April 2004
Letterbox
Dear Watchers
Food Co-op Shopping Day
Join Us on April 17!
Dear Watchers:
Begin Earth Day festivities early—drop by the Community Food Co-op (1220 N. Forest) on Saturday, April 17. A portion of Food Co-op receipts for the day will be donated to Whatcom Watch. Support your local independent environmental newspaper while filling up those recycled grocery bags with your favorite food items!
Come by our table from noon until 4 p.m. Subscribe to Whatcom Watch for $20 and we’ll throw in one of our “hot” hemp T-shirts!
Also, while you’re there, thank the Co-op for their generous Shopping Day program, which assists local Earth-friendly organizations. We, at Whatcom Watch, are very happy to be a part of the program.
Whatcom Watch Staff
March Growth Headline Misleading
Dear Watchers:
Thanks for your March issue presentation of my perspective on the necessity of adding the no-growth dimension into the lesser-or-greater growth projection dialogue. (See “The Perils of Unplanned Perpetual Growth,” pages 8 and 9.) The need for global population stabilization or reduction is critical.
However, l’d like to note, for the record, that the Watch’s apparently inadvertent injection of the word “unplanned” between the words “The Perils of…” and “…Perpetual Growth” in the title heading conveyed the suggestion that planned perpetual growth is okay. (Responsible contemporary scientific literature fully supports the position that any population growth, planned or not—given our socio-economic system’s standard rationales and minimum sustained ameliorative responses to the long and short range negative consequences to our general well-being—makes future adjustment that much harder.) Unless that system is substantially altered, all classes will suffer.
This aptly illustrates how pervasively ingrained in public consciousness is the ostensible redeeming value of human “planning” when the term is closely linked, by conventionally conditioned semantics, to the term “growth.”
Norm Wicks
Bellingham
County Councilmember Brenner Explains Her Opposition Vote
by Barbara Brenner
See voting chart in this issue.
2/10/04: Vote 24. I voted against this recommendation (to enter into a $35,000 contract with RE Sources for waste reduction and recycling) because the council originally authorized $50,000 in the 2004 budget and RE Sources submitted a very good proposal. Then the county administration cut the amount back to $35,000, which will not give us as much important recycling and waste reduction services. This is an area in which we should not be cutting corners. §
