Earth Hour 2009

Earth Hour 2009

Tomorrow night from 8:30pm until 9:30pm local time for wherever you are is Earth Hour for 2009. This is a callout to all people to turn off your lights for this one hour in an effort to get 1 billion people to shut off the lights for an hour, which would save an unimaginable amount of energy and save the environment from tons of pollution in just one hour. This started in Australia in 2007, when a little more than 2 million people and businesses turned out the lights for an hour, grew substantially in 2008 and now, hopefully even more this year! Check Earth Hour's website for more information.

New Recycling Policies for Seattle

There seems to be a few problems about Seattle's new recycling policies, at least as according to news coverage interviewing Seattleites. The biggest problem, as illustrated by news coverage, seems to be the "threat" of policing of garbage cans. If someone is not following the plans and recycling as instructed, the garbage will not be taken. The biggest complaint(s) in interviews with "ordinary people" seemed to be that people felt forced to recycle. One woman claimed that she already did all that she could to "help" because she was riding the bus instead of driving, but that she would follow the new recycling rules because she didn't have any other choice.

I think that policing is an unfortunate yet realistic need in ensuring that recycling is happening. I hate to admit it and will usually do it when no one is looking, but I'll dig through someone's garbage to pull out recyclables from their trash to put in recycling when it's possible. The idea of policing isn't even an immediate enforcement policy, but one that may be enacted later on down the road. If policing of people's trash is used at some point, it should hopefully only be necessary for a short while until people develop the habit of sorting out their garbage and recyclables properly. After that, it should just be the habit and people will no longer have to consciously think about it, but it's forming that habit that might take some policing. I think it's a necessary evil and don't even really think of it as an evil.

The End of a Reporting Era

Today marks the end of the print version of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The Post-Intelligencer, or "the P-I" in Seattle, was one of two major newspapers printed and distributed in the Seattle area, the other being the Seattle Times.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer had been around since the late 1800's and there seemed to be people who followed one or the other (the P-I or the Seattle Times) for their news pretty regularly. Some people really preferred one over the other and I definitely preferred the P-I over the Times, though I would tend more to just read whatever was available. Due to financial losses (the Hearst Corporation, which owns the P-I, claimed the paper had taken losses every year since 2000, including $14 million in 2008), the Hearst Corporation announced in January of 2009 that the P-I was being put up for sale and would no longer be able to operate its print paper if not purchased. With the nation's economy still heading down in what feels like the worst economic crisis many have ever seen, buyers were not to be found. The March 16th issue of the P-I announced that today's paper would be the last printed edition of the paper before it moved to a web-only version.

The Post-Intelligencer is the largest US paper to switch from a print to web-only newspaper. This move is unfortunately also bringing more layoffs to Seattle, as the staff is being reduced from 165 down to 20 people. Surely many other papers will be watching the results of this change as the printed newspaper industry has been in decline for years with the availability of news access readily available from internet/TV/radio/cell phones/etc. As many others are watching the results of the P-I's switch, hopefully this is not bringing Seattle closer to having no local newspaper.

The P-I's famous rotating globe that sits atop their building will continue to sit (and continue to rotate) for the time being, which is a relief to many in Seattle as this has become a well-known icon, much like the Space Needle, to Seattleites.

While the P-I and Hearst Corporation had to worry about publishing costs and the $14 million loss from 2008, American International Group (AIG) was able to give $165 million in bonuses, mostly to its executives, despite having received over $170 BILLION in federal aid last year. AIG claimed that they were contractually obliged to pay out these bonuses and that their hands were tied, which seems so incredulous, considering they only had the money for these bonuses via the federal aid. Perhaps the P-I should have pushed the government for a financial bailout of its own...