[sustran] Re: FW: Thousands bike for clean air in Manila

[Pascal Desmond]

At 3:56 pm +0800 30/4/03, Paul Barter wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>Sent: Tuesday, 29 April 2003 7:48 PM
>To: Clean Air Initiative -- Asia
>Subject: [cai-asia] Thousands bike for clean air
>
>This is an article forwarded by the Firefly Brigade, a member of the
>Clean Air
>Initiative for Asian Cities in the Philippines.
[SNIP]
>Catrina Rasha Ricardo won this year's best firefly costume competition.
>For
>her prize, she will fly to Bangkok, courtesy of Lufthansa Airlines, in
>an
>all-expense paid three-day trip.

As a "clean air initiative", I'm a bit surprised at the prize. This 
will throw a bucket load of pollutants into the atmosphere around 
both Manila and Bangkok. Additionally, this prize will contribute to 
ozone layer damage, albeit slight. And, I expect, the winner won't 
find much clean air in Bangkok when she gets there.

This sort of prize is quite common among environment protection 
groups. A few years ago in the U.K. the Royal Society for the 
Protection of Birds, when subscriptions were approaching one million, 
offered an inducement of a Land Rover Discovery for the one millionth 
member. At present this organisation is lobbying hard against a new 
airport for London at Cliffe in the Thames estuary because it would 
harm poor little birds http://www.rspb.org.uk/noairport/index.asp
However, a 5 minute search of its wwwsite [along with knowledge of 
the organisation stretching back over the last 10 years] revealed 
nothing about aviation in general.

There are other examples, too, such as a peatland campaign in Ireland 
which gave out 'save our bogs' bumper stickers. Such freebies 
reinforce western society's attitudes towards the environment: "Let's 
be nice to birds and bees and leaves on trees but tough luck on those 
people who [more often than not] have no economic choice but to 
inhale our waste".

Environmental campaigners need to be acutely aware that sometimes 
their actions can appear as 'do as I say, not as I do'. This can 
undermine their cause.

Slán agus Beannacht [Irish for Take care and Best wishes]
Pascal