Reusable shopping bag company that also makes them with your group or company logo (minimum order)

[AlGore-08.com]

http://www.1bagatatime.com

These folks make the shopping bags given as swag at Sundance and those sold at Ralph's grocery stores in out here in Cali and a lot of other places around the country. I've used them, they're good quality. They sell their own bags (minimum order 10) or they will create unique bags for your company or organization (minimum order for customized bags is 100).

[MatrixEscape]

1. Ahh, yes ....

Capitalism at its finest!

Let the profits begin! The masses are moved and emotionally charged!

Time to shift gears.

No really, this is a great time to ignore the larger issues and get in on this new cash cow. As we all know, making people feel better about helping the environment while they also make sacrifices works! People made all kinds of them during the WWII, etc.

Now if you want me to help tear down all those McMansions, (that suck energy like a mosquito in a blood bank , even when they are not inhabited) that are growing like freekin' mushrooms on cow shit everywhere, dismantle those gated communities where heaven lurks, and join people who enforce mandatory workshops that focus on the massive, shameless waste and lack of conservation by greedy, selfish, (they are people with rights like we are supposed to have you know) corporations, I am in.

If you want me to help smash all the SUV's with sledgehammers and turn them into plowshares, you have me motivated and attentive and very willing. If we are all going to join in and turn all the high-end industries, (private planes, limos, yachts, designer clothing, etc.) into centers for Rapid Environmental Reclamation and aid to the impoverished, sign me up now!

But if you want me to march in a goose step fashion, with an energy saving light bulb, (mercury-laden) held high in one hand and a cloth shopping bag in the other, well, I don't feel up to it and it won't make me feel better about a bigger picture that supports an increasing number of wealthy with a proportionally increasing number of dirt poor. The rest of you are unwittingly assuring those wealthy of more resources and being made to feel really good about it in the process.

And LED light bulbs save a lot more energy and could have a big impact if they were subsidized because they are far too expensive. If we replaced all of our bulbs with those, (they are around $30-40 a piece last time I checked) that would really have a far greater impact on the entire country's energy use, like around a 25 percent decrease for electricity. Demand that your government subsidize those like they do corporations and you would get great results in the light bulb arena -- if that is your thing.

You don't need to argue with me or chastise me for spoiling you feel-good moments here. Just go feel good and buy some stuff! Your economy and your controlling corporations and investors need you right now.

[AlGore-08.com]

2. Just F.Y.I. the 10 point plan Gore submitted to Congress in spring

might be more along the lines of what you're looking for. My paraphrase is below:

http://www.algore.org/Gores_10_Point_Plan_To_Combat_Global_Warming

1.) Immediately freeze carbon at the existing level; then implement programs to reduce it 90% by 2050.

2.) Reduce taxes on employment and production, instead taxing pollution (especially CO2). These pollution taxes would raise the same amount of money, but make us more competitive by encouraging employment while discouraging pollution.

3.) A portion of the revenues must be earmarked for low-income and middle class people who will have a difficult time making this transition.

4.) Negotiate a strong global treaty to replace Kyoto, while working toward de facto compliance with Kyoto. Move the start date of this new treaty forward from 2012 to 2010, so the next president can to act immediately, rather than waste time trying to pass Kyoto right before it expires. We have to try to get China and India to participate in the treaty. If they don’t immediately participate, we have to move forward with the treaty regardless, trusting that they will join sooner rather than later.

5.) Impose a moratorium on construction of any new coal-fired power plant not compatible with carbon capture and sequestration.

6.) Develop an "electranet" -- a smart grid that allows individual homeowners and small businesses to create green power and sell their excess power to the utility companies at a fair price. Just as widely distributed information processing led to a large new surge of productivity, we need a law that allows widely distributed energy generation to be sold into the grid, at a rate determined not by a the utility companies, but by regulation. The goal is to create a grid that does not require huge, centralized power plants.

7.) Raise CAFE standards for cars and trucks as part of a comprehensive package. Cars and trucks are a large part of the problem, but coal and buildings must be addressed at the same time.

8.) Set a date for the ban of incandescent light bulbs that gives industry time to create alternatives. If the date is set, industry will meet this challenge.

9.) Create Connie Mae, a carbon-neutral mortgage association. Connie Mae will defer the costs of things like insulation and energy efficient windows which cut carbon but are often not used by builders or renovators because they add to the upfront costs of homes, only paying for themselves after several years of energy savings.

10.) The SEC should require disclosure of carbon emissions in corporate reporting.

[MatrixEscape]

3. Good to see that plan.

Of course, the ideas are sound and presentable. It is their enactment that is improbable.

I stand convinced that the root of our collective problem are the rights and privileges that we have allowed for corporations. If you have any quesiton or uncertainty on the matter, you can easily look that up and research the issue.

Just like the industry responses to SiCKO, and the profitable aspects of recycling versus its real impact, (and counterproductive energy costs versus your free and voluntary cooperation), as well as the endless supply of products to consume that feed the problem more than anything else, we have to see this problem at its roots and pull out those roots before any testimony or posturing are to be considered as viable and worth the effort and sacrifice we are compelled to give.

Your corporations are just as much a person as you are. They have the very SAME rights, but their leverage of money and power is far, far greater than you, or even a group of you, could ever muster. This should, no must be, the very core of a platform for any change that you feel is necessary beyond "feel good" and being managed, despite how you feel about Al Gore's rebirth as an innovative, proactive champion.

If you all, as a people, do not work for, demand, and even fight for the demotion of modern corporations from virtual persons, like yourself, back to fictitious agencies that merely reduce liability for practical and functional reasons, then nothing is going to effect the change you are being enticed with now. From what I know about capitalism and corporations to date, this is all simply turning out to be yet another side-show that stifles the necessary dissent to enact something tangible and powerful with the voice of an informed and decisive population acting in unison.

There have been many testimonies and speakers before Congress with many, very righteous intents and purposes, and all you are seeing to date, are the results. Are they satisfying to you, or can you see that every corporation gets what they want and always manages to prosper at your expense. We are talking everything from corporate welfare, (gosh, don't tell the welfare Queens in their new cars) to bailouts, to windfall profits without taxation, to tax breaks, to unfair practices, to exploitation of workers, to whatever else you are in the know about. The corporation itself, (and its Neo-Fascist alliance with, and control of, our own government) should never, ever be taken lightly. It is the iron fist that doles out the opiates that media provides while it takes the larger portion of everything we work for and hold dear.

Now, if we were going to start this trendy environmentalism, (so captivating, and soothing it seems in fact) and have a World-wide concert to the tune of, "unhook the claws of the corporate parasites and profit takers from the fruits of our efforts" sort of thing, that would really get me enthused and I would consider joining that cause as long as it was not yet another guise for corporate control or a revolution for the sake of a controlling cabal, (as the past has proved is often the case).

We have to start at the root of the problem and then work our way up to the others. The environmental problem is largly based on a breaking of the rule that, "You can never get enough of what you don't need to truly make you happy!" We are all guilty of that and the way this system works, we won't have jobs, food, or any kind of livelyhood unless we feed that model of endless expansion with an endless garbage heap for the results. I don't care how many light bulbs you replace or cloth bags you buy, the endless consumption that comes from capitalism is the source and core of our environmental results, period.

That means we ALL (rich and poor alike) have to drastically rethink and change our lifestyles in a rigid way and without loopholes. Who is really willing to rethink and retool and reinvent a society that is based on nothing more than exploiting, despoiling, and polluting the planet in just about everything it does? Nobody imagines a simple, tribal existence as closer to the truth, especially not with 6.5+ billion people served, (I mean exploited and manipulated to one degree or another) daily.

Oh it all really could have gone much better, (but then, would have, could have, and should have are ridiculous and irrational assumptions) but it did not. We have, collectively, played adolescents with every serious and dangerous adult toys, and are directions, desires, and use of said, has left us in a very dire and wanting predicament. A change of consciousness and perspective, for us all, is even more important than stemming the control and dominance of the corporations that pull our strings with such expertise and subtlety.

[troubleinwinter]

4. I learned some facts on the site. And TEN nice bags for $19.90- cheap.