I know this was already mentioned in the Hadley cell diary on the Texas drought, but I want to push it front and center.
"24 Hours of Reality will focus the world’s attention on the full truth, scope, scale and impact of the climate crisis. To remove the doubt. Reveal the deniers. And catalyze urgency around an issue that affects every one of us."
-Al Gore, Chairman of the Climate Reality Project
My standard disclaimer: Zero waste is not the most important thing a person can do to reduce their carbon footprint. Taking public transportation over driving, particularly for a daily commute, weatherproofing one's home and turning down the thermostat, cutting down on air travel, switching to renewable energy sources, avoiding factory-farmed meat and most importantly political action to get the Republican climate deniers out of Congress are all bigger priorities in fighting climate change. Don't use zero waste as an excuse to rest on your green laurels.
And this is a diary about those bigger things. Changing lightbulbs and eating less meat are all well and good, but we need large-scale political action. We need regulation, we need tax incentives, we need a jobs program for weatherproofing and we need a LOT of money directly funneled to R&D for renewables.
Here Joe Romm interviews Al Gore for the Climate Progress blog:
http://thinkprogress.org/...
In any case, the reality of the climate crisis continues to unfold irrespective of what these attacks are, but as you also know extremely well, it’s urgent to rendezvous with reality in order to take the appropriate steps to save the future of civilization as we know it. That sounds like an expansive goal, but that’s really now what we’re facing. This crisis is very threatening, very urgent. We know the solutions require broad changes and we know it’s a fight that won’t be won overnight. And the politics, the campaigns, the media cycle, will all ebb and flow on this issue. But the reality of the crisis marches on. If we keep focusing on that reality, it is only a matter of time before we reach a tipping point with the public, beyond which inaction is no longer an option.
And just to keep this diary a token zero waste diary:
10 Honda Factories Are Now "Zero Waste"
Back in 2001, Honda Manufacturing of Alabama became the first zero-waste-to-landfill automotive facility in all of North America and the company has kept up the pace since then ...
Combined, Honda's 14 North American facilities send less than one-half of one percent of all operating waste to landfills. The two remaining landfill waste streams are paper, plastic and food waste from break rooms and cafeterias at Honda's Mexico automobile and motorcycle factories, where there are no environmentally responsible means of disposal; and a byproduct of the paint pretreatment process for aluminum body panels at Honda's East Liberty and Marysville, OH sites. This byproduct, in accordance with EPA regulations, has been deemed non-recyclable.