Scuttlebutt: Computers and Plastic
My ten-year-old computer died this week. Those of you who have experienced this (likely most of you) know what a huge inconvenience that can be. Running out of gas on the Golden Gate Bridge at rush hour is a big inconvenience, but once you get towed off the bridge while suffering the glares of hundreds of other drivers and pay the inevitable fine, it is over. Not so with a computer failure.
First you spend an hour or more on the phone with a tech before discovering that there is no solution to your problem. After a 45 minute wait to speak to someone and another 45 minutes while they worked with me I found out that I had lost my home folder. Of course, I had no idea what that meant, but apparently it is like having your entire personality erased. You are no longer a person or in the case of my computer, it is no longer a computer. Data mining may be in my future as I had started to write a book, but failed to keep it on a thumb drive. I'll never do that again.
By the way Apple is a two trillion dollar company. You would think they could afford to hire enough employees to answer the phone, but no. Though their employees are very friendly and nice, it took 45 minutes to speak to one of them. That is ridiculous.
So thanks to my wife's laptop, here I am writing my September column, but with little inspiration. The Covid virus is still raging, Trump is still President, my favorite teams are getting shellacked in the NBA playoffs (and as of this writing may be canceled), fires are burning all over, my computer died and I can't get to my chiropractor. Damn.
In other bad news Point Arena has lost a dear friend. The venerable Sonny Suddith has been lost to Covid19 and we are all the poorer for it. Best known for owning the Point Arena Deli (they prefer to not be called "the liquor store") he was far more than that. In the old days he would have been known as a "City Father". This is a term that was used to describe someone who was a significant influence and contributor to the culture and activities of a town. Sonny served on the Point Arena City Council, but was even more important interacting with friends and neighbors with his well-known humor and intimate knowledge of town affairs (yes, those kind of "affairs" too).
Though many knew Sonny better than I, I did live just a few doors down from him on Lake Street for over 20 years and often saw him making his rounds about town during his daily walks to the store. He was a welcome site as he went about town with his good cheer—tinged with a bit of cynicism.
Others can and will give a better accounting of his life and contributions to Point Arena, but here is one guy who says, "thanks, Sonny, for a life well lived".
China bashing is all the rage these days. Even while trying to cozy up to them, the President never misses an opportunity to criticize them and you won't read any apologies for them in this column. As a former merchant seaman who sailed those waters many times, I am particularly concerned about their activities in the South China Sea.
That doesn't mean everything they do is bad. They actually are ahead of the U.S. on many environmental issues despite their complicated and conflicting approach to coal burning, which finds them planning to build more coal plants while the existing ones are operating at 50% capacity (I told you it was complicated).
Jack Ma is the flamboyant head of Alibaba, the Amazon of China . He has created a mobile payment application called appropriately Alipay. This system allows users to earn "green energy points" by recycling, green purchases and other actions to avoid carbon emissions. As these points accumulate, a virtual tree grows on the user's phone, which Alipay matches with tree plantings and land protection.
This may at first glance seem rather trivial compared to the scale of our global environmental crisis, but there are 500 million users of this system in China and Alipay is looking to expand across Asia. So far 122 million trees have been planted and 432 sq. miles of some of China's driest areas have been transformed. This tree planting initiative is called Ant Forest (weird name) and has received the United Nations Environmental Program's 2019 Champion of the Earth award.
I have not found any other payment application that directs some profits in such a way while also encouraging sustainable behavior.
In other news the federal government and most economists are still hooked on the idea of consumption and growth. Mao Zedong's phrase "running dog capitalism" comes to mind, but fortunately many outside of government see the need for controlling our rapacious consumption of the earth's limited resources.
One of the big battles in the war over wasted resources concerns plastics. While most people understand the problems created by plastic use, virtually everyone is eager to get their hands on the next shiny plastic thing that comes their way.
A group of diverse public and private stakeholders have launched a high-profile plastics initiative establishing near-term targets for
U.S. circular economy efforts. Supported by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, The Recycling Partnership (TRP) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and have brought together trade organizations from the solid waste industry, municipal governments, and corporations such as Walmart, Coca-Cola, Target, Nestle, and Unilever to create the U.S.
Plastics Pact with four major goals. They begin by defining a list of "problematic or unnecessary packaging". They wish to see that all plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable, or compostable and that at least 50% of plastic packaging actually gets recycled. Finally, ensure that all plastic packaging contains at least 30% recycled or responsibly sourced bio-based content.
The World Wildlife Fund will be tracking the plastics footprint of member companies with reports made public.
If Walmart and Coca-Cola can do this, why can't Congress get on board (ask Mitch McConnell)?
