I never knew the plastics industry had co-opted the recycling symbol in order to reduce people's image of plastic as an environmental issue. Bleak but not particularly surprising.
Four years ago, Clientearth and several Brussels citizens took the regional government to court over its lack of any air quality improvement plan. In the final hearing this week, all the government's lawyers managed to do to defend themselves was put the quality of their own pollution measurements into question. It's depressing.
On the contrary, rather than admitting that there is a problem and committing to solve it, the Brussels lawyers in court today have gone as far as discrediting the reliability of air quality measurements carried out by the government’s own environmental agency. In doing so, they expose the residents and workers of this city to unacceptable health risks in their day to day lives.
On the hypocrisy and deviousness of the fossil-fuel companies:
It’s here that British Petroleum, or BP, first promoted and soon successfully popularized the term “carbon footprint" in the early aughts. The company unveiled its “carbon footprint calculator” in 2004 so one could assess how their normal daily life — going to work, buying food, and (gasp) traveling — is largely responsible for heating the globe.
I knew about the anti-litter campaigns being funded by the packaging producers but I didn't know the carbon footprint was a similar industry invention. All created to put the focus on individual responsibility and cloak the oil industry's.
Recycling delays, rather than avoids, final disposal.
An in-depth look at our humongous plastic problem. Long read but worth it.
A perfect analogy for how climate change will affect us: by wearing us down, not through some singular event.
We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.
A flourishing economy mostly depends on an unsatisfied population and a declining environment.
