Virginia Chapter
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Virginia Chapter |
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| Explore, enjoy and protect the planet | ||
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> Home > Our Issues > Sustainability SustainabilityOur enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption… We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate. To continue U.S. patterns of consumption will require six planet earths to sustain our lifestyle particularly as it is adopted by the emerging economies of China, India and South America. While government policies often fail us and multi-national industries operate with impunity to environmental laws, the individual can have the greatest positive effect on the rampant consumption by his own personal choices. TRUE COST OF FOOD CAMPAIGN
We, the consumers, through our food choices, can stop the practices that harm our health, our planet, and our quality of life. Sustainable consumption is the use of goods and services that satisfy basic needs and improve quality of life while minimizing the use of irreplaceable natural resources and the byproducts of toxic materials, waste, and pollution. The Sierra Club National Sustainable Consumption Committee has put its emphasis on the true cost of the food we eat. We believe that dietary lifestyle is the easiest aspect of consumer behavior to address and the one with greatest impact on the environment. The Sierra Club expends enormous resources fighting the symptoms of unsustainable agriculture, from water pollution and toxins in the food chain to loss of habitat and species. What the Club has not previously done is to seriously challenge the root cause of the above: American food consumption patterns. Consider this:
We are literally eating ourselves to death. Worse, far worse is this: Corporate food behemoths, abetted by the government and the WTO, are stuffing this model down the gullets of the rest of the world. They are doing everything possible to get the whole world to eat – not just itself to death – but the biosphere as well, and quickly. By and large, our diet is so unsustainably produced that it jeopardizes not just the environment but also our health. Our diet completely ignores the true cost of food. Would you like to become involved by sharing your ideas, starting a home study group or hosting an occasional outing? Would you like to present our new video, The True Cost of Food, to your friends, family members or community group? For information about the True Cost of Food Campaign, visit our website at: http://www.truecostoffood.org/ TRUE COST OF HOMES CAMPAIGN
The Club’s top priority is Smart Energy Solutions (SES). Of those solutions, it favors energy efficiency and conservation above all others. As an individual, you exert limited control over production (power plants, wind farms, etc), as but as a consumer you have myriad options to make your home conserve energy and use it more efficiently. Your choices can range from easy to complex:
They apply to every type of home energy consumption:
The Sierra Club favors energy efficiency and conservation above all sources of energy. We have limited control over energy production systems, but we have many options to make our homes more energy efficient. The Sustainable Consumption Committee’s True Cost of Homes Campaign has developed a web site to guide you to these options. Please visit it to learn what actions you can take to green your home and reduce global emissions: http://truecostofhomes.org/tcoh.html We don’t have to rely solely on laws and policies to protect our natural resources; our consumer behaviors and demands can create the market for goods that are created with renewable resources and manufactured with materials that do the least amount of harm to the earth. Most importantly we can slow our demand for ever increasing quantities of throwaway goods that will spend more time in landfills than in our homes. We, the consumers, through our food choices, can stop the practices that harm our health, our planet, and our quality of life. Sustainable consumption is the use of goods and services that satisfy basic needs and improve quality of life while minimizing the use of irreplaceable natural resources and the byproducts of toxic materials, waste, and pollution. The Sierra Club National Sustainable Consumption Committee has put its emphasis on the true cost of the food we eat. We believe that dietary lifestyle is the easiest aspect of consumer behavior to address and the one with greatest impact on the environment. The Sierra Club expends enormous resources fighting the symptoms of unsustainable agriculture, from water pollution and toxins in the food chain to loss of habitat and species. What the Club has not previously done is to seriously challenge the root cause of the above: American food consumption patterns. Consider this:
We are literally eating ourselves to death. Worse, far worse is this: Corporate food behemoths, abetted by the government and the WTO, are stuffing this model down the gullets of the rest of the world. They are doing everything possible to get the whole world to eat – not just itself to death – but the biosphere as well, and quickly. By and large, our diet is so unsustainably produced that it jeopardizes not just the environment but also our health. Our diet completely ignores the true cost of food. Would you like to become involved by sharing your ideas, starting a home study group or hosting an occasional outing? Would you like to present our new video, The True Cost of Food, to your friends, family members or community group? For information about the True Cost of Food Campaign, visit our website at: http://www.truecostoffood.org/ TRUE COST OF HOMES CAMPAIGN Your choices can range from easy to complex:
They apply to every type of home energy consumption:
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