[Newspoetry] RE: good time to start boycotting amazon.com

[Peter Miller]

I just thought I'd chime in that this issue has an environmental angle, too.  The growth of e-commerce has resulted in a dramatic growth in shipping and packaging.  Where, formerly, an entire crate of books was shipped to Horizon (or Pages or BN or Borders), with e-commerce, each book is individually packed and boxed with several pieces of junk mail on the side.

At the WTO ministerial in Seattle, one agenda item was the "Fair Logging Agreement", or the "Explosive Expansion of Clearcutting Initiative" (EEC!).  Global wood product companies fight for this agreement because it can nullify endangered species laws (or prevent new ones from being passed), prevent local, state, or national governments from regulating how their forests are used (e.g. the US bans the export of all raw logs from national forests in the west--the EEC! would make this type of law WTO-illegal), and by reducing such regulatory costs, accelerate unsustainable forestry.  

The WTO is already damaging forests without the EEC!.  Between 1991 and 1994, Indonesia's paper and paper board production capacity grew by 16%.  After passage of the WTO, its capacity grew by 200%.  And, specifically regarding shipping, Mexico, which has held most of its forests in public trusts since the 1915 revolution, is "liberalizing" these public trusts and plans to triple its forest production capacity to serve the booming demand for wood-fiber packaging.

I still bring my own bags when I go to the grocery store.  But buying one book from an on-line seller takes us several steps back in the pre-environmental direction.

As a consumer-based alternative, I'd suggest finding the books on-line, then asking (pleading with) small stores like Priceless to place special orders for them on a weekly basis.

Valuing subversiveness and a non-dead planet,
-Peter

At 1/29/00 07:38 PM -0600, you wrote:
>On Tue, 28 Dec 1999 sigfried at shout.net wrote:
>
>> gillespie william k said:
>> > 
>> > 
>> > Being asked to boycott Amazon.com is like being asked to give up the first
>> > amendment. Being able to buy obscene, dissident, and otherwise
>> > semi-marketable literature - even through a creepy e-market economy and
...