A Green New Deal? & A New Book Out

Here's a nice, short article that puts the $700 billion economic stimulus package in perspective, in light of our pressing environmental and energy concerns. It highlights a concern that I share about the long-term viablility of this short-term solution to the economic crisis, calling for something akin to what commentators have called a Green New Deal to make real change on that front.

The article refers to a brand-new book from Van Jones that looks timely and insightful.

Thanks to Good Magazine.

Still using plastic bags?

My good friend Billy loves tote bags and exfoliating. Here's a nice looking tote that comes in two sizes, available at Whole Foods for just 79 to 99 cents. The toddlerish quote, complete with funky ellipses ("I love my home... planet Earth") is from Sheryl Crow.

Sometimes it can be difficult to use reusable bags at every trip to the store -- they're not always in the car, after all, and we don't exactly plan every trip to pick up essentials. I suggest forcing yourself to buy a bag or two every time you walk through those glass door and realize you've forgotten your lovely reusable bags at home. Of course, it'd be just as bad to have a million or so of these handsome sacks junking up our landfills, but doing this once or twice could remind you to keep your bags in the car (or near your bike!).

If you'd like to shift your consumer votes away from big oil (yes, they make those plastic bags, too!) and toward your community, pick out one of these gorgeous totes on Etsy, and be proud of your commitment to the planet, to local commerce, and to the arts all at once.

Extra credit: Your proud bag transition can serve as an example for yourself: what other decisions can you make to divert your dollars from big, heavy, dirty industry, to nimble, clean, local purveyors?

This year, China banned the use of plastic shopping bags nationwide, and San Francisco also became the first U.S. city to ban the use of these wispy disposables. If China and San Francisco can agree on something, surely we can abide within our own households, eh? Here's an interesting summary from the AP concerning various public policies on plastic bags in the past several years:

Cities around the world are moving to ban plastic shopping bags to protect the environment. A roundup:

• In April 2007, Leaf Rapids, a town of about 550 people in Canada's Manitoba, became the first municipality in North America to adopt a law forbidding the use of plastic bags by shops. The law calls for fines of as much as 1,000 Canadian dollars, though no one has yet received one, a town official says. Local businesses offer reusable cloth bags as an alternative.

• In March 2007, San Francisco became the first city to ban common plastic shopping bags. At least 30 villages and towns in Alaska have followed suit.

• In January, the New York City Council voted to require large stores and retail chains to recycle plastic bags.

• The following U.S. cities are considering fees or bans of plastic bags: Austin, Texas; Bakersfield, Calif.; Boston; New Haven, Conn.; Portland, Ore.; Phoenix; and Annapolis, Md.

• In Germany, stores provide consumers with the option of a plastic bag or a canvas- or cotton-made tote — for a fee. Many German consumers carry their own bags when doing the shopping and it's not uncommon to see some using wicker baskets or wheeled carts. Stores that offer plastic bags have to pay a recycling fee.

• In January, China announced a ban on stores handing out free plastic shopping bags. The ban takes effect June 1, two months before Beijing hosts the Summer Olympics. The measure will eliminate the flimsiest plastic bags and force stores to offer more durable bags.

• Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania's Zanzibar islands have banned flimsy plastic, introducing minimum thickness requirements. Many independent supermarkets in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, now charge a small fee for each plastic bag but also give away a free, reusable basket with a minimum purchase.

• In 2003, Ireland introduced a 22-cent levy on every plastic shopping bag. That, the government said, resulted in a big drop in the number of bags that stores were handing out. Some switched to paper bags; others stopped handing out bags completely. In July 2007, Ireland raised the fee to 32 cents.

• Shopkeepers in the English town of Modbury, which has about 1,500 residents, eliminated disposable plastic bags, while some of the country's big grocery chains have offered customers money-saving incentives to reuse old bags.

• The Swedish government is encouraging plastic bag producers to continually develop greener bags. Two of the Nordic country's biggest grocery chains have made biodegradable paper bags and reusable cloth bags available to shoppers.

From the Associated Press

Thanks to AlternativeConsumer.com.

So many good people are from Ohio.

When I arrived in DC for law school I met a ton of people -- I must have added a hundred new Facebook friends (the most objective modern-day gauge of social activity, of course) since July. My classmates here at GW Law are friendly, very smart, well-rounded people with balanced lives and nuanced perspectives that I'm eager to experience every day. All of these new faces gave me the opportunity to explain who and am and where I'm from more than a few times. When I told people I'm from Ohio, it was hard not to notice how many of these folks said things like, "I know a lot of really good people from Ohio," or "I never met anyone from Ohio I didn't like." Here are the things that went through my head after hearing this kind of thing over and over:

Step 1: Midwestern pride
Midwesterners are known for their niceness and down-to-earth attitudes; both are quite likeable. No surprise here.

Step 2: Ohio pride as a specific Midwestern pride
Far from the vanilla flatland it's described as by less articulate left- and right-coasters, Ohio is a land of political swingery and complex urban-rural dynamics. It is the home of telecommunications executives and soybean farmers, wealthy Lake Erie boaters and landlocked hill-dwellers, consumer test markets and local farmers' markets. Its complexities represent the whole of the United States, which is why everyone from corporate marketeers to national political party chairs are keenly interested in the Buckeye State. Risking too-proud over-generalization, I think it makes sense that people who grow up amidst these differing dynamics have a flatfooted appeal that makes them likable to other Americans from all points non-Ohio.

Step 3: The dread
After the Ohio solidarity wore off, perhaps three days later -- any quicker, after all, would be sooner than the half-life of Buckeye pride would allow to dissipate into the 20001 ZIP code -- it occurred to me that there must be a lot of Ohioans out there to be giving all these non-Ohioans such frequent and favorable impressions. And then -- oh no -- of course there are: Ohio leeches fertilizer into its groundwater, and it leeches talent to Chicago, New York, and Washington. You can't turn a corner in Chicago without bumping scarves with someone from Lima or Canfield. Ohio nurtures well-balanced young adults with high hopes and honest eyes, and after they peak in Columbus or Cleveland they head to bigger ponds because they think that's the only place they can grow.

Step 4: A solution
I think that because Ohio is a microcosm of America, because it's a victim of post-industrial rust and because it is ripe for enviro-industrial seed-sowing, it's a place worth growing into, not growing out of. If the talent stays, if progressive hearts and ambitious minds resist retreat to bigger cities, Ohio can be an experiment in the new kind of progress required by the twenty-first century challenges of post-meltdown economic restructuring, of now-imperative green industrialization, and of red-versus-blue social issues concerning reproductive rights, gun control, and race relations.

I'll be thinking about how this experiment will go.