I have been struggling a bit since writing issue 52 that dealt with prejudice, hate, and discrimination. I just have too many interests. So, I am finding it difficult to focus on one of them. I have wanted to get back to writing about the kind of city that I would enjoy. However, I have hit pause to read through the articles for perspective. Also, I have neglected the “Things I Like” series and these pieces are fun to write.
However, when I thought about some of the more recent articles and newsletters on my reading list such as:
So, it’s the environment, stupid!
There is a link, of course, to my writings about cities. I live in a Montreal suburb. Six houses, twenty people, and seventeen cars reside on my little stretch of street. If you take our household out of that formula, five homes, eighteen people, sixteen cars. In what world does that make any sense?
But since I have spent and will spend more than a little time rattling on about cars, people and cities in my city series, I will turn my focus elsewhere.
How frustrated are you with the amount of plastic that results from almost any shopping trip? It drives me to despair. I keep looking for alternatives. We have our own shopping bags plus string bags for fruits and vegetables. We pick bulk alternatives whenever possible but still we generate piles of plastic. It is dutifully placed in the recycling but how much is really recycled. I wonder.
A quiet street, a quiet neighbourhood now interrupted multiple times a day by FedEx, UPS, DHL, Amazon contractors, and the postal service. Noisy, exhaust exhaling trucks left to idle while packages get delivered to doors.
We then unpack the delivery. Often, there is one cardboard box inside another. Plastic bags, styrofoam popcorn, and hard plastic containers take up the rest of the space in the recycling bin.
Western society has an addiction to cheap, fashionable garments. The scientific data indicates that the textile industry is the world’s second worst polluter, just behind the petrochemical industry. For the financial year ending March 2018, Burberry burnt US$38 million worth of merchandise. H&M had US$4.3 billion of surplus merchandise in the same year.
I often wonder how often Greta Thunberg’s young acolytes think about the impact of fast fashion during their weekly visit to the mall.
I can’t leave the fashion section without a little bit about cotton. Many consumers still think that cotton is virtuous. It can be, if it could be determined where it is grown. Egypt has grown cotton for centuries on land irrigated by the naturally occurring Nile delta floods. Sea Island cotton is grown in naturally conducive conditions.
Pima cotton from Arizona is not. It grows by siphoning off billions of gallons of water from the Colorado River. The “Stans” have drained the Aral sea to grow cotton. How many pairs of chinos or jeans do we need? How many shirts or t-shirts?
This is where I would normally launch into more self- righteous rhetoric. However, I have just read an excerpt from Sahra Wagenknecht’s book, The Self-Righteous. A quick synopsis:
She suggests that it is the supply side of the equation that needs modification:
Okay, so the reminders are a little self-righteous but they don’t cost anything. In fact, they save you money::
….. and only then
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We were visiting Glasgow (literally that Dear Green Place in Gaelic) to see where my father was born, grew up, and went to University. Fortunately for me, my cousin John from Australia had just visited and had met with historians, Bruce Downie and Norry Wilson. So, we too arranged to meet them in the Govanhill […]
Vienna on top again. This week both Monocle Magazine and The Economist unveiled their quality of life / most liveable city indexes. There are differences in the way each publication sets its index. So it is even more impressive that once again, Vienna tops both lists. I am a bit lazy today so rather than […]
Many Viennese went from hot bedding to superblocks overnight. Could they even imagine an apartment complex 1000 metres long built along two streets with even more massive landscaped courtyards? Could they conceive of 1400 apartment units built to house 5000 people on 56,000 square metres or 38 acres of land. Or a vertical build-out that […]
Vienna had been a poor city even before the First World War. “Normal” housing arrangements meant six to eight people sharing one room and a kitchen. Then, in early 1919, just after the Armistice, the cost of living tripled in two months. Bed lodgers could no longer afford their 8-hours a day in a shared […]