And just WHO has ruined the environment?

[ErikJ]

Got this chainmail today from older RW relative. It has some great points how to be greener, like in the "good ole days"....
....(I think I'll reply-all the good ole days also had a top tax rate on the richest of 90% and its only 15% ON OUR BILLIONAIRES TODAY.)


"Being Green"

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags
because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."

The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.

But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.

But too bad we didn't do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in
an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred
by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send
in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms
into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green
thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person..

We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off.

[orpupilofnature57]

1. The Dominion Theocracy

[peace13]

2. You'll have to forgive the young people for being bitter.

Look at it this way, in the 'old' days you had a job that you could plan to retire from in a place where you could buy a house. If you chose to move you could sell your home in a reasonable time frame for a fair price.

Those concepts are now gone, dead, dried up.

The fact that the planet is full of pollution is the icing on the cake.

For the record, I'm old but I can still see how hard it would be to be young on this planet at this time.

[orpupilofnature57]

8. Agreed ,more technology ,more maladies .

[Zalatix]

3. "Your generation did not care enough to save our environment..."

What clerk would ever dare say that to any customer now?

Smart people wouldn't even put those words on their Facebook account for fear of some elderly employer seeing it in some dark corner of their Facebook pages and firing them for it.

[Fumesucker]

6. My generation had roughly the same quota of avaricious psychopaths as any other..

And they are the ones who end up running things at the highest level a remarkable amount of the time.

What Dr Bob Altemeyer calls "double highs", strong social dominators who also score high in authoritarianism. In his book "The Authoritarians" he talks of experiments with double highs in charge on both sides of war game situation and how it ends up in mutual disaster every time.

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

[ret5hd]

4. Well, yeah, I see your point, but I notice you didn't list...

the Cuyahoga River (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River)
or PCBs,
or tire fires,
etc etc etc

Just so we are clear, I am probably about your age judging by the examples you gave.

[Egalitarian Thug]

5. The kernel of truth buried under a landfill of lies. n/t

[ErikJ]

7. Our town now has a fantastic recycling program

they only collect the garbage can every other week forcing people to recycle more that they collect every week.

They also gave everybody a food compost bucket to set by the sink which you throw in the big COMPOST bin they collect every week instead of throwing it in the trash or washing it down the disposer into the sewer system.