We Were Instinctively Green ! Are You ?

Hantu Laut

I don't know who the real author of this very discerning piece of the good old days when nothing was wasted and the planet not an environmental wasteland. It has appeared all over the Internet. It's kind of nostalgic, bringing back the good old days where nothing is thrown away, nothing is wasted.

Being green was never on the mind of those years of my generation because we were instinctively green, we saved, recycled and threw nothing away. We made our own kites, tops, toys and invented our own games. Those were days of ingenuity, making do with the little we have.

Some of you may have read this, but for those who have not happy reading and thanks the older generations for not killing the environment, not until some smart-asses invented the killing machines.

Today, you go to the supermarket they have what they called "no plastic day" but they would still give you one if you pay 20 cents, a miserable sum that most people don't mind to pay.A pathetic failure. Only the supermarkets benefited making extra profit. 

The government should stop this bloody nonsense, it's no help to the environment. They should instead sell fabric or paper bag which cost much more, which will deter people from coming empty-handed to the supermarkets and to bring their own bags.

Being Green

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.” The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truely recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But too bad we didn’t do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day. Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint. But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person.

Hantu Laut

Read the following article from the Economist and see for yourself the hypocrisy of the Western nations who have been outspoken about conservation and preserving the rainforests of the world.

They blame the poor and less developed nations for extracting forest resources to generate revenues without making an effort to help those countries minimise the ecological damage.Much have been said about its conservation but very little had been done to actually conserve it.

From the jungles of Borneo to the deep lust forests of the Amazon, indiscriminate exploitation of the forests have been going on for decades without any sincere effort to minimise it other than providing lip service.

Those like the American charity, Conservation International who are prepared to finance conservation but is limited by its financial resources, wanted the cheapest price possible, which become meaningless to the host country as it does not help in any economic improvement of the country concerned.

Corporations and NGOs do not have sufficient financial resources to undertake this mammoth and non-profit endeavours.It has to be an agglomeration of rich and developed countries putting their resources together.A reasonable conservation fee should be paid to the host country that have agreed to conserve its tropical rainforests for the benefits of the global community

The best possible scenario would be to establish a new body under the auspices of the United Nations and make the top 20 richest countries as permanent members and make them contribute certain percentage of their GDP to the rainforest conservation fee.The selected forests should than be made as World Heritage Site with no commercial activity allowed other than low impact eco tourism.

Here is an opportunity for them to help poorer countries to protect and preserve pristine forests from destruction and none had taken up the offer for a chicken feed sum of US$1.6 million a year.

If the conservationists can't pay this meagre sum than they shouldn't complain if the logging company buy the rights to destroy it.

The government of Cameroon will soon have to sell the pristine tropical rainforest of 830,000 hectares to the loggers to generate revenue for the country, if no rich nation, big corporation or NGOs come forward to conserve it.

The rich Western nations especially the US, Japan and Western European countries should put their money in their mouths.

The price of conservation

The unkindest cut

Feb 14th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Cameroon wants to sell a forest, but conservationists don't want to buy it

FOR rent: 830,000 hectares of pristine tropical rainforest. Rich in wildlife, including forest elephants and gorillas. Provides a regionally important African green corridor. Price: $1.6m a year. Conservationist tenant preferred, but extractive forestry also considered. Please apply to the Cameroonian minister of forestry.

That, in essence, is what the government of Cameroon has been offering since 2001 in an attempt to make some money from a forest known as Ngoyla-Mintom. The traditional way would be to lease the land to a logging company. But Joseph Matta, the country's forestry minister, would rather lease it to a conservation group. The trouble is, he cannot find one that is prepared to take it off his hands.

The idea of conservation concessions has been around since 2000. It was introduced by an American charity called Conservation International, which realised the going rate for logging concessions was often so low that it could afford to outbid the foresters. It has since leased forests in Guyana—where it has 80,000 hectares of Upper Essequibo—and in Peru, Sierra Leone, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Mexico. But even in 2001 it reckoned that at $2 a hectare Ngoyla-Mintom was too dear. Its land in Essequibo costs a mere 37 cents a hectare.

Mr Matta, of course, thinks Ngoyla-Mintom is worth every penny. Indeed, the price has gone up. The government now wants additional money to compensate Cameroon for forgoing the jobs and local development that come with logging. The forest is pristine habitat of a sort likely to contain some extremely valuable pieces of timber. It also connects three other large protected areas (see map), and thus forms an important part of a regionally important green corridor. Mr Matta says that if one group of conservationists or another doesn't cough up soon, he really will be forced to get on the phone to the loggers.

A compromise put forward by the World Wide Fund for Nature has failed to find favour. The WWF suggested keeping an unexploited core of Ngoyla-Mintom while the rest is opened to limited “sustainable” hunting and forestry. The quid pro quo would be a lower rent. Read more.....