North of MPLS

unconsumption:

Patagonia always had a reputation for making durable, low-impact outdoor apparel, but the California label is taking its sustainable ethos one step further with the launch of Common Threads, an initiative that seeks to help consumers, well, consume less. Together with online-auction website eBay, Patagonia created a virtual swap meet on Wednesday for buying and selling used Patagonia gear—an unexpected retail model that’s a first for a major brand. The underlying message, one that underscore one of eBay’s core commandments, is clear: The greenest product is the one that already exists.

Read the rest on Ecouterre here.

(Spotted on Twitter, via Zeynep Arsel.)

This is a great idea. Patagonia stuff lasts forever anyways, so buying it used shouldn’t be an issue at all. 

Because if you asked yourself what it meant that the Amazon has just come through its second hundred-year drought in the past five years, or that the pine forests across the western part of this continent have been obliterated by a beetle in the past decade — well, you might have to ask other questions. Such as: Should President Obama really just have opened a huge swath of Wyoming to new coal mining? Should Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sign a permit this summer allowing a huge new pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta? You might also have to ask yourself: Do we have a bigger problem than $4-a-gallon gasoline?

Better to join with the U.S. House of Representatives, which voted 240 to 184 this spring to defeat a resolution saying simply that “climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.” Propose your own physics; ignore physics altogether. Just don’t start asking yourself whether there might be some relation among last year’s failed grain harvest from the Russian heat wave, and Queensland’s failed grain harvest from its record flood, and France’s and Germany’s current drought-related crop failures, and the death of the winter wheat crop in Texas, and the inability of Midwestern farmers to get corn planted in their sodden fields. Surely the record food prices are just freak outliers, not signs of anything systemic.

It’s very important to stay calm. If you got upset about any of this, you might forget how important it is not to disrupt the record profits of our fossil fuel companies. If worst ever did come to worst, it’s reassuring to remember what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the Environmental Protection Agency in a recent filing: that there’s no need to worry because “populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations.” I’m pretty sure that’s what residents are telling themselves in Joplin today.