Tea Bags and Plastic

I do not live a decadent lifestyle. If I drink, it is usually a glass of $10.00 wine. I don't gamble. Except when I am travelling, I almost never eat in restaurants and my definition of fine food is a plate of brown rice with some broccoli and mushrooms on top. I really try to keep my life as simple as possible. When I relax, all I want is a cup of tea - a drink that has been drunk for centuries around the world. In fact, according to Wikipedia other than water, tea is drunk more than any other beverage. (https://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Tea). Plain tea is very simple - boiling water poured over the leaves of a specific plant that originally came from Asia but now grows in various parts of the world. That is all. How can tea not be good for you - or at least harmless?

The answer is plastic. Tea and plastic - two words that should never be used in the same sentence. Tea is natural, plastic is made from oil. But the purveyors of high-end teas have decided to use plastic tea bags for their best teas. And it turns out that those plastic bags release literally billions of microbeads of plastic into the tea which then end up in our guts (Globe and Mail).

Life is incredibly complex. There are all kinds of disasters happening all around us. Some of those disasters are, at least initially completely beyond our capacity to predict. But surely, with all of the discussions as to the number of micro bits and pieces of plastic that are floating in our rivers, lakes and oceans, some bright person at the tea company would have realized that using plastic for tea bags would potentially cause problems. Don't they test things before they release them to the public?

On the other hand, perhaps it is some sort of far-left dastardly plot to kill off all of the capitalists drinking their premium brands of tea.

Greta Thunberg

It is interesting to read various people's reaction to Greta Thunberg's, the 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden, address to the UN. Some people are stuck in a rut - arguing as to whether or not her comments were polite enough or appropriate for a young person to make to her "betters". Others are, somewhat unbelievably, arguing that there is no such thing as climate change and that therefore there was no need for her to be there at all. Some people seem to feel it is all a public relations ploy engineered by the political left or her parents or that she is being manipulated by participants in some sort of weird conspiracy plot designed to change life as we know it. I am sure if I dug down deep enough, I would find at least a few people suggesting that is was all an alien plot intended to soften the world up for an alien invasion.

I do not have a clue as to who wrote her speech. I do not care if her thoughts have been influenced by her parents or by people who think that the world leaders need to get off of their butts and do something. It does not matter if she is a bit vulnerable or perhaps easily influenced. In fact the whole debate about who she is etc is just a smokescreen so that people do not have to confront the reality that our climate is changing and that while some of those changes might be due to cyclical complex weather patterns, some of the changes are clearly because of what humans have spewed into the atmosphere, the land and the water.

It is easy to get distracted by how she got here, how she travels about or to debate her age or her relative lack of sophistication in terms of world affairs. She clearly is relatively sheltered, coming from a first world country with access to all types of services and levels of education. She is at best naive in terms of her understanding of both the science and of what needs to happen to address the problem in a meaningful way. But none of that means that her message is wrong

For all of those people who think her a near -saint or as someone who can motivate the leaders of the developed world to create policies that will reverse the changes in our climate - they are wrong. For all of those people who see Greta Thunberg as our saviour, a person worthy of the next Nobel Peace prize - they are living in a fantasy world that is doomed to be drowned in the next flood or else be turned into a desert. She is not our knight in shining armour, she will not cause anyone to do anything. Nothing will change because of her impassioned speech - as impressive as it was. Unfortunately, a handful of inspired by her but privileged high school students protesting for a day will be equally as un-useful.

The only hope is that she and others like her will be able to convince their older peers who can vote - to do so. And that those new voters will vote for individuals and parties that have both the vision and the capacity to act. The only hope is that she and others like her will be able to convince their parents to vote for those same individuals and parties. And the only hope is that all of those young people will be able to convince their peers and the others in their lives that we cannot keep on living a lifestyle that depletes the earth's resources.

Greta Thunberg may be a wonderful person, but changing the world is everyone's job. We must not abdicate our responsibilities to her.

A Very Minor Rant on Trucks

I think I can understand a person's (generally a male's) desire to drive a pick-up truck. And without a doubt, the bigger the truck - the better it must feel. There must be some sort of ego rush as one drives down the road, perhaps a foot or so higher than anyone else, lording it over all the drivers of smaller vehicles. The driver may argue that he needs the truck for work (although the truck bed is frequently cleaner than my trunk has ever been) or that he has things he needs to cart to the dump or back from Home Depot, but the fact is that he seldom needs a truck and he almost never in his life will need a truck with such big tires that one almost needs a step stool to get into it.

If it wasn't for the large carbon footprint that these trucks have from both the amount of fuel they burn and the energy needed to manufacture them - I would almost be inclined to say it is none of my business. If someone wants to spend all of that money on a four-passenger vehicle, it has very little to do with me. Certainly, there is nothing that I can do change the owners' minds. Except.....

Large pick-up trucks, oversized SUVs and cans are a menace to smaller cars. Those of us who drive smaller cars do so either because it is all that we can afford or because it is environmentally responsible to do so. Every time I am on the highway, I am very aware that if any one of those pick-up trucks crashes into me - especially those with the extra chromed, extra-large bumper - I am dead. Not because I am driving an unsafe car, but because the other driver is driving something to boost his ego.

On Saturday, I found a new reason to dislike big pick-up trucks. I was downtown and needed to park my car. I found a spot in a parking lot about three rows away from the street. I got out and walked towards the street. I could not get through rows of parked vehicles. There were 6-7 big trucks in a row and their oversized side view mirrors were so close to the next truck that there was no room for me to squeeze through. It is bad enough when large vehicles park in spots clearly designated for smaller cars or when they block my sightlines but now the drivers are even making it difficult for pedestrians.

Maybe we should ban such vehicles from city streets and parking lots. I am not really serious - but I do wish someone could explain to me the value of large pick-up trucks.