offer an environmentally preferable alternative. Some retailers no longer
sell products containing mercury. Among them are Brooks, Target, Wal-Mart,
Albertson's, Kinney, Toys `R' Us, Safety First, The First Years, and Meijers.
Shifting Gears: The Joy of (not always) Driving
This unusual article by Jeremy Sinek, Editor of World of Wheels magazine, is reprinted
with permission.
Since you're reading World of Wheels, I'm going to make a giant leap of logic and
assume that you love cars and you enjoy driving.
Not for you the notion of a motor vehicle as merely an appliance or "a tool, personal
transportation, for the use of." Cars, to you, are intrinsically interesting. Driving is an act
of emotion, not mere motion.
That being the case, I have a proposal that may shock you.
Drive less.
Am I nuts? The editor of a car magazine telling people to cut back on their driving? No,
I'm serious: if you're serious about how much you like to drive, do it less.
What this planet needs more than anything is fewer cars on the road. We need fewer cars
crashing into each other, cleaner air in our cities, less carbon dioxide heating up the
planet. We need to reduce our dependence on the foreign sources of oil over which future
wars may be fought.
At the same time, what we of the auto-enthusiast persuasion need is more quality in our
driving, not quantity.
Put these two needs together and what we have is an opportunity for enlightened self-
interest. If we're going to benefit from reduced traffic, we who like to drive will have to
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do our part. But there are personal spin-off benefits from leaving the car at home, say,
one or two days a week. And on the days we do drive, we'll enjoy it that much more.
On many of North America's busiest highways, traffic already grinds along so slowly
that it would be literally faster to ride a bike to work. How much longer before walking
becomes the faster alternative?
It's not an issue only of journey times. The greater the traffic congestion, the nastier the
driving experience becomes. The fact that you have zero opportunity to enjoy your car's
scalpel-sharp steering and spine-crushing acceleration is the least of it. Stop-and-go
driving is tedious, frustrating, and mentally draining. Hell on your car, too.
Worse, you're trapped in the company of people behaving badly. The heavier the
congestion, the worse the behavior. I don't know about you, but I normally go a long way
to avoid being near aggressive, selfish, boorish people who get what they want by
pushing and shoving.
Don't think you're exempt if you're the one who's behaving badly. What do you think is
happening to your stress levels, to your heart rate, every time you cut off another driver
so that maybe you can get home seven-tenths of a second earlier than if you had stayed in
the other lane? Of course, if that's the way you drive, the chances are you're also blowing
a wad every year in traffic tickets and inflated insurance premiums.
Let's face it, this whole concept of personal mobility that the automobile represents is a
wondrous privilege and luxury that we abuse and misuse shamefully. And I don't mean
misuse in the sense of driving badly, though Lord knows there's enough of that going
around. I mean it in the sense of driving inappropriately; driving when you really should
not be driving.
Last May, on a warm, dry Saturday night, a neighbor invited us to their house party. My
wife and I walked the entire 150 meters to get there. Two other guests, each of whom
lives less than 300 meters from the venue, drove to the party.
C'mon folks, this is not OK!
Another example. Go to any mall, and even in the nicest of weather you will see drivers
circling around looking for parking as close as possible to the mall entrance. Sometimes
people even get into fights over empty parking spots. Meanwhile, maybe 100 meters
further away, there's acres of empty parking. People spend five minutes burning gas and
spewing emissions so they can save themselves a one-minute walk.
Then there are all those rugged, outdoorsy SUV drivers. Have you noticed how it always
seems to be SUVs parked illegally in the fire lane right outside the mall entrance because
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their "active-lifestyle" (pah!) drivers are too lazy to walk 50 or 100 meters from a
legitimate parking spot?
Or how about this for the height of absurdity? Suppose we need to pick up a carton of
milk or rent a movie. We put on our $200 "athletic" shoes, brush past the bicycle in the
garage to get into the car, and drive to the plaza 0.9 kilometers away. If we think about it
at all, maybe we justify it to ourselves in terms of time saved.
But then, maybe later that same day, we get into the car again and drive a few kilometers
to the fitness club, for which we pay hundreds of dollars a year in membership. There, we
spend the next hour or two doing totally artificial exercise on a bicycle or a treadmill
going absolutely nowhere. And on the way home afterwards we stop to fill up our tank
and bitch about the price of gasoline.
Now you tell me who's nuts.
(Here's a thought: Imagine how much energy could be saved and pollution avoided if
every exercise machine in every gym was hooked up to a generator that fed electricity
back into the hydro grid. Remember, you read it here first.)
Quite aside from oil crunches and global warming, there's another crisis facing our
western lifestyles: growing levels of obesity and declining physical fitness. Surveys show
that not only are we getting fatter, so are our kids.
Could there be a connection between the obesity epidemic, dirty air, global warming--
and the number of mothers I see every morning chauffeuring their 1.7 children to
neighborhood schools in nine-seater Chevrolet Suburbans? D'ya think?
You can write Jeremy at 6200 Dixie Rd., Suite 220, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5T
2E1, or e-mail him at jsinek@helpardpublishing.ca
If Jesus would drive a hybrid, who'd drive a Hummer?
The Car as an Expression of Values
by Walt Hays
Satirists have been having fun with "What Would Jesus Drive?" Cartoons and op-eds
conjure up everything from Jesus on a donkey to his needing a pickup for his carpenter
tools. But while the Jesus reference may not speak to everyone, it has called attention to
an important fact--that we make an ethical statement in the car we drive.
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In November, a broad coalition of religious groups signed a letter to the Big Three auto
companies in the U.S. asking them to improve the fuel economy of their vehicles. They
based their request primarily on the fact that auto emissions are a principal contributor to
global warming, which scientists predict will cause droughts, floods, rising sea levels,
epidemics, and greater extinction of species. While that letter made no reference to Jesus,
the New York Times reports that Paul Gorman, executive director of the group, did
support the request by stating that "we are under a commandment to be faithful stewards
of God's creation."
One of the smaller groups in the November coalition, the Evangelical Environmental
Network, made headlines with its ads asking, "What Would Jesus Drive?" Reverend Jim
Ball, who directs the Network and drives a Prius, Toyota's hybrid, asks, "How can I love
my neighbor as myself if I'm filling their lungs with pollution?" As reported by
Katherine Ellison in the Washington Post, the Network is launching a barrage of
publicity, mostly on Christian radio stations and cable television, urging consumers and
automakers to start thinking of gas mileage as an ethical statement. According to Ball,
"Most people don't think the kind of car they drive has anything to do with their faith.
We want to show them it does."
As the Times notes, the religious leaders' efforts could create complications for
Chevrolet, which makes huge SUVs like the TrailBlazer, and has begun a drive to court
religious conservatives by such gestures as sponsoring a Christian concert series. The
automaker is not likely to be overjoyed by Gorman's comment: "Chevrolet is
encouraging people to buy automobiles which are poisoning God's creation."
Jesus' transportation preference has gained enormous media coverage, but the message
has clearly not convinced everyone. On November 19, the San Jose Mercury News
featured an article entitled "Hummer H2 Is Hot in the Valley." According to that report,
Silicon Valley's newest status symbol needs a big parking space. The Hummer H2, the
huge sport-utility vehicle shaped like a brick on wheels, is a surprise hit. In October, it
outsold all other models in its class, including SUVs from BMW, Cadillac, Lincoln, and
Lexus. Hummer dealers can barely keep the $50,000 behemoths in stock.
The article notes that dealerships have been surprised by the number of female buyers of
the vehicle, which weighs 6,400 pounds and gets only 13 miles per gallon. It quotes one:
"You're up high. You feel very safe. It's fun to drive. It's fun to be in. It makes people
smile." As stated by one dealer, "People are just emotional over this truck. I've never
seen anything like it in terms of the passion."
Reverend Ball might ask what kind of ethical statement that makes.
Automakers respond that they make many models with better gas mileage, but consumers
don't buy them. Typical is Eron Shoesteck of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers:
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"We can't control the price of gas, and as long as gas is an inexpensive commodity,
there is no incentive for consumers to use less of it." While that statement is true, it
overlooks at least two important facts. First, when President Clinton attempted to
introduce a small energy tax (which would have raised gas prices) at the beginning of his
first term, the automakers mobilized all their resources into defeating it. Second, the
technology exists to enable even SUVs to obtain better mileage, but instead of developing
it, the automakers continue to fight any effort to increase fuel economy requirements. As
stated by a spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists, "It's a disappointment
they're focusing on putting out large gas-guzzling vehicles, instead of taking the
technology they have to improve the economy of the fleet."
Automakers aside, however, car buyers do have a choice. Even if it seems daunting to
try to influence our political leaders to take action on climate change, our purchases do
make a difference. And regardless of speculation as to what Jesus would do, the car we
drive does reflect our values.
With SUVs, the Devil's in the Details
by Walt Hays
In addition to contributing to global warming, it turns out that SUVs are a scam, in more
ways than one. On November 26, 2002, the New York Times published a review of a
book entitled High and Mighty: SUVs--The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How
They Got That Way, by Keith Bradsher. The reviewer, Jay Rosen, chairman of the
journalism department at New York University, says that it is "one of the best books
about American politics that I have read recently, although it's supposed to be about
cars."
The politics deal with the definition of what is a "truck." Congress originally established
fuel efficiency standards in response to the Arab oil embargo of 1973, but the auto
industry persuaded them to set lower standards for trucks based on the argument that
higher ones would leave trucks with too little weight and power for the farmers and small
contractors who need them. Then the automakers charged into that loophole, claiming
(successfully so far) that all SUVs, including such luxury cars as the Lincoln Navigator,
are really trucks.
That loophole led to enormous profits for the auto industry. SUVs constitute more than
half of auto sales by U.S. companies, and account for almost all their profits. The book
describes how a single Ford factory in Michigan produced $11 billion in annual SUV
sales (equal to McDonald's global sales) and $3.7 billion in pre-tax profits.
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But more alarming is the truth about what people are buying. As Mr. Rosen
summarizes it, the book's thesis is that Detroit has utilized sophisticated social
psychology to convince drivers that a bigger, heavier, taller vehicle is safe because it
feels strong and intimidating and looks "likely to demolish other people's cars in
collisions." For example, one Chrysler marketing person said that the Dodge Durango is
supposed to look like a "savage jungle cat," and another summarizes the psychology by
stating that the vehicle is designed to be "aggressive on the outside and Ritz-Carlton on
the inside," or as Rosen puts it, "menacing but comfy." In reality, however, Mr. Bradsher
describes SUVs as the "world's most dangerous vehicles [and, Rosen adds, the most anti-
social]...tippy monstrosities with mediocre brakes."
The need is not really for more brains,
the need is now for a gentler, a more tolerant people
than those who won for us against the ice, the tiger, and the bear.
The hand that hefted the ax, out of some old blind allegiance to the past,
fondles the machine gun as lovingly.
It is a habit man will have to break to survive,
but the roots go very deep.
Loren Eiseley
CORRECTION : Through an error of transcription, a quote attributed to Congressman
Dennis Kucinich in the Nov/Dec 2002 issue of Timeline should have been attributed to
Dr. Bela Banathy, the author of the book Guided Evolution of Society: A Systems View,
which the congressman quoted.
TIMELINE (ISSN 1061-2734) is published bimonthly by the Foundation for Global Community 222 High
Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301-1097
www.globalcommunity.org - timeline@globalcommunity.org
Managing Editors: Kay Hays, Mac Lawrence
Editorial Board: : Jim Burch, Don Burns, Diane Gordon, Walter Hays,Sandra Mardigian, Jackie Mathes,
Susan Stansbury.
Art Director (print edition): Sue Lyttle
Desktop Publishing: Diane Gordon
Electronic Edition: Timeline Team
A print edition of Timeline with photographs and artwork is available for a subscription price of $15 per
year (six issues). This is pretty much what it costs us to produce and mail Timeline since our writers are all
volunteers and we have no editorial expenses. But we do have overhead costs for our building, computers,
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etc. So if you feel Timeline and the other work our Foundation does are valuable and you want to help
keep us going, please consider making a tax-free donation to Foundation for Global Community. Be sure
to indicate that it is for Timeline E-mail Edition -- otherwise our subscription people will automatically
send you the printed edition, and the whole idea of saving natural resources is down the tubes. Thanks!
Palo Alto, California
February, 2003
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