[QUOTE=acsenray]
You know what, I think the whole situation didn’t become unreasonable and unpleasant until the OP decided to react in a hostile manner.
There’s nothing wrong with a merchant trying to educate customers regarding a pet issue and encourage the use of products that he or she prefers to peddle. It very well might be the case that wide-spread replacement of Coke with Blue Sky would change the lives all the babies and puppies in a positive way. That’s how social change happens.
Nobody forced you to do anything and it didn’t become an argument until you decided to make it one.
[/QUOTE]
Exactly.
Furthermore, who believes the conversation actually went like this. . .
as opposed to this. . .
“I’m sorry sir. We don’t serve Coke, is Blue Sky OK.”
OP (assholey): Why don’t you serve Coke?
“We believe Blue Sky is a more environmentally and socially responsible choice.”
It’s like asking me to believe a place would say,
“I’m sorry sir. We don’t serve Coke here, only the clearly more refreshing and tasty Pepsi.” instead of “we don’t have Coke. Is Pepsi OK?”
My church has a “Green Team” that is full of these sorts of misunderstandings, like the “cloth napkins are better than the thinnest, cheapest paper napkins because we reuse them when we wash them,” thing, which ignores the energy and water used to wash them, and the detergent that needs to be cleaned out of the water before it can be put back into the environment, and all the rest of the crap that needs to be considered before one makes a decision.
Then there’s the time when someone turned off the small incandescent lamps on the ceiling fan and turned on the overhead fluorescents “because fluorescents use less energy.” Lemme see: The four incandescent spots gave us plenty of light while burning between 60 and 75W each. Worst case: 300W.
On the other hand, each overhead fixture containes two 40W tubes. Twelve troffers at 80W per = 960W or over three fucking times the power!
I’m sick of anyone with a cause who “tsk-tsks” the rest of the world for not doing whatever it is that they’re doing at that moment. There are way too many vocal “holier than thou” folks annoying people every day.
In reading some of the responses here, it seems that some of you are posting in this thread.
[QUOTE=jali]
I’m sick of anyone with a cause who “tsk-tsks” the rest of the world for not doing whatever it is that they’re doing at that moment. There are way too many vocal “holier than thou” folks annoying people every day.
In reading some of the responses here, it seems that some of you are posting in this thread.
[/QUOTE]
I’d be interested to know if you think it is the OP or the waitress who was being holier than thou?
[QUOTE=Measure for Measure] Sigh The worst part is the way the piddling stuff (bring your own bag!) gets elevated above the more relevant environmental choices.
Recycling is way over-rated.
[/QUOTE]
:dubious: Obviously you haven’t heard about the Philipeans where they don’t recycle and a hundred some people had to be dug out of tons of garbage when it fell on them (17 died). Or about the parts of the Pacific that you can walk over due to the sheer number of plastic bags…or the fact the many African nations, in an effort to save their ecosystem are now banning plastic bags before they clog up their rivers hopelessly.
[QUOTE=jali]
I’m sick of anyone with a cause who “tsk-tsks” the rest of the world for not doing whatever it is that they’re doing at that moment. There are way too many vocal “holier than thou” folks annoying people every day.
In reading some of the responses here, it seems that some of you are posting in this thread.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t even think this thread is really about environmental tsk-tsk’ing. It’s about a hungry, caffeine-deprived guy overreacting and taking personal offense at a waitress who was just trying to do her job. I mean, really. Look at the OP. He asks for a Coke, she says they have Blue Sky, which is all natural. Somehow this is taken as an indictment of his lifestyle; all the personal attacking done in that convo was done by him.
There’s a difference between what the speaker implies and what the listener infers. Even with his understandably biased retelling, I think DFTH was the one who was acting obnoxious. The environmental spin on the story is a red herring.
[QUOTE=Tony]
This reminds me of an item in a MAD magazine article many years ago that said that the “all-natural” label wouldn’t be such a pleasing term if you consider that cow dung and arsenic are also all natural.
[/QUOTE]
“Whatya mean you don’t serve Arsenic Flavored Cowflop Cola?! Well I never!! I’ll bet you came to work in a tank! And you don’t even tankpool!!”
[QUOTE=betenoir]
Or about the parts of the Pacific that you can walk over due to the sheer number of plastic bags…
[/quote]
Cite? :dubious:
[QUOTE=betenoir]
or the fact the many African nations, in an effort to save their ecosystem are now banning plastic bags before they clog up their rivers hopelessly.
[/QUOTE]
Cite? :dubious:
Recycling is important, but I think the top quote is BS and I have never heard anyting about African nations banning plastic bags or about their rivers clogging up with said bags…
(People dying in the Philipeans trying to mine landfills does not surprise me too much.)
[QUOTE=clairobscur]
The pictures I’ve seen of the “garbage ocean” are quite impressive, but I don’t think anybody stated one could walk on it.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve read extensivly (well, spent a couple of hours doing online research anyway) about the Pacific garbage patch and this is what I thought. The amount of plastic afloat in the Pacific is truly apalling, but nowhere near the density to walk upon and is probably not even noticable if you were sailing though it unless you were looking for it…
[QUOTE=clairobscur]
It seems to be true, according to this article
[/QUOTE]
Thanks for this. About time if you ask me, these things are a plague and a nuissance.
[QUOTE=olivesmarch4th]
We all do what we can. I re-use bags at the grocery store and use incandescent lightbulbs, but I have a long gas-wasting commute. I recycle but I take lots of baths. I could always be doing more, but I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with encouraging other people to try to do a little bit too.
[/QUOTE]
I humbly request that you read post #4 above. With all due respect, this busy-body doesn’t give out points for steps with relatively trivial environmental effects. (Hey, I’m just applying social pressure, right?)
(And you meant compact fluorescents, right? [1] Incandescents are the energy-gulping ones, though halogens are wasteful as well.)
No, the piddling stuff doesn’t worry me. (Comedy aside. :))
Help me out. That phrase sounds like ad-copy and not something that would naturally (ha, ha) come out of the mouth of a living human being. I assumed that the OP was using hyperbole on this point.
Do people really talk like that? About products which are even crappier than Coke no less?
[1] Hilariously, I referred to them as CFCs rather than CFBs earlier. CFCs are Chlorofluorocarbons, the stuff that destroys the ozone layer.
or: eating your peas won’t help the starving children in India.
[QUOTE=betenoir]
:dubious: Obviously you haven’t heard about the Philipeans where they don’t recycle and a hundred some people had to be dug out of tons of garbage when it fell on them (17 died). Or about the parts of the Pacific that you can walk over due to the sheer number of plastic bags…or the fact the many African nations, in an effort to save their ecosystem are now banning plastic bags before they clog up their rivers hopelessly.
Don’t tell me that’s not important.
[/QUOTE]
There is no absolute shortage of landfill space in the US. There is a lot of Nimbyism: for good reason people don’t like to have a dump nearby. But that’s a lower order environmental problem than…
global warming,
and
the massive extinction event that has gone on for the past ~100 years,
and even
overexposure to agricultural chemicals suffered by migrant farm workers,
but not (for example)
pesticide residues on produce.
If you’re concerned about garbage in the Pacific Ocean, then that is a matter of not dumping garbage in the Pacific Ocean. Choosing paper over plastic doesn’t really cut it.
[QUOTE=Measure for Measure]
Do people really talk like that? About products which are even crappier than Coke no less?
[/QUOTE]
Want a script? Here:
Waitress: Anything to drink?
Patron: I’ll have a Coke.
Waitress: We only carry Blue Sky brand.
Patron: Blue Sky?
Waitress: It’s an all-natural cola. We try to support environmentally conscious brands at GranolaLand Restaurant.
Patron: Um, OK, I’ll have an ice tea.
What’s so hard to believe about that? And that manages not to be a lecture, or a pissing match, or an indictment of a person’s lifestyle? No big deal.
[QUOTE=acsenray]
You know what, I think the whole situation didn’t become unreasonable and unpleasant until the OP decided to react in a hostile manner.
There’s nothing wrong with a merchant trying to educate customers regarding a pet issue and encourage the use of products that he or she prefers to peddle. It very well might be the case that wide-spread replacement of Coke with Blue Sky would change the lives all the babies and puppies in a positive way. That’s how social change happens.
Nobody forced you to do anything and it didn’t become an argument until you decided to make it one.
[/QUOTE]
How interesting that this post comes from someone who reacted in a hostile manner to efforts by their employer to secure the workplace. Perhaps that was your employer’s pet issue, but you chose, in that case, to have none of it.
