In Between Times 3-23-2023
Carbon credits for America, Anti-war GOP?, Steel made with NO fossil fuels?, The National Week of Conversation
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McDonalds was pressured via a shareholder resolution to increase the circularity of its waste regime. After some initial reluctance the hamburger giant appears to be moving toward a future where single use packaging is greatly reduced. A report will come out in early 2024. This could set the pace in the industry.
Please sign the petition to show your support for these waste reducing efforts.
Please sign the petition HERE.
McDonald’s to publish “first-in-sector” report on reusable packaging
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The giant dump truck made of steel produced without the use of fossil fuels (Now available in the USA)
Volvo Group (a separate company from the car company) is a massive industrial company that makes some of the best construction vehicles and freight trucks in the world. It is also making them increasingly sustainably.
(From Inside Climate News)
A Pennsylvania-based asphalt supplier this month accepted delivery of a special vehicle.
This super-size dump truck was the first construction machine sold in North America to be made with low-emissions steel, according to the manufacturer, Volvo Group of Sweden.
European companies have a head start in producing low-emissions steel and finding customers to buy it. But U.S. officials are working to close that gap, and the Inflation Reduction Act contains incentives that provide a strong nudge to use cleaner methods.
The tough part is matching up the companies that want to make cleaner steel with the manufacturers that want to use it in their products, and doing so on a scale large enough to make sense financially.
Click here for the article.
Baseball, apple pie, and carbon credits
“Will you be critiqued for these partnerships or accused of greenwashing? Yes, you will.”
Some of the most productive and interesting partnerships are between “strange bedfellows”. This is as true for environmental matters as anything.
Forgive the cliche but we too often see things in a binary way. One/zero. Black/white. Republican/Democrat. Environmental villain/environmental hero. But this isn’t how the world works. Most issues have many shades of grey. It is in the grey where some of the best opportunities for legitimate progress lay.
In the attached article the author mentions that the Houston Astros and the Houston Texans are now buying carbon offsets to counter their carbon footprints. Both organizations don’t necessarily seem like natural allies of the environmental movement. But that is what is particularly interesting. That a baseball team in HOUSTON is doing this voluntarily is a win and it should be seen as such.
Additionally when other companies make positive environmental moves we should celebrate them. Too often a company will do something good only to be criticized for not doing enough. Or a company may be accused of “greenwashing”. (Which is certainly a legitimate issue.) This has become such a concern that the term “greenhushing” has been coined, meaning when companies actually do good things for the environment quietly and without fanfare at all for fear of being targeted and being called “greenwashers”.
As the author of the attached article points out there are many opportunities for environmental wins with partners who may not immediately leap to mind. We should keep an eye out for these opportunities.
(From Adamantine Energy - Via LinkedIn)
This month, Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) announced a partnership with the MLB’s Houston Astros through which the team will purchase carbon credits from the company’s low-carbon energy ventures subsidiary, 1PointFive, to help reduce the ballpark’s carbon footprint over a three-year period. The credits will be generated by the CO2 removal at the company’s direct air capture (DAC) facility currently under construction in Texas. Earlier this year, 1PointFive announced a similar agreement with the NFL’s Houston Texans through which the team will use carbon removal credits to offset three years of air travel emissions.
These partnerships creatively combine baseball and football, two of Americans’ favorite pastimes and saviors of the linear TV industry, with the narrative of how an oil and gas giant can lead in real decarbonization. It also invokes the power of sports to engage people on salient social issues (one of which many of your stakeholders consider climate change to be).
Click here for the article.
Allsides: When Republicans go back to their pre-Reagan roots
It goes way back, long before Reagan. Why didn’t we join the League of Nations post-World War I? A Republican Senate refused to authorize US participation. Who sought to keep us from being embroiled in another World War? The Republicans, generally speaking. There are many other examples. (Whether these stances were the right ones is another question and worthy of debate.)
Dan Halloway at Newsweek had this to say last year on the subject of war and the GOP.
…we're at the brink again, debating U.S. intervention in Ukraine which is facing another incursion into its territory by Russia. And the episode is exposing a story that we've been getting wrong for a while now: We've somehow convinced ourselves that it's conservatives who are the warmongers and liberals who love peace…
…Our history tells a different story. If we consider the major wars of the 20th century—World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War—America entered each under the presidencies of Democrats. Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman, and JFK all led America into major wars resulting in the combat deaths of 426,079 Americans. That's 63.9 percent of all U.S. combat deaths ever.
Now, this is not exactly correct but the current anti-war sentiment in the GOP in many respects is grounded in an idea that was originally popularized by a man of the (far) left, Randolph Bourne, who wrote that, ”War is the health of the state.”
This sentiment is now widely held by many of the most influential people on the right. The size of government always expands with war. If one is for small government one should generally be anti-war. (The logic goes.)
The pro-war era for Republicans was defined by thinkers who are now referred to as neo-conservatives, who were not small government oriented. These folks were the architects of the 20 Years War in the Middle East, that only ended recently when we finally pulled out of Afghanistan. Intervention abroad and unbridled spending on the military was their MO, and it stood in conflict with what is called the “old right” stance on war, which is fundamentally that the US mind its own business.
The friction between the neocons and the re-emergent anti-war right first became evident with the rise of Ron Paul who electrified a new generation of libertarian-conservatives. Paul voiced old views that were new again. Iraq was a disaster. Why were we pouring billions and billions into a black hole in central Asia? Do these interventions make us safer? Probably not. Is it costing us a fortune? Yes it is. Do such actions create resentment abroad and undermine America’s moral authority? You better believe it.
Then Trump came along and tapped into this sentiment, though it was not a core part of his message. But it is fair to say that the guy didn’t start any wars. (This should be a low bar for presidents, but sadly it is not.)
Regardless, the generally anti-war Republicans are now arguably the dominant foreign policy voice again within the party, which for many people is pretty weird. (Including for many Republicans.)
(From Allsides)
…public opinion polling shows that Republican voters are almost evenly split on the question of whether the U.S. should continue to provide military aid. It seems likely that those numbers will continue to shrink as the war continues with no apparent outcome in sight.
Some of this is probably just a matter of knee-jerk partisanship. The Biden Administration has made Ukraine a top priority, so it’s no more surprising that so many Republicans are reflexively objecting to U.S. involvement than seeing large numbers of progressive Democrats lining up in support.
But it’s much more than that.
Click here for the article.
And to continue the (GOP) weirdness check out this headline from The New York Times.
In this story George Bush is the hero
What is the National Week of Conversation, and why should you participate?
A key principle of In Between Times, and our parent organization, In This Together is the idea that people can come together to solve difficult and contentious problems. We can have conversations, productive conversations, with people who might not agree with us on many points.
Not only CAN we have these conversations, we believe it is VITAL to civil society that we have them. The National Week of Conversation is a great place to start.
We encourage all of our readers to participate.
About National Week of Conversation:
The 6th annual National Week of Conversation invites Americans to practice “Courage over
Contempt” by having conversations despite differences in bold and energizing ways. NWOC
events will be hosted by more than 150 partners within the wider #ListenFirst Coalition and
anyone else who would like to become a Hosting Partner. For more information, visit:
Click here for more on The National Week of Conversation.
The Fulcrum: Taking flight into difficult but meaningful conversations
In the words of the late Hunter S. Thompson; “Buy the ticket. Take the ride…”
(From The Fulcrum)
Within my worldview, I believe that we are writing our own stories – past, present and future. We have the facts – what happened without any assigned meaning. We have interpretations – where we assign the meaning to what happened. Our individual stories live in our particular mix of those two factors. This is how two children can grow up in the same home and have vastly different experiences within the family.
This is our collective conundrum. With so many possible interpretations of the facts, how do we find enough common stories to share our nation with those who are very different from ourselves?
Click here for the article.
Event
The EarthX Expo is the world’s largest green gathering held annually around Earth Day in Dallas, Texas. Our Congress of Conferences highlights a wide range of environmental & sustainability-related topics.
It has grown to become the largest event of its kind in the world, bringing together environmental organizations, businesses, academic institutions, government agencies, speakers, interactive programming, and subject matter experts.
EarthX Expo also features live music, art and food to help create a fun and engaging atmosphere for thought and experiential learning.