“… 33 percent of Americans said they had rewarded companies that are taking action to reduce global warming by buying their products, while 24 percent said they had punished companies opposing steps to reduce global warming by boycotting their products. Importantly, 48 percent – nearly half of the country – said they are willing to reward or punish companies for their climate change-related activities over the next 12 months, a potentially dramatic increase in consumer pressure on companies to act” (Leiserowitz et. al 7).

Consumer activism would also serve to alleviate the danger of fracturing environmental efforts. Rather than spreading resources thinly to cover rainforests, damming, and recycling advocacy, consumer activism would consolidate efforts through individual’s every-day, personal behavior on the behalf of the greater good of Earth. It would also force company objectives to represent the higher values of their consumers, thus also indirectly supporting the response of legislation to climate change. An information service that would solidify this strategy would be an information database ranking each company in terms of their environmentally friendly practices. They can be ranked by a multitude of criteria, from energy consumption due to production, recycling efforts, or the amount or impact of their environmentally controversial activities. While such a list exists for Newsweek (Newsweek), it would be advisable for the government to invest in these rankings to maintain distance and objectivity, as Newsweek is a for-profit organization:

“The primary barrier preventing most Americans from punishing companies that oppose action on climate change was simply knowledge: 68 percent said they did not know which companies to punish. Again, translating this willingness to reward or punish companies into concrete consumer behavior will largely depend on the success or failure of efforts to educate, organize, and mobilize this large and growing market force” (Leiserowitz et. al 7).

A belated Earth Day post, and well wishes and hopes to the recent catastrophic oil leak in the Gulf.

Graceee

Leiserowitz, Anthony. Maibach, Edward. Roser-Renouf, Connie.“Climate Change in American Minds”. Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. 24 April 2010.

“2009 Green Rankings for US Companies – Newsweek.com.” 2009 Green Rankings for US Companies – Newsweek.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2010. <http://greenrankings.newsweek.com/>.

In the fascinating plot of my Real Life, I have this terrible class that could potentially be super cool/hip/relevant (and whatever sarcastic adjectives hipsterrunoff can think of) but … isn’t. The teacher works as a Father in the Vatican for his “day job”, but I don’t think that sort of job has shifts, hm? Besides, isn’t the point to give your life up to Him? How is it possible to partition/pick and choose? Anyway, students in the class feel as if his biases and opinions are becoming obstacles to teaching objectives; whether or not that be the case, the point is that they feel that way, so there must be something a-wry…

To end on a better note, start hopping on that waiting list for your Robert Pattinson pillow-man.

TUH

Doesn’t even look like him.

Your team.

Graceee

This weekend, I enjoyed a bit of reading, hiked up to Bald Spot (somewhere in Issaquah,  I believe) for a lovely sunset, and visited the Sandpoint Seattle Public Library booksale, where I proceeded to loot the rest of the treasures for anything and everything:

 I bought an Illustrated Physiology book, describing each aspect of the body (chapters associate with different systems within the body– respiratory, circulatory, etc.) which was apparently used to assist physiology students with visualizing the body in its basic functions;

a semi-scientific/historical dinosaur book that comes with illustrations of dinos eating other dinos (yezzz!);

my friend bought a book depicting Hitler and his public life as the Nazi leader;

andI had purchased a large amount of sci-fi/fantasy (see: Piers Anthony, his Xanth series, David Eddings, his Belgariad/Mallorean series)… including the Illustrated Guide to Xanth.

Xanthians, unite!!!

It was a beautiful weekend. .. my roommate TARA and me had also visited a Halloween costume store; the season has people crawling all over brains/zombies/masks alike; and it was fun to dress up. Despite the fact that yes, we are 20/21 years old.

In news, though: the controversial debate over open internet policies continues as regulations over bandwidth use and/or network capacities clash with the idea of ‘net neutrality’. I feel as if I don’t understand enough tech-talk to support or oppose viewpoints on these subjects of capacity in terms of signal/bandwidth/networking, but the debates make me nervous never-the-less– especially in light of Comcast’s overwhelming presence in our media-mediated lives…

More laterz!!!

Gracie