Letters: 9/19/19

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Strike for the climate

Please join the world-wide Climate Strike events, a collaboration of 350.org and other organizationss inspired by the young Swedish woman Greta Thunberg, who started the Friday School Climate Strikes, inspiring young students around the world to increase awareness on how dire our situation is with climate change. 

On Sept. 20, young people and adults will strike all across the U.S. and world to demand transformative action be taken to address the climate crisis. Millions of us will take the streets to demand a right to a future for upcoming generations. 

There are two events happening in Boulder on Sept. 20th. The one I am organizing will take place on the corners of 28th Street and Pearl Street. 

There is also an event at 11 a.m. on the CU campus at the Norlin Quadrangle with educational speakers. 

Please bring signs that show your passion regarding fracking, sustainable energy, plastics, zero waste or anything else. 

My focus is on Starbucks and Whole Foods, which are located near 28th and Pearl Streets. 

Whole Foods used to have real plates and compostables, but since Amazon bought them their practices have become more unsustainable. 

Starbucks is a huge company with over 28,000 locations in the U.S. If Starbucks was to become a leader in being sustainable, it could make a huge difference in educating folks. As it is now, they send millions of single-use plastics and non-recyclable paper cups to the landfills every day. The EPA and Eco-Cycle say that striving for “zero waste” is one of the easiest and quickest ways to fight climate change.

Please spread the word and encourage your friends and colleagues to join in this huge planetary event. 

Find a strike near you or have your own strike at strikewithus.org.

Laurie Dameron/Boulder

MAGA masking

Thinly disguised behind “Make America Great Again” is the darker “Make America White Again” and there are distinct echoes of “Germany Uber Alles” in Donald Trump’s “America First” sloganeering. Similarly, behind the Republican resistance to firearm regulation is a tacit acceptance of gun violence, be it of criminal, mental, suicidal or law enforcement origin. This extends into the very profitable armaments industries and our endorsement of proxy, sublet elsewhere, endless warfare. Such is the dystopian reality of America today. 

Robert Porath/Boulder 

Shift to a plant-based diet

“Climate Change Threatens World Food Supply” was the lead story in early August in leading newspapers. It was prompted by the release of a summary report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), staffed by more than 100 experts from 52 countries.

The report details how climate change is threatening our world’s food and water supplies — turning arable land to desert, degrading soil and raising the frequency of devastating weather conditions. It concludes that avoiding wholesale starvation and mass migrations requires fundamental changes in current animal agriculture and land management practices, which account for 23% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

The conclusions of the IPCC report match closely those by Oxford Univrsity in 2017 and by Chatham House in 2015. A 2010 United Nations report blames animal agriculture for 19 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, 70 percent of freshwater use, and 38 percent of land use. All reports recommend a massive shift to plant-based eating.

In an environmentally sustainable world, meat and dairy products in our diet must be replaced by vegetables, fruits and grains, just as fossil fuels are replaced by wind, solar and other pollution-free energy sources. Our next visit to the supermarket provides a superb starting point.

Rudolph Helman/Boulder