Create the Future

Okay I'm a little bit of a hypocrite

So after my post about how everyone should stop using bottled water for the good of all mankind I tried to do so myself.  Not very successfully.  Football game: "uh, no time, I'll just grab one this time."  Off to a meeting: "uh, i don't have a container, I'll just grab one this time."  Over and over it went.  I don't think that I reduced my water bottle consumption by even one bottle this week.  So I am sympathetic to the problems that "watter bottle convenience addiction" causes, but I am going to do everything possible to try to do better this week.  Stopping cold turkey might not work, but maybe if I do it one little bit at a time I'll do better.  We'll see.

Put the bottle down

Okay so you have made the step from drinking sugar water (a.k.a. soda) to bottled water.  Good.  Now go one step further, but a bottle and re-fill it for a week.  Fast Company has a very sobering article on bottled water in the July August issue.  The article looks at some of the interesting facts about bottled water, here are a few:
1)While it is better than drinking soda bottled water does not have any other sort of "health" properties that tap water does not.
2)"Fiji water produces more than a million bottles of water a day, while more that half the people in Fiji do not have reliable drinking water." (Note, this does not mean that they are taking water that would go to those in Fiji, it is an irony of the situation)
3)Both Pepsi and Coke's bottled water is nothing more than distilled tap water.
Instead of buying plastic bottles that will fill landfills, and paying for water that requires energy intensive processes to fill and transport, refill the bottle of water that you already have.  This will save you some money, and keep a little more of that evil CO2 out of the air.

Another book to add to the list

Chris Anderson (of "The Long Tail" fame) writes a great post about Bjorn Lamborg's new book: Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. Among the myths that he dispels are Antarctic Melting, Polar Bears Disappearing, Mount Kilimanjaro Disappearing, and Rainfall decreasing.
Lomberg's solution is low carbon tax with high R&D subsidies.  Anderson's suggestion is increasing the carbon tax and using the tax money to alleviate taxes elsewhere.  I tend to side more with Chris Anderson on this issue (although I haven't read Lomberg's book yet so I can't speak expertly on his opinions), increasing the cost of emitting CO2 should drive companies to develop products that will emit less and thus be less affected by the tax.  This has been done with other pollutants such as sulfur. However if a government wants companies in their region to take the lead in this, tax credits specific to this type of research will provide more to the "carrot" end of the equation.  While generally I would like the government to allow free market forces to determine the flow of funds, if you want companies to Research and Develop products in a certain area doing what you can to decrease their costs will help.