The photos with this blog show the rather disgusting sight that greeted me Sunday morning as I walked downtown on Kentucky Street in front of Infusions. The butt zone extended for three parking spaces.

Disgusting!

Here is a suggestion for a small thing someone can do to make the world around her or him a better place. This one is for smokers only. Please, when you finish your cigarette, put it out and put the butt in the trash. Please, don't throw butts into the street anymore.

If cigarette smokers started properly disposing of their butts, there would be a lot less litter. How much less litter? "It's estimated that trillions of filters, filled with toxic chemicals from tobacco smoke, make their way into our environment as discarded waste yearly." (Source: Cigarette Litter and How it Affects Us)

It costs nothing to dispose of a cigarette butt properly. Disposing of a cigarette butt properly is easy to do and it improves the world around you. Why wouldn't someone properly dispose of a cigarette butt?

This is an excellent example of a little thing we (all smokers) can do to improve the world around us.

This is also an excellent example of how we all have to pay for the price for what some Americans do. Cigarette butts damage the environment and second hand smoke kills thousands of us every month. Butt that's a topic for another day.

Here is another quote from Cigarette Litter and How it Affects Us:

"The core of most cigarette filters -- the part that looks like white cotton, is actually a form of plastic called cellulose acetate. By itself, cellulose acetate is very slow to degrade in our environment. Depending on the conditions of the area the cigarette butt is discarded in, it can take 18 months to 10 years for a cigarette filter to decompose. But that isn't the worst of it. Used cigarette filters are full of toxins known as tar, and those chemicals leach into the ground and waterways, damaging living organisms that contact them. And, most filters are discarded with bits of tobacco still attached to them as well, further polluting our environment with nicotine."

To learn more about the consequences of cigarette butts, visit http://quitsmoking.about.com/od/cigaretteingredients/a/ciglitter.htm (Cigarette Litter and How it Affects Us)

Please, if you smoke cigarettes, make a promise to never again throw a butt away.

Please, if you smoke cigarettes, try and convince as many of your fellow smokers as you can to never throw a butt away again.

And if you don't smoke, do whatever you can to keep butts from littering our beaches, streets, rivers, parks...

Thanks to Norton II for his comment about lifeboats. It helped focus my attention regarding the importance of Americans working together on the problems we face.

People get into a life boat to escape from a life-threatening situation. They stay in the boat until they make it to safety or until help arrives. In our present crisis, there are no lifeboats because there is no safe place to go to and no one is coming to our rescue.

Like it or not, we are all in this together. We can choose to act as a team and create a better world or we can continue down the path we've followed to get to where we are today. In either case, we will live in what we create and share a common fate. Even though most Americans don't buy drugs from Mexico, we all have to live with the problems caused by those who do.

Norton II also commented on the need for a new paradigm. Thinking about lifeboats has brought one to mind: that of Spaceship Earth.

I watched an interesting program on CNN today. Its focus was the growing crisis Mexico faces as drug cartels destabilize the country. An unstable Mexico is not good news for America. The drug cartels are not just a Mexican problem! If the situation continues to deteriorate, we may have to send troops to the border with Mexico to prevent the violence from spilling over onto American soil. Border wars anyone?

The problems America and Mexico face from drug cartels are caused by Americans buying Mexican drugs. If Americans stop buying drugs made in Mexico, the cartels would not have the money needed to fund their operations and I suspect the problems would just disappear.

Whether it's driving at gas-guzzling speeds or pouring water unused down the drain, many of the environmental, economic and international (did you know that China holds $1,000,000,000,000 in American Treasury bonds) problems we face as a nation are either caused by or exacerbated by our own actions.

Why are we doing this to ourselves and, more importantly, how do we stop engaging in self-destructive behavior?

Thanks to Walt Kelly and Pogo.

Tomorrow: There are no lifeboats!

That is certainly true when it comes to individual-sized bottled water. Below I've quoted two Web sites I found with a quick search on plastic water bottles + pollution. This is clearly a case where a lot of little things make a difference.

The articles I've read on the topic always mention plastic and oil. Rarely do they mention how much WATER is wasted when the bottles are discarded.

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"In 2007, the manufacture of plastic water bottles generated more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions and required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil.

Every year more than 4 billion pounds of plastic bottles end up in landfills or as roadside litter, and while some states have bottle-bill laws that extend to cover bottled water, the recycling rates for bottled water pale as compared to carbonated soft drinks."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ina-pinkney/tap-tap-tap-water_b_173338.html

It's an old story; one that has been told many times. You know how the story goes: it's easy to break a single twig but much more difficult to break a twig when it's part of a bundle.

Simple wisdom, easily grasped.

The question facing us all today is not if we will survive the current economic downturn; of course we will. The question is how much pain will be suffered by how many people before this storm passes? If sufficient numbers of Americans work together, if we form "bundles" from coast to coast, we will get past this crisis more quickly and with less pain.

Like the bundle of twigs, each individual grows stronger by association with others. We give strength to each other and in the process the whole becomes much, much more than the sum of its parts.

We can't prevent suffering; it's too late for that. As more jobs are lost, the newly unemployed are likely to join the ranks of the suffering. But if Americans find ways to work together, we have it in our power to reduce the suffering. Where can we start? By rising to meet this challenge: to see ourselves not only as individuals but also as part of a larger whole, as part of a team.

The larger whole may be one's neighborhood, city or state; or it could be the whole world. All Americans are in this together. The sooner we start acting like a team and doing whatever it is we can do improve the world around us, the sooner this crisis will begin to turn around.

As a group, we have the power exert some level of control over how the recession plays out. If we don't act in bundles, if we act as individuals our situation turns into every man/woman/child for him/herself.

Challenge For Change. I like that.

I'm always happy to receive comments from readers. Occasionally I feel compelled to reply to a reader's comment as I am doing tonight. The Emperor Norton II comment to which I am replying is quoted below.

Dear Emperor Norton II,

With all due respect to your highness, your comparison of America to the Titanic falls short in several ways.

Once the Titanic hit the iceberg it was doomed; there was nothing anyone could do to save the ship. If introducing yourself to your neighbor on the Titanic made your last moments alive together more pleasant, then your time was well spent. However, America is not a sinking ship, our country is most certainly not doomed and there is a lot that can be done to improve our situation.

I completely agree with your comment regarding our need for a new paradigm. I even have a suggestion for one: Americans working together to improve the world around them doing the things they can do rather than standing still, frozen with hopelessness. Americans acting together as agents for change rather than passively waiting for the government to solve our problems. That's my suggestion for a new paradigm. Does the Emperor have a more radical suggestion he'd like to share?

Regarding baby steps, are you suggesting that people not do small things that will improve the world around them because the actions are small? Small though any action may be, it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness!

I think your suggestion that we take this to the schools is an excellent one that I fully support. School children are our hope and our future. If we can teach children to consider how their actions affect the larger whole and to do the things they can do (however small) to improve the world around them, then we will have taken a big step in the right direction.

Finally as for the lifeboats, what fri@@&% lifeboats? Unless by lifeboat you mean moving to another country, there are no lifeboats. Either Americans join hands and make this work or we all pay the price. There are no lifeboats!!!

Norton II's comment
Picking up litter and introducing themselves to their neighbors was what the folks were doing on the Titanic before it went down. All very positive and friendly baby steps, to be sure, but not the radical, getinthefrigginglifeboat fast action that was needed for the times. If Skully had taken the time for baby steps cleaning up the cabin or introducing himself to the passengers he probably would have put the plane into a building instead of the Hudson. The humans need a new paradigm and they need it now. But alas, we fear the Boomers will be spending their time recycling plastic bottles and feeling good about it as they drive the SUV to the mall to buy cheap crap they don't need and more calories than are good for them. We suggest you take your Challenge For Change to the high schools and pray there are some precocious Millenial Generation kids there with what it'll take to bring society back from the brink of disaster. If not, put on your life vest and getinthefrigginlifeboat.