Notes from an Environmentalist.
On May 16 I travelled from New York to Washington for a joyous occasion. But I-95 it was wall to wall container trucks for almost ten miles. Each truck was carrying a container full of food, cars and consumables for New York and beyond. It was an arresting visual image of how much we extract natural resources out of the earth to feed our appetites.
New York handles about 9 million ETU’s a year. An ETU is a twenty feet equivalent unit i.e. 9 million containers each one carried on an individual emissions producing truck.
The United States has 20 such container ports handling 866 container trucks full of consumer items.
Does anyone think such rampant consumerism is sustainable in our rapidly warming world?
It is the methods supporting the consumerism that are the problem. Packaging that uses plastics is harmful. We need to cut down on transportation that uses carbon based fuels is not good. Consumerism is ingrained in our society.