Small steps against climate change

Let’s start thinking about ways such as this to stop necessary waste.

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SOURCENationofChange

We go to meetings and discuss climate change.  And yet we don’t do anything about it. But here are somethings we can do.  The next time you’re invited to go to a big convention, and you would have to travel by plane to get there, try and see if they’re televising the convention.  You can listen to everything that’s going on. And you won’t be contributing to the pollution of the air by taking an unnecessary plane ride. And you may save money on the entry ticket.  Of course, you won’t be able to engage in chit-chat with other participants, but ask yourself: is that really valuable? Yes, I suppose it is if you are trying to sell things to the people attending the conference.  Otherwise, no.

If you’re part of an organization that’s going to have a convention or a giant meeting, see if you can convince the organizers NOT to hold it in some grand venue.  Instead, ask them to invest in television equipment so that the convention speakers can be broadcast, and no one needs to travel great distances while spewing pollution in the air.

Have you ever though how much unnecessary garbage is created by flyers distributed through snail mail?  Why is anyone doing that these days? Why not use emails? If you send flyers through the post office, 99.9% of them wind up in the garbage almost immediately.  Think of the unnecessary increase in the cost of distribution, not to mention the trees that have been sacrificed to print off the flyers. The government should place a pollution tax on every flyer produced and distributed through the mail.

And the government itself produces tons of paper garbage every week.  Have you noticed that the Internal Revenue Service, Social Security, Medicare, and oodles of other government offices insist on snail-mailing forms, notices, and unnecessary letters out to the public?  Sometimes they insist that “security” requires mailing, when surely they could figure out a way to send the same information electronically.

If the government is truly interested in “security” and believes it is necessary, perhaps it should ask the taxpayers if they really want things mailed to them, or if they would be just as happy with an electronic copy.

What about older people who aren’t computer savvy?  Shouldn’t they get snail mail versions? Well, of course.  Or perhaps they could get telephonic notices. Anything to stop the unnecessary downing of trees and the cost of distributing the paper all over the United States.

Every month I receive envelopes full of garbage from Medicare or my private insurer.  The information tells me little. It would be just as efficient to email it to me. And, besides, I can access the same information online.  Of course, I could access the information a lot easier if it were offered through systems that weren’t so security bound, making it extremely difficult to get the information in the first place.

Let’s start thinking about ways such as this to stop necessary waste.

FALL FUNDRAISER

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