Balloons are terrible for the environment!
Ingredients are rubber, plastic, and chemicals, all having an environmental footprint to manufacture.
Then there is the footprint to dispose. After one use, the balloon is either in a landfill or finds its way to nature, giving back its microplastics and microrubbers!
Let’s just say we should think three times before using balloons. Kids sure like balloons! A few balloons provide physical activity and informal fun lessons for science.
At the end of the Democratic National Convention, thousands of balloons were dropped from the rafters of the arena. Thousands. All for a good photo shoot and give political adults a feel-good feeling. Not many kids around to enjoy that balloon drop.
We could argue that the photo shoot and good feeling were important to encourage the Democrat workers to get more involved in the campaign to defeat the evil Republicans. So the environmental cost justifies the means, right?
And then there are the lawn signs
Political signs are another bane for environmentalists. Again, resources are consumed that really don’t need to be consumed. Many lawn signs end up in landfills. Those that are recycled have to be trucked to a de-inking site, then trucked again to a cardboard plant. And what happens to that de-inked ink after, I don’t know. Do you?
Yeah, but Dave, lawn signs help convince soft supporters for our favorite party to make the effort to vote. If the other party wins, they will crush the environment. So the end justifies the means, right?
Yep, lawn signs are important in close elections. But even in elections where the result is known before the campaign starts, lawn signs are everywhere. It seems we have this lawn sign tradition mostly because it is a tradition.
Balloons and lawn signs show us the political parties are really not on top of the environmental movement. While we could argue the that parties are only a reflection of ourselves, many readers would like a system where our political leaders can lead.
And that system is . . .
. . . my alternative democracy called “Tiered Democratic Governance (TDG).”
TDG elections are much different than our current elections. Balloons and lawn signs are totally unnecessary in TDG elections. TDG representatives don’t get voted into public office because of balloons and lawn signs. So TDG elections are better for the environment. Environmentalists should be the first citizens to start building this new democracy.
The link below describes how environmentalists need only spend 10 hours a month to build this democracy. There’s still lots of time for environmentalists to attend to their regular environmentalist causes.
And they will be working alongside some interesting people.
Another reason
Political balloons and political cardboard are trivial to all the waste we are currently generating. While it is important to start somewhere, is the 10 hours a month a worthy investment of the environmentalist’s time? Maybe those 10 hours could be given to other causes?
Well, I have another reason.
Western democracy has screwed up
When I graduated from university in 1982, my newly acquired science background told me that we could not continue with our current consumption of fossil fuels. I believed that a higher fuel tax would have prevented climate change.
While my science was not exactly right, the result is the same. We would be in a much better place had we started taking climate change seriously in 1982. If only I had been granted the world’s benevolent dictator. . . .
Well I did not have the creds to prove climate change was coming. But Carl Sagin did. In his famous Congressional warning in 1985, he prophesied our future.
https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI
By 1995, it became apparent to many that Dr. Sagan was right all along. Yet we did little.
So environmentalists need to help build this new democracy. The new democracy will address environmental issues long before things really go wrong.
If they don’t build it, they should expect more balloons and lawn signs from democracy.
Published on Medium 2024
Logistics of the Fuel Industry
