"When did being an environmentalist mean buying a bunch of shit? "

So true, so true.

Why do these stupid Moos think that all we have to do is buy organic food and everything will be fine?

The problem is there are too many of us. We have poisoned the Earth almost past the point of recovery.

And there is no such thing as an Environmentalist Breeder. It's an oxymoron.

A "green baby" store opened up in my neighborhood recently called Bebe Verde - A Green Baby Boutique. Their motto is "Let's Save the Planet One Baby Step at a Time". I have never been inside but I'm assuming it's full of overpriced luxury baby goods made to make the recent suburban transplants (yay gentrification! NOT) feel good about having babies even though the world is going to hell in a handbag.

I have to laugh when I go to Whole Foods and the parking lot is full of humongous SUVs that people drive in from the burbs, just so they can get organic baby food and other "earth friendly" overpriced junk for their kids. Oh and the irony of parents pushing around shopping carts that look like SUVs - the ones at WF now have space for two kids to sit in them, with two steering wheels (I'm presuming in order to avoid meltdowns because both kids want to "steer").

Whole Foods Market is a rip-off. WAAAAYYYY overpriced.

I once found that Whole Foods was selling a bag of King Arthur flour for $3.99 - same bag of flour was selling at Kroger for 99 cents. Their markup is incredible.

You can buy a lot of the same products cheaper elsewhere.

The worst consumerism in the name of being green are the shirts that state how the wearer recycles. Why not just wear what you got rather than buy something that states you are a simplistic person?

casseyrod Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Whole Foods Market is a rip-off. WAAAAYYYY
> overpriced.
>
> I once found that Whole Foods was selling a bag of
> King Arthur flour for $3.99 - same bag of flour
> was selling at Kroger for 99 cents. Their markup
> is incredible.
>
> You can buy a lot of the same products cheaper
> elsewhere.

This is so true!

I was in the area of a Whole Foods and wanted apples. I walked into the store, saw that they were $2.99 (or maybe $2.29, but don't remember now) a pound and walked out. I went to another store and got some at 99 cents a pound.

Keep working more hours, CF people! Millions of breeders depend on us.

bell_flower wrote:
**Why do these stupid Moos think that all we have to do is buy organic food and everything will be fine?

The problem is there are too many of us. We have poisoned the Earth almost past the point of recovery.**

This is exactly my thinking too. It doesn't matter that more people are replacing conventional lightbulbs with CFLs. They are still breeding! That means more burden placed on our planet.

In a similar thread, did anyone see "The Happening?" Many critics are dissing it, but I think it's brilliant. I posted this topic on the main board ...

Screw "Whole Paycheck" !!!

A few weeks ago, I posted something regarding honeybees, who pollinate over 70% of what me and you eat.

If the rate of the honeybee continues to decline at the rate it is now, by 2035, there will BE no honeybees. Take that you selfish reproducing fuck-machines. I hope I'm fucking DEAD by the time the honeybee vanishes. I have counted on both hands only the numbers of honeybees who've pollinate my flowers and vegetable garden. Jesus Christ, when are people going to open their EYES?!?!

Who do these 'green' mothers thinks is making their kids' organic fruits and vegetable grow? HONEYBEES!!!! In my garden, I had a recent visitor ask why one of my pumpkin plants looked so poor. I told him it is a sacrificial plant. I don't use ANY pesticides AT ALL, and bugs are part of the deal. You sacrifice a few plants, the birds eat, the bees don't get poisoned with pesticides, and YOU have an ORGANIC product.

Geeez, I'm going to get on a roll here

The whole honeybee situation scares the snot out of me, too. My parents never gardened with pesticides, and even though I have a pretty small garden compared to what they used to have, and I don't either. Insects love milkweed, and fortunately it grows naturally in my area. I never pull it and leave it there for the bugs. Also marigolds are natural insect replellants. Plant them in between your garden rows. Another thing I do is natural insect removal by hand. It may sound yucky to some, but peruse your garden daily and grab any tomato worms or other visable bugs. I don't kill them. I collect them in a jar and take them to the woods behind my house. I figure it will take them until the next day to refind my plants! Sorry, I can go on and on about all of this, too, as I was raised to be this way.

I hear ya, str8six and bratBgone--I love honeybees, they're very helpful and it scares me that we're poisoning the earth in this way--I'd urge these breeders to pick up a copy of Silent Spring and read it, but I'm afraid they'd whine about how haaaard it is to stop using disposable diapers!

When my grandpa and I shell corn we make sure to remove all the worms, and since we've got a cockatiel we put the worms in his bowl so he has a nice birdish dinner. ^_- We make sure not to use those yucky chemical fertilizers because the runoff causes eutrophication--algae blooms that cause fish kills. (I like being smarter than breeders ) The list goes on and on...I hate to bore people though

The elephant in the room that people just don't see is that the only way we're even feeding the people all over the world is because of pesticides! There is no way in hell every person can have food like they do now without them - the bugs and birds are always going to take some of what you grow, it's natural. But there are too many screaming mouths to feed and the world cannot afford to lose that much food to insects and birds, so they spray the crops. And the bees are suffering not just from pesticides, but from malnutrition. They need more then just one type of pollen. They are trucked and flown all over the world by bee keepers to pollinate thousands of acres of one kind of fruit/vegetable/nut tree, and the stress of all that traveling coupled with being forced to pollinate only one type of flower has really taken its toll on them.

This world will be a brown, horrible, ugly place without the honey bee. My heart breaks when I think about it and what a greedy, despicable race we've become.

I did use marigolds last year and must admit I didn't have as many bugs, I just didn't feel like planting them this year so I'm paying the price for it a little. I should still have a decent reap this year though. I'm also planning on trying my hand at attracting Purple Martins to help out next year, but it is a very exacting project and I have a lot of research to do before I embark on such a commitment.

The demise of the honey bee is critical right now, everyone SHOULD be very, very worried!

str8 the world will be a dead place..

if all humanity died tomorrow, the world will toddle on.. if all the insects died.. we would have a few weeks left..

the cfl lightbulbs are more polluting than normal.. they contain mercury, so if you dump them mercury gets into the environment.. they have to be disposed of in a intensive manner, because mercury is HIGHLY dangerous.. especially mercury vapour..

so is it realy green..

*********************************************************************************************************************************
I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

Being green is just another fad, In a few months or years, this "green fad" will be swept under the rug. Its all bullshit, No one mentions the best and only way to be really green is to STOP BREEDING!

The funny thing about Whole Foods and Trader Joes, is that while they may carry more organic and healthy foods, they're still shipping it all over the country. They're still buying from giant wholesalers, and they're still putting the food in unnecessicary packaging. Plus their elitist pricing is completely over the top.

They don't support local agriculture, local economies and local production. They are predatory in their retail practices, working to drive out local stores/coops. They are anti-union/anti-worker. They add just as much to the overall pollution as most other food based businesses by shipping products from one corner of the country to another, and the incredible amounts of packaging their products use. The only thing that makes them any different from something like Walmart is that they've branded THEMSELVES "green", and the suburban sheeple buy into that without the slightest thought. "Of course it's more expensive, it's organic" even though it's just as mass produced as the cheapest stouffers frozen meal.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

Corporate vs. local retailing is something that fascinates me, becuase it involves so many different aspects of society.

I've heard so many people complain about the high costs at the local natural foods coops and then turn around and buy their stuff at WF or TJs for the same price, or maybe 20 cents less, and think they're doing something good. "It must be better, every piece of fruit is individually wrapped in plastic". "Well, they're more expensive because it's organic".

Simply being organic doesn't make things more expensive. What makes the food at your local coop more expensive is that it is produced/purchased in smaller quantities and generally within a couple hundred miles of the store. WH and TJ's are expensive simply because they can get away with it because of expectations set up by coops. It pretty much goes across the retail board, actually.

Things at your locally owned retailers are expensive because they don't get the big huge discounts for buying/producing in mass quantities. Things at Walmart are cheap because of the huge quantity they can purchase/produce. That said, if you buy things for the higher price from your local retailer, that money generally stays within the community because that owner lives in the community. When you purchase things from WF, TJ's, WM or whatever giant corporation, while it may be cheaper, most of that money leaves the community via the corporate profit margin.

One can argue this till they're blue in the face, and folks will still go "but I can buy 20 pairs of socks for $2 at the Walmart", like my inlaws who don't see the value in paying more to support a local business with quality goods, and would much rather never say "No, we don't need that" and just have a house packed full of cheap plastic crap. In their minds, the more you have, the better you must be.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

I shop at walmart simply to save money, im not concerned about the money staying in the communtiy, I cant afford to be concered about that, times are tough and the farther i can make my money go the better. I do hate wal mart, its full of trashy breeders but compared to other food stores its alot cheaper, for me any ways

Please don't get the wrong idea. It's more important to live within your means than anything else, really. Many people simply can not afford to shop locally, and to say anyone should go into debt or go hungry to be a more ethical consumer is simply wrong. Many people simply don't have a choice any more either.

Unfortunately my inlaws, and many others, make plenty of money and have nice houses filled to bursting with worthless crap. They live in towns where they have a choice, and the means to buy responsibly. Their only reason for not doing so is that they can have more stuff, even though they couldn't possibly use all the stuff they already have. (seriously, my inlaws homes are nightmares where every nook and cranny is bursting with unused or no longer needed stuff - they're saving the baby crap for me - hope springs eternal I guess)

For the well off WH/TJ's shoppers, I think it's more like Starbucks vs. your local coffee emporium. The prices are pretty much the same between the two (and actually, I've found local coffee shops are cheaper generally). But, people feel more comfortable with same. It's NICE at Starbucks, you will always get a fresh faced server with a name tag on their white shirt. You will always get your beverage made from concentrate, so it's always the same. You will always hear some unobtrusive adult contemporary playing in the back ground. Were one to venture into the local coffee shop the only guarantee is that one will get a high quality coffee product. However, one might see a facial piercing, or a teeshirt with a message on it, or pants with patches, or hear some challenging music. That scares most people to death.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

"God forbid a child come into contact with germs and build an immunity up. My husband spent a few free hours last week reading all about our anti-bacterial universe, and how we are just asking for some infection to wipe us out."

That shit really pisses me off. All the anti-bacterial-anti-microbial-holy-shit-boil-and-bleach-everything mentality our society has. Hey, America, know what really strengthens your immune system? Germs, motherfuckers, GERMS!

nokyds4me Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I do hate wal mart, its
> full of trashy breeders but compared to other food
> stores its alot cheaper, for me any ways

Try Kroger, its just as cheap as wal mart most of the time. And a more pleasant shopping environment.

feh, i get what your saying, I have stopped going to chain resturants, the food is average, its full of crying babies, I now only try small mom and pop resturants, its alot of fun and i have found some great food!!

Feh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Were one to venture
> into the local coffee shop the only guarantee is
> that one will get a high quality coffee product.
> However, one might see a facial piercing, or a
> teeshirt with a message on it, or pants with
> patches, or hear some challenging music. That
> scares most people to death.

This is the one major beef I have with Starbucks, other than their coffee is no longer that great. "Partners" have to cover up their tattoos...even if it means wearing ACE bandages around their legs or wrists and turtlenecks on a hot summer day. Facial piercings are not allowed, either. God forbid, a moo or some corporate idiot gets so 'skeered'...as if the GAP uniform is so lovely. I prefer local coffee places where the people are not put into the same cookie-cutter image.

Breeders are about as environmentally friendly and "green" as a nuclear power plant.

Mother Earth is fucked. Royally. The only way to save her now is a breeding moratorium for about 20 years. And I don't see that happening.

http://green.yahoo.com/blog/forecastearth/49/you-don-t-still-use-a-screen-saver-do-you.html

Now, screensavers are bad for the inh-virow-mint!

amethusos* Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This is the one major beef I have with Starbucks,
> other than their coffee is no longer that great.
> "Partners" have to cover up their tattoos...even
> if it means wearing ACE bandages around their legs
> or wrists and turtlenecks on a hot summer day.
> Facial piercings are not allowed, either. God
> forbid, a moo or some corporate idiot gets so
> 'skeered'...as if the GAP uniform is so lovely. I
> prefer local coffee places where the people are
> not put into the same cookie-cutter image.

FYI, Starbucks no longer brews their iced tea. They just make it from a concentrate. Seriously, if they can't trust their staff to BREW A POT OF FUCKING TEA, put in the fridge and pour it over ice when needed, they should just close.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

When I lived in Texas OH, where my ex and I owned a mobile home park (talk about trailer trash...), I was able to have a small garden. I mostly grew tomatoes as you really cannot get a good one. I remember seeing a tomatoe horn worm (I think that is what they are called) on it. (They are big green caterpillar like things). I was gonna remove it and toss it in the river, when I noticed the wasp eggs. Great... I decided to let it go about its business as it was already doomed and I didn't want to eliminate the wasps as well. (Just so long as I wasn't over run by them.) Eventually all I saw was a shriveled skin on the ground and that was the end of the caterpillar.
Next year, the same thing happened: one worm that was already parasitized.
Who needs horror films when we have insects?